Media freedom safe in Ukraine despite the war, officials say

Freedom of speech in Ukraine has not faded away and has survived the ongoing Russian aggression against the country, Ukrainian officials said.

“We live in times when the main news is coming from the frontlines,” Oleksandr Tkachenko, the Ukrainian Minister of Culture and Information Policy, told a crowd at a recent conference on media freedom in Kyiv.

Government officials have put some limitations on media freedoms, including restrictions on reporting on the military, but media experts said those limitations shouldn’t be transformed into restrictions on political reporting, according to a group of Ukrainian government, parliament, media and NGO members who gathered for a “National Media Talk” conference.

Andriy Kulykov, who chairs the Commission on Journalistic Ethics, said he wanted to dispel some of the lingering doubts about restrictions, pointing out that the Ukrainian society, with two recent revolutions behind its back, is learning and will not let political censorship take over.

Media Bias Fact Check rates media freedom in countries around the world. In 2022, MBFC determined that Ukraine had limited press freedom before the war and most likely has less now. View our full report.

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