Maxim Eristavi is a nonresident research fellow with the Atlantic Council and co-founder of Hromadske International, an independent news outlet, based in Kyiv.
I’m a journalist in Ukraine. If I’m killed, justice will not be served.
As a kid from a poor town in eastern Ukraine, full of anger and frustration about the injustices that surrounded us, I decided to become a journalist at age 16. The first person I told was my father. I thought he’d be proud. But the look I saw on his face wasn’t what I expected: utter fear and panic. “They’re going to kill you,” he pleaded. “Please, don’t do it.” It was just two years after the prominent investigative journalist Georgiy Gongadze was kidnapped and beheaded. I made a promise to my family that I would never end up dead because of my writing. Fifteen years later, every journalist in Ukraine will tell you that this is still an unrealistic promise.
