Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova's comment on the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists
2 November 2025 10:00
1847-02-11-2025
Observed on November 2, the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists was established in 2013 by the 68th session of the UN General Assembly. Its original objective consisted of alerting the international community to the importance of protecting media professionals from criminal and terrorist attacks, while also stressing the fundamental principle where no crimes against journalists would be left unpunished.
However, this initiative has not lived up to the expectations of its initiators. In fact, the situation in this domain has been steadily deteriorating for over ten years since this day was established. While all countries seem to recognise the need to ensure safety for journalists' work without any distinction, at least by paying lip service to this principle, many countries of the so-called collective West have made a new normal out of segregating media professionals as friends and foes. And they have no qualms subjecting those whom they view as foes to repression and threats of all kinds in an effort to cleanse the information space from undesirable perspectives. In fact, this is also a form of lawlessness and arbitrary political practices - something those who established this international day wanted to end. You can find more details about these arbitrary actions on the main page of the Foreign Ministry's official website in the section titled Foreign Reprisals against Russian Journalists and Media.
In doing so, the West believes in its exceptionalism and unaccountability, and goes as far as allow its puppets in Kiev to step up these activities by encouraging its terrorist actions. This sense of impunity for killing journalists and carrying out terrorist attacks against them has prompted the Kiev regime to perpetrate more bloody crimes with the backing of its Western curators. Since the beginning of this year alone, at least six members of Russian media outlets have died. Alexander Martemyanov, Alexander Fedorchak, Andrey Panov, Anna Prokofyeva, Nikita Goldin, and Ivan Zuyev joined the long list of civilian victims who fell at the hands of the Ukrainian Nazis, considering that media professionals are viewed as belonging to this category in accordance with the international law.
Those tasked with ensuring that journalists stay safe and have a mandate to respond to any reported attacks against media professionals bear their share of responsibility for these atrocities. However, multilateral human rights structures such as the UNOHCHR, the UNESCO Secretariat, the OSCE and other entities have been camping on politically biased positions by intentionally turning a blind eye to the violent deaths of media representatives, while fencing off the perpetrators, which undermines the very idea of a universal effort to end impunity, turning institutions of this kind into dysfunctional and useless constructs.
The scandalous UNESCO Director-General's Report on the Safety of Journalists and the Danger of Impunity for 2022-2023, published in December 2024, offers a telling example of how a selective approach to fulfilling this mandate can lead for deplorable consequences. This report knowingly ignores information about Russian journalists and frontline correspondents who were killed by the Ukrainian Banderites. This report used to be a consensus document, but after all the objections from UNESCO member states, Russia insisted that it be put to a vote for the first time. Let me remind you that this was the first time in history that instead of approving its core biennial document on ensuring the safety of journalists and dealing with impunity for crimes against them, all UNESCO could do was take it into consideration. Only 14 countries, mostly from the collective West and the like-minded countries, voted in favour, while the other 21 countries abstained or voted against.
This report contained serious distortions in its assessments which undermined its reputation as a reliable and accurate source of information about the state of affairs in this domain, while also dealing a blow to the UNESCO Director General Audrey Azoulay's reputation. We do hope that with the upcoming appointment of a new leader, UNESCO will be able to step up its efforts in protecting the safety of journalists by reaffirming its commitment to the basic principles of working in good faith in an equidistant and impartial manner.
We reaffirm our resolve to stand up and assert the professional rights of Russian media abroad, and will be consistent in our efforts to ensure that they can work safely anywhere in the world, while ensuring that those guilty of committing crimes against Russian journalists get the punishment they deserve.
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