Russia-Ukraine War

A journalist holds a piece of a rocket while reporting at the site of a rocket attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, on January 26, 2023. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)
Rescued civilians, journalists, and police officers take cover as an air-raid siren sounds during a drone strike in Kyiv, Ukraine, on October 17, 2022. (Reuters/Vladyslav Musiienko)
A journalist stands in a crater caused by the explosion of a rocket outside the Pivdennoukrainsk nuclear plant in Yuzhnoukrainsk, Ukraine, on September 20, 2022. (AFP/Genya Savilov)
Journalists walk on a street in Balakliia, which had been recently liberated by Ukrainian forces, in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine, on September 13, 2022. (Reuters/Gleb Garanich)
Journalists report on the departure of the M/V Razoni, from the Ukrainian port city of Odesa on August 1, 2022. The Lebanon-bound cargo ship carried the first shipment of Ukrainian grain under an internationally brokered deal to ease the growing global food crisis after Russia’s invasion blocked Ukraine’s agricultural exports. (AFP/Oleksandr Gimanov)
An AFP journalist runs as smoke rises behind after a bombardment in Bakhmut, Eastern Ukraine, on July 31, 2022. (AFP/Bulent Kilic)
A journalist photographs smoke rising from a landmine outside of Kyiv, Ukraine on June 9, 2022. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
A Ukrainian serviceman and a journalist run for cover from shelling at a field camp near the front line at an undisclosed location in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region on June 6, 2022. (AFP/Aris Messinis)
Ruslan Smieshchuk (right) poses with Ukrainian military press officer Iryna Rybakova while on assignment in June 2022 outside the Russian-occupied city Izyum in eastern Ukraine. (Photo: Ruslan Smieshchuk)
Journalists walk inside the rubble of a food warehouse on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine on March 29, 2022. The warehouse was destroyed in a Russian attack 12 days earlier. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

Russia’s war on Ukraine is exacting a brutal toll. As the conflict continues, the United Nations reports that millions of Ukrainians have been forced from their homes and thousands of civilians have been killed or injured. At least 15 journalists and media workers have been killed covering the war and CPJ is investigating whether the deaths of two others were related to their journalism. Local journalists in Ukraine have been forced to transform themselves into war correspondents, working through curfews and blackouts and relying on safety trainings and equipment to help them survive. Meanwhile in Russia, the country’s independent media have been gutted as scores of journalists have fled onerous new media restrictions in their homeland, and dozens of Belarusian journalists who had earlier found refuge in Ukraine from their own country’s media crackdown were forced to flee yet again.

CPJ has called for the protection of Ukrainian journalists, along with the international reporters and media workers who join them in covering the conflict.

For more detail about attacks on press freedom in the early stages of the conflict, read CPJ’s Russia-Ukraine Watch for round-ups published weekly between February and June 2022.

Click here for CPJ’s updates, in-depth reports, and statements on the invasion.