An award-winning US journalist working in Ukraine, Brent Renaud, has been shot dead in Irpin, outside Kyiv, on Sunday 13 March. Ukrainian police said he had been targeted by Russian soldiers. Two other journalists were injured and taken to hospital. It is the first reported death of a foreign journalist covering the war in Ukraine. The International and European Federations of Journalists (IFJ-EFJ) condemn the killing and call for the killers to be brought to justice. Brent Renaud, 50, was a journalist and documentary filmmaker who lived  and worked in New York City and Little Rock, Arkansas. He had previously…

Update 20.03.2022: Oleg Baturin was released on 20 March following eight-day detention by Russian soldiers. Ukrainian local journalist Oleg Baturin disappeared in Kakhovka, a city in Kherson region (Ukraine), on Saturday evening. The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) joins its two Ukrainian affiliates, NUJU and IMTUU, in calling on the authorities to investigate this disturbing disappearance in a region where journalists live in terror of Russian reprisals. We call on any witnesses to contact journalists’ organisations. On Saturday 12 March, at about 4 pm, an acquaintance called Oleg Baturin, who is a journalist for “Novy Den” newspaper, and proposed to…

On 10 March, the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don (Russia) sentenced Remzi Bekirov, a correspondent for the Russian independent news website Grani, to 19 years in prison for allegedly organizing the activities of a terrorist organization, a charge he denied. The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) and the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU) call on the Russian authorities to immediately release Remzi Bekirov and all other Crimean Tatar journalists who are in prison for informing the public about human rights abuses against their ethnic group. On 27 March 2019, journalists Osman Arifmemetov and Remzi Bekirov were arrested in…

The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) welcomes the call for solidarity with Ukrainian journalists by the Russian Journalists and Media Workers’ Trade Union (JMWU). The EFJ also supports the legal action by the Journalists’ Union of the Russian Republic of Karelia against the new Russian censorship law and against the censorship imposed by the Russian regulator RKN. The independent Russian trade union JMWU on 7 March issued a message of solidarity to Ukrainian and Russian journalists who are trying to do their work in the public interest in an increasingly difficult environment: “Let’s call a spade a spade. Peace is…

The European Federation of Journalists joined Access Info Europe and 125 journalists, transparency, anti-corruption, open data organisations in calling upon the European Union institutions and the Member States to act urgently to open up company and beneficial ownership registers across the European Union to the public. This is crucial in exposing the assets and money of Russian oligarchs in the EU. We are deeply horrified by Putin’s incursion into Ukraine and the violation of the rule of law, human rights, and state sovereignty. We support the European Union in collectively taking a strong stance to defend democracy and our common…

A solidarity mission carrying half a ton of humanitarian aid for Ukrainian journalists left Athens on 9 March, headed by Maria Antoniadou, the President of the Journalists’ Union of the Athens Daily Newspapers (JUADN). The International and European Federation of Journalists (IFJ/EFJ) praised the ”incredible show of solidarity” by JUADN who organized the mission in collaboration with the Unified Journalists Organization of Subsidiary Insurance and Health Care  (EDOEAP) and supported by the Panhellenic Federation of Journalists Unions (PFJU). The aid, which will be delivered to IFJ/EFJ affiliates the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU) and the Independent Media Trade Union of…