It has become known how many journalists are held captive by the Russians

At least 30 Ukrainian journalists are now in Russian captivity. This was stated by Kateryna Dyachuk, head of the free speech monitoring department at the Mass Information Institute (MI), during the session "Journalists matter: Call for the release of Ukrainian journalists held captive by the Russian Federation" at PACE in Strasbourg, France.

Dyachuk also presented a list of journalsites who are held captive by the Russians. In particular, these are:

Irina Danilovich
Vladyslav Esipenko
Viktoria Roshchyna
Dmytro Hilyuk
Irina Levchenko
Alexander Malyshev
Georgiy Levchenko
Maxim Rupchev
Yana Suvorova
Mark Kaliusz
Konstantin Zinovkin
Alexey Bessarabov
Dmitry Shtyblikov
Seyran Saliev
Marlen Asanov
Timur Ibragimov
Server Mustafayev
Osman Arifmemetov
Remzi Bekirov
Ruslan Suleymanov
Rustem Sheikhaliyev
Amet Suleymanov
Asan Akhtemov
Vilen Temeryanov
Ernest Ametov
Nariman Dzhelyalov
Anastasia Glukhovskaya
Rustem Osmanov
Aziz Azizov
Vladislav Gershon

She emphasised that all journalists are civilians and are being held for spurious reasons. Many have been "convicted" and locked up in prison for terms of up to 20 years.

Dyachuk emphasised that Russia was afraid of journalists and was doing everything possible to prevent the world from learning the truth, including from those media people it had locked up. Moreover, she pointed out that access to Ukrainian journalists is difficult for both lawyers and their relatives.

We do not have a mechanism for returning civilians from captivity, as can be done with prisoners of war. Therefore, the situation is stalemate. We are talking about them, but there are no concrete actions," the media expert explained.

She said that the Russians had lists of the town's residents before entering a particular locality. They singled out activists, patriots and journalists - people who could be dangerous for the occupation authorities.

They cleansed exactly these categories of the population, which can also serve as evidence of the crime of genocide and requires a separate international assessment," Dyachuk said.

The IMI expert called on the international community to start acting proactively to free the captured journalists and punish the offenders.

We would like to point out that in the two years and four months of the full-scale invasion, Russia has committed 602 offences against journalists and media in Ukraine, according to monitoring carried out by the Mass Information Institute.