TASS Deputy Director-General Mikhail Gusman has criticized the UN for omitting the murders of Russian journalists in its latest report on press safety. Speaking at a session of UNESCO’s International Program for the Development of Communication (IPDC) on Friday, Gusman said the body’s selective approach to attacks on journalists was “unacceptable.”
The veteran journalist was commenting on the latest ‘Report on the Safety of Journalists and the Danger of Impunity’ by UNESCO Director General Audrey Azoulay, which was officially presented at the session. The report, covering 2022 and 2023, claimed that 162 journalists, media workers, and social media producers had been killed over this period, a figure Gusman called “tragic.” However, the document mentioned the murders of only two Russian journalists and did not address other killings, attacks and threats to the country’s media representatives that have taken place since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict.
“For me, it was surprising, painful and unacceptable that the report presented by the General Director did not mention my fellow journalists from Russia... I personally knew some of my deceased colleagues, they were honest professionals who passed away while doing their journalistic duty,” Gusman stated.
He noted that the Russian media community found it unjust that the names of many of their compatriots killed over the past two years were omitted from the report, citing the letters from the Union of Journalists of Russia he brought with him to present to the IPDC.
“[They] do not understand why the names of their colleagues who died did not find a place in the report. Of course, this caused their just indignation,” he stated. Gusman expressed condolences to the families of all the deceased journalists, saying that their deaths were “our common pain… regardless of the country in which they died, under what conditions.”
A member of the Russian delegation later in the session named several Russian journalists murdered by the Kiev regime in 2022-2023 but whose names were absent from the report. Among them are Boris Maksudov, who worked for Russia 24 TV, RIA Novosti’s Rostislav Zhuravlev, Tavria TV’s Oleg Klokov, RuBaltic’s Aleksey Ilyashevich, military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, and journalist Darya Dugina. He also mentioned more recent deaths, such as that of the Russian news photographer Nikita Tsitsagi, who was killed in a Ukrainian drone strike in June, and many reporters who sustained injuries while covering the Ukraine conflict.
Moscow’s ambassador to UNESCO, Rinat Alyautdinov, earlier slammed Azoulay’s report as “a source of disinformation.” At the session on Thursday, the diplomat said Russia had submitted its own findings to UNESCO on the killings of Russian reporters, but the body apparently chose to ignore them while preparing its report.