The fate of the Donetsk blogger Stanislav Vasin remains unknown. He was last seen on 2 June. Image courtesy of the OSCE. Some rights reserved.
The situation with press freedom in the territories not under Ukraine’s control hasn’t been surprising for a long time. The new authorities liquidated independent local and commercial media offices for their lack of loyalty to the new formation known as the “Donetsk People’s Republic”. The region’s main newspapers, such as Donbas, Evening Donetsk, Donetsk News, and the television channels Donbas, First Municipal and K61 left Donetsk back in 2014. Since then, the city’s media environment has been chilled by censorship overseen by the “Ministry of Information of the Donetsk People’s Republic” (which employs over 100 people).
