There is a saying that the first casualty of a war is the truth. Therefore, where there is a war, you will find reporters there, not just for the scoops but for the truth.
The Death of Rostislav Zhuravlev
On 22 July 2023, a Ukrainian artillery bombardment using US-supplied cluster munition killed Rostislav Zhuravlev, a Russian reporter for the Russian state-owned channel RIA Novosti while he covering the Russian military frontline in Zaporizhzhia, in southeast Ukraine. The attack also injured three other reporters. The attack occurred as the Russian soldiers assembled, possibly to prepare to assault a Ukrainian defensive position.
The attack drew condemnation from the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the United Nations for Education, Science, and Culture (UNESCO) Director-General Audrey Azoulay. The UNESCO DG also mentioned that Rostislav was the 14th reporter to die in the conflict since 22 February 2022.
Yet, on the same day Rostilav died, Yevgeny Shilko, a cameraman with the German channel Deutsche Welle for their Russian language channel, received injuries from a Russian cluster bomb bombardment while covering the same war in Druzhkivka in Donetsk oblast. What happened to Shilko became just a byline in the broader view of this conflict.
Not too long after the IFJ and UNESCO condemned the killing of Rostilav, pro-Ukrainian websites deplored both IFJ and UNESCO's condemnation. They contended that despite that Rostilav being a journalist accredited to RIA, he was a Russian propagandist who not only participated in the invasion of their country and actively justified the Russian invasion as part of his work but was also a key agitator that had encouraged the 2014 separatist movement in eastern Ukraine. There are many online photos of Rostilav carrying weapons, alleging that he was an active participant instead of a mere observer.
Another anomaly emerged as I began to search for more information about Rostilav. Searching for the news coverage on Rostilav, I found several English-language posts on VK and Russian-based military websites, the Russian equivalent of Facebook, claiming that Rostilav was a military commander with RIA. Since these posts came from Russian pages, it would be easy to write this off as Russian admission that he was, in fact, a soldier. But I have since discounted these pages as incorrect translations. One Russian website, topwar.ru, has the same article in both English and Russian. The English article incorrectly identified Rostislav as a military commander, while the Russian language website correctly identified Rostislav as a military correspondent when translated to English using Google Translate.
Other Reporters
As mentioned, UNESCO identified Rostislav as the 14th reporter to die in the Russo - Ukrainian war. However, I have identified fifteen reporters having died since the start of the February 2022 invasion, excluding former journalist Viktor Dudar who died in March 2022 in a combat operation with a Ukrainian paratrooper unit.
Most interestingly, all 14 other reporters died at Russian hands. At least one reporter, Roman Nezhyborets, might have been executed by Russian paratrooper forces who took him away from his home after they caught him calling his mother. Local Ukrainians found his body in a grave in Yahidne, his hands tied behind his back, suggesting the Russian paratroopers had executed him.
It piqued my interest to search Russian media outlets, Russian Today and TASS, to see if they have covered any of these deaths. Unsurprisingly, there were none. They did not even mention the death of Russian journalist Oksana Baulina. Baulina was the former Chief of Video Operations for Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. The only outlet that covered Baulina's death was RIA.
News versus Propaganda
As mentioned at the start of this article, the first casualty of a war is the truth. As opposing sides in a war fight to sway the public's opinion of their narrative, news, in turn, would become propaganda.
Danny Liew is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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