On 6 February 2023, the Armed Forces of Ukraine suspended the accreditation rights of two Italian freelance journalists, who were subsequently unable to have their documents renewed and left Ukraine. According to L’Indipendente, an Italian online collective of journalists, Andrea Sceresini and Alfredo Bosco were denounced to authorities by their local fixers in Ukraine, who claimed they were “collaborators of the [Russian] enemy”. Sceresini and Bosco said this accusation was unfounded, and stemmed only from the fact that they had earlier reported both from territories controlled by Ukraine and from areas under the control of pro-Russian separatists.
“We are aware that the role of [security] services is to protect the Ukrainian people and that we are in an invaded country at war, but our reports from those territories were far from [pro-Russian] propaganda”, said Sceresini and Bosco in an interview with Italian newspaper La Nazione. The two freelance journalists added that they had initially hoped the Italian embassy in Kyiv would manage to convince Ukrainian authorities to renew their accreditation rights. However, these efforts seemingly brought no results, and Sceresini and Bosco decided to leave Ukraine at the end of February, days after being refused the right to report from a joint press conference in Kyiv by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and president Volodymyr Zelensky, on 21 February.