On 29 May 2024, the editor-in-chief of Gwara Media, Serhiy Prokopenko, said that the Instagram account of President Volodymyr Zelensky blurred Gwara’s logo when posting original videos filmed by the outlet in Kharkiv following recent Russian attacks. Prokopenko complained about the issue on Facebook, adding screenshots from Zelensky’s posts to his publication. Olena Leptuha, the editor-in-chief of Nakypilo, another local media outlet in Kharkiv, also published a similar Facebook post, in which she reported that Zelensky’s office had also blurred her outlet’s logo in Instagram publications containing Nakypilo videos. Both Prokopenko and Leptuha said that the decision to blur the logos of their outlets was a blow to their work as media outlets, and a lack of respect to their journalists. The Kharkiv-based editors admitted that blurring media logos in secondary reporting is sadly not an uncommon phenomenon in Ukraine, adding however that it was “different [when this was done] by the Office of the President of Ukraine”.
In response, Zelensky’s office apologized to the media outlets and claimed that the incidents were a “technnical mistake”. The presidential administration said that it would not blur logos on social media in the future.