On 20 June 2023, journalists from online media outlet Dumska, which is based in the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa, were not allowed into the building of the local regional council, where they were planning on reporting from a meeting of one of the council’s auxiliary bodies.
According to Dumska, the journalists, who were not named by the media outlet, were barred from entering by officials of the Ukrainian National Guard, who are tasked with guaranteeing the building’s security under martial law regulations in Ukraine. The media outlet reported that National Guard officials quoted a Ukrainian government decree, according to which journalists could allegedly only enter government buildings accompanied by a representative of the institution’s press service.
However, no representatives of the council’s press service arrived to accompany the Dumska journalists, with the head of the service Nazar Melnykov later explaning that he had not been able to do this as the correspondents arrived after the beginning of the meeting they were planning to report on, at which Melnykov was present.
According to a lawyer for the Kyiv-based media rights defence group IMI, the explanations provided by the Odesa regional council were not accurate, as the government decree mentioned by National Guard officials described procedures for security controls of items carried by visitors of government buildings, not the presence of visitors inside buildings. Moreover, the council’s press service should be able to delegate at least one employee to accompany media workers in such situations, IMI wrote.