By Tanya Kozyreva
Editor’s note: This essay is part of CNTI’s “Letters from the Field” series, in which journalists from around the world share their experiences reporting in restrictive spaces and share advice for journalists in the U.S.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is the most documented war in history — broadcasted in real-time on TV and social media, with mounting evidence of Russian war crimes. Yet Ukraine’s newly occupied territories remain sealed off, their suffering cloaked in darkness. Journalists, along with humanitarian organizations, have been denied access. Reporting from the occupation is a deadly venture. As a result, accounts of atrocities are scarce.
When Russia seized Crimea in March 2014, I ventured there to report on how Ukrainians were coping under occupation. What I witnessed was haunting. Armed men in unmarked green uniforms patrolled the streets. Families shared harrowing stories of loved ones arrested, kidnapped or killed for daring to protest Russia’s presence. Priests spoke of the harassment and eventual closure of their churches. Journalists described how their outlets were expelled from the peninsula. And schoolteachers, their voices low, would ask me, “When will Ukraine return?”
Traveling to occupied territories required meticulous planning and a convincing cover story. My cameraman and I crossed the newly established border at Dzhankoy disguised as tourists, casually explaining our camera as our hobby.
On our first visit, the changes were subtle. Crimea still felt unmistakably Ukrainian. Cars bore Ukrainian plates, residents carried Ukrainian passports and some buildings still flew the Ukrainian flag.
The transformation in Crimea was almost unnoticed — until we were arrested for daring to ask difficult questions. At a public gathering of “children of World War II” urging Vladimir Putin to “protect Donbass by invading Ukraine,” I couldn’t resist asking one of the protesters: “How can the children of war demand war again?” My question sparked anger, and someone in the crowd called the police. We were arrested, interrogated for three hours, and eventually released.
Despite ordeals, we went back to Crimea for the first local elections under the occupation. The veneer of “normalcy” had all but disappeared. Though 12 political parties appeared on the ballot, there was no genuine choice. Vladimir Putin’s “United Russia” dominated the political landscape, plastered across every advertisement, broadcast, and coerced endorsement. None of the parties on the ballot represented pro-Ukrainian sentiments.
Many Crimeans we spoke with couldn’t name a single Russian political party other than Putin’s, nor identify candidates or policies they represented. Organized buses ferried attendees to pro-Kremlin rallies, ensuring optics of mass support. Some didn’t even know what the Russian flag looks like — wearing it upside-down at events.
The aftermath of the elections brought a chilling wave of repression. Ukrainian churches and the homes of Ukrainian activists were raided. Many were arrested on fabricated “terrorist” allegations. The Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people was evicted from its offices where it was based for 15 years. Ukrainian television channels were blocked, replaced with Russian propaganda branding Ukrainians as “fascists.”
The full-scale invasion in February 2022 brought an even darker reality. Covering life under occupation became a daring challenge. The horrors of filtration camps, child abductions, torture, rape, executions of prisoners of war and the daily humiliation of civilians surface exposed mainly through the testimonies of those who survived prisoner swaps or risked their lives to escape.
When all communication from Mariupol went silent during its brutal blockade, most of the journalists, including myself, waited in Zaporizhzhya, hoping to meet the humanitarian corridor. Left without food, water, electricity, or heat, survivors from Mariupol described the escape route as a “Squid Game” nightmare — every step a gamble with death. Not everyone made it alive.
Few journalists dared to venture into the occupied cities. Some, like AP reporters Evgeniy Maloletka and Mstyslav Chernov, survived 20 harrowing days in the port city Mariupol, documenting the relentless devastation. Their work, which earned a Pulitzer Prize and an Oscar for best documentary, brought the siege’s horrors to global attention. Other journalists were not as fortunate, falling victim to the very atrocities they sought to uncover.
Ukrainian journalist Viktoria Roshchyna was abducted by Russian soldiers on her way to Mariupol. Her kidnapping unfolded during the same harrowing period when Ukrainian photojournalist Max Levin was interrogated and tortured before his execution in Russian-occupied territory near Kyiv and American filmmaker Brent Renaud was shot dead in Irpin. Both Levin and Renaud died documenting the brutal reality of Russian occupation, just miles from the Ukrainian capital.
It was only after the withdrawal of Russian forces that the world glimpsed the true face of the Russian occupation in the Kyiv region: streets strewn with the bodies of unarmed civilians, mass graves filled with bound victims hastily buried in backyards, and homes left destroyed and looted.
Why We Keep Reporting
Roshchyna had made it her purpose to report on the harsh realities of life under occupation. “I thought it was my duty to tell the truth about the occupied city,” she wrote in an essay recounting her first, week-long captivity.
Roshchyna died after being abducted for a second time; after a year in captivity, it was impossible to determine the cause of death due to the immense trauma and torture she had withstood.
Russia’s control over occupied territories ensures its crimes remain hidden under the rubbles, veil of denial and propaganda. Systematically destroyed evidence threatens to bury these atrocities beyond reach.
As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Justice delayed is justice denied.” Today, the world risks repeating one of history’s darkest lessons — whether from World War II, or the Rwandan genocide: silence in the face of atrocities allows them to spread unchecked. Without verifiable documentation of Russia’s crimes in newly occupied territories and their devastating toll on civilians, justice will remain elusive, and any peace built on ignorance will be dangerously fragile.
In the fourth year of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine — and more than a decade since the occupation of Crimea — one truth remains inescapable: occupation is never just about territory. It is about lives held hostage by an authoritarian regime that silences, imprisons and erases.
The work of documenting this reality is neither easy nor without cost. But the truth must be told — even when it is painful, even when the consequences are steep. That is why I, like so many of my colleagues, continue to report on Russian war crimes. Not for the retweets. Not for the awards. But for the civilians whose stories would otherwise vanish into the margins. For the families whose grief remains unspoken. For the voices the world might never hear.
It falls to us — the journalists — to bear witness. To tell the stories of resistance and endurance. To insist on accountability in the hope that justice will be served one day, whether in Ukraine, or the United States.
In the U.S., the press operates under vastly different conditions — safer, more protected. But freedom here, too, is vulnerable. Rarely do threats arrive all at once. They slip in quietly: an accreditation that never comes through, a source too frightened to speak, a records request endlessly delayed, an editor who shelves a story for being “too political.” That’s how it started in Crimea: with subtle changes that were easy to dismiss — until they weren’t. We cannot afford to ignore the first cracks. Silence begins slowly — and spreads fast.
Tanya Kozyreva is an investigative reporter based in Kyiv, Ukraine. Her work focuses on geopolitics and high-level corruption worldwide. She previously spent three years at BuzzFeed News, where she examined the shady business dealings of President Donald Trump’s inner circle, and was a co-author of the FinCEN Files project, a 2021 Pulitzer Prize finalist in international reporting. Kozyreva reported on the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, Russia’s annexation of Crimea and military conflict in eastern Ukraine for the journalist-owned Ukrainian broadcaster Hromadske. As the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine started, she covered the war for the Telegraph, Sky News, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the New York Times.
