On 30 September 2024, journalist Olena Hnitetska was physically assaulted while reporting from a construction site in Kherson, as reported by Ukrainian press freedom group Institute of Mass Information (IMI), who spoke with Hnitetska. According to the journalist, who works for local news outlet MOST, an unidentified man pushed her, grabbed her phone from her hands and threw it in a pit.
Hnitetska explained that she was reporting on the construction of underground schools in Kherson – which are being built across Ukraine to increase schoolchildren safety in the context of regular Russian airstrikes – and “wanted to personally inspect the construction, which local residents are outraged about”. It was not clear why the construction of the schools was controversial in the area.
“Arriving at the construction site, I saw a man and a woman. A boy approached me and I told him that I was a journalist. He pointed to the [two] people I saw [and said they were] representatives of the developer. When I approached them to ask a question, the man started throwing himself at me, he took my phone and threw it into a ditch, he started shouting something, he pushed [me] and threw rocks at me,” Hnitetska said.
According to the journalist, the man refused to return her phone, following which she left the construction site and asked a passerby to call the police. At that moment, a man who called himself Viktor Spurza arrived to the construction site, Hnitetska added.
“He immediately told me that he knows everything about me and [about my] online media outlet, MOST. He [ironically] asked me to send his regards to the editor. He began saying: ‘You constantly write badly about me. Why did you come here at all?’ At that moment, the police arrived, and this Spurza ordered the attacker to return [my] phone to me,” the journalist said.
According to IMI, Spurza is the owner of a construction company which was contracted to build several underground schools in Kherson with funds from the city budget. In autumn 2023, a court reportedly found him guilty of forgery and fined him 850 hryvnias.
Police who arrived to the scene conducted interviews with those who were present at the moment of the assault on Hnitetska, however eyewitnesses testified that there was no attack on the journalist. Hnitetska was also examined by doctors who recorded no injuries.
On the same day as the incident took place, police in Kherson said that they had opened a criminal case under article 171 part 1 of Ukraine’s Criminal Code, which penalizes “obstructing legal journalistic activities”.