On 19 August 2023, Russian forces carried out a missile strike on the city of Chernihiv, in northern Ukraine, destroying the office of local online media Cheline, alongside a theater in the city center which was the main target of the strike, reported Ukrainian press freedom group Institute of Mass Information (IMI). According to Cheline’s editor Pavlo Solodovnyk, none of the outlet’s collaborators were harmed in the attack, which took place on a Saturday. “Our editorial office no longer has the premises in which we were born and where we worked for seven years. Fortunately, there was no one in the editorial office on [that] Saturday”, Solodovnyk told IMI.
According to information Cheline provided to IMI, the outlet’s office was located several dozen meters from the location of the missile strike. Photos showed windows and doors in the office blown out from the impact of the explosion. The office’s ceiling and walls had also partially collapsed. Devices used by Cheline’s collaborators, such as laptops, computers, cameras and microphones, were also destroyed. The media outlet’s team has already rented a new office and is currently removing undamaged equipment from the one which was destroyed in the missile attack, Solodovnyk reported.
On August 19, Russian forces fired a missile that struck the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, targeting a theater where a public exhibition of drones used by the Ukrainian army was taking place. Seven people were killed and at least 156 were injured. Among them was Arsen Chepurnyi, a freelance Ukrainian journalist with the local news website Chas Chernihivskyi.
Chepurnyi and Dmytro Falchevskyi, a camera operator with Chas Chernihivskyi, were covering the drone exhibition when an air-raid siren sounded. As the journalists ran to the shelter in the theater’s basement, an explosion shattered the building’s windows, sending glass into Chepurnyi’s left hand. He also sprained ligaments in his left leg when he tripped over a window frame that had been knocked onto the floor. Paramedics in the shelter provided Chepurnyi with first aid and bandaged his hand.