On 6 June 2024, Ukrainian investigative outlet Slidstvo.Info reported that military authorities in Kharkiv region had instructed soldiers under their orders not to provide comments on the state of fortifications in the region.
Quoting an anonymous soldier dispatched near Vovchansk in northern Kharkiv region, journalist Natsya Horpinchenko said that her source had been banned from “mentioning fortifications, [Russia’s] offensive, villages lost [to Russians]”. The ban would have been made with no further explanation. Unnamed military commanders who spoke to the soldier would have also told him that journalists inquiring on the question were “working in the interest of the enemy”.
“In particular, they asked to remove all mentions by soldiers about problems with missing or incomplete fortifications,” Horpichenko wrote, in reference to several anonymous exchanges with military leadership. “They tried to ‘convince’ journalists [to do this] for three days. Moreover, this was done by [military] representatives of different levels. Some of them appealed to the fact that the topic of fortifications is now a ‘political issue’, and that mentioning specific units in this context may lead to ‘pressure on them from above’,” Horpinchenko claimed.
The journalist added that she would not specify which commanders in which units had come out with these demands, as this would expose her sources to pressure. Horpinchenko said that Ukrainian journalists who currently want to work on the issue of fortifications in the Kharkiv region are forced to either stay silent, or write about the situation with the risk of creating problems for sources.