Around 12 March 2022, a group of British journalists working in Kharkiv for The Times were threatened and briefly held at gunpoint by a member of the local Territorial Defence Forces (volunteer Ukrainian armed corps), together with their fixer, Ukrainian freelance reporter Stas Kozlyuk. According to Kozlyuk, the group were in the city center, where they wanted to film a report with cars destroyed in recent Russian shelling in the background. They reportedly approached a territorial defence brigade stationed in the area and asked them for permission to do this. After their request was validated, they started preparing to film at an agreed location, when one of the territorial defence members ran up to them to say that, in the end, filming was “categorically” forbidden. In the discussion which ensued, the armed man first threatened to break their photo cameras, before pointing his gun at the group, reportedly saying: “guys, if you don’t understand this the nice way”. The journalists were later able to film after speaking to the commander of the man who threatened them.