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Security guards block journalists from reporting after missile attack in Odesa

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On 24 June 2024, security guards attempted to prevent a film crew with TSN (the news service of Ukrainian TV channel 1+1) from reporting at the site of a recent Russian missile attack in Odesa. Journalist Serhiy Osadchuk, who was present at the site with an unknown camera operator, recounted the events to the Insitute of Mass Information (IMI), a Ukrainian press freedom group. According to Osadchuk, the film crew was interviewing eyewitnesses of the attack while standing at a location designated to them by police, when two security guards approached them and demanded they leave the location. In doing this, the guards interfered in the reporting crew’s task of recording accounts of the attack by eyewitnesses.

The reporting crew and the security guards then briefly argued, following which the guards left and did not again attempt to interfere in the TSN team’s work. According to Osadchuk, one of the guards attempted to convince the team that he was a military commander, however Osadchuk later reported that he was able to identify the two men as members of a volunteer security service group created in Odesa in June 2022.

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