Ostrovsky’s brave, unapologetic brand of journalism that fuses on-the-scene videography with in-depth analysis, has offered the public a new way to experience and understand conflicts, particularly the complex one unrolling in Ukraine.
Ostrovsky, unfortunately, was not the first journalist to be kidnapped in Donetsk Oblast, and we fear he might not be the last. Over the past week, at least 16 people have been kidnapped by the gangs of pro-Russian separatists and militants in Ukraine’s troubled east. They should all be set free immediately.
On April 24, a Russian Twitter propagandist told former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul that Ostrovsky was not a hostage but rather a prisoner of war. But this is sick and twisted thinking. Like medical workers, journalists and photographers go to the hot spots to do their jobs, and should be treated as non-combatants.
But in what is increasingly being recognized as a war between Ukrainian troops and Kremlin-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, journalists are being portrayed as militans.
Journalists like Ostrovsky have fought the Russian propaganda machine with crucial and unbiased dispatches from the scene; they have sought truth in the fog of the information war.
That insurgents have brought journalists into their delusional quest for whatever Moscow is telling them is abominable, though not unexpected. For the Kremlin, journalists are a tool to spread lies and disseminate fear to keep the population zombified. This is why independent popular bloggers have now been outlawed in Russia and social networks are under threat. And why only Russian media outlets – the Kremlin’s mouthpiece – are given open access in the area.
It would be unreasonable to expect a different attitude towards journalists from separatists in the east, some of whom are Russian or on its payroll and even carry badges of Russian special forces.
But taking journalists hostage is a clear and detestable violation of the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocols, as well as the Rome Statute of the International Court, both part of international humanitarian law protecting journalists.
Those responsible for the attacks against journalists in Donetsk Oblast – and those calling the shots in Moscow – should be tried at the International Criminal Court.
