Nearly 1,700 journalists have been killed since 2003, a heavy toll denounced on Friday by Reporters Without Borders. Deadly peaks in 2012 and 2013 were followed “by a gradual lull, then historically low figures from 2019” but the death toll rose again in 2022 with 58 journalists killed compared to 51 the previous year, because of the war in Ukraine.
Eight have lost their lives there since the Russian invasion in February, adding to the 12 reporters who had been murdered there “in the previous 19 years”. Hence Ukraine’s second place in the ranking of the most dangerous countries in Europe, behind… Russia (25 killed in twenty years).
“Since Vladimir Putin came to power, attacks – including fatal ones – on the freedom of the press have been systematic there, as RSF has often denounced, with in particular the emblematic liquidation of Anna Politkovskaïa on October 7, 2006 “, insists the NGO.