12 December 2025, 6-8 pm: What do we really know about life under occupation?
Location: n-ost e.V, Erkelenzdamm 59/61 Portal 1b, 10999 Berlin
The theme of occupation is among the most challenging and sensitive for coverage among the other topics of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Journalists tend to avoid visiting temporary occupied areas due to the threat of being killed or captivated. Local media chose to relocate to the territories controlled by Kyiv or to close. While occupiers actively introduce their propaganda media to the local contexts. Independent international organisations have a rare and sporadic access to these lands. This creates an information vacuum and turns the topic into a grey zone stuck in oblivion.
Join the discussion with:
Raji Abdul Salam, the Chief legal data archivist at The Reckoning Project (TRP)
Lenie Umerova, a Crimean Tatar activist, ex-prisoner of war.
Moderated by Natalia Gumeniuk, founder and CEO of the Public Interest Journalism Lab.
Background and context
This year n-ost in partnership with Public Interest Journalism Lab (Ukraine) launched a project focused specifically on safe for the journalists and their sources coverage of life under occupation. To bring our findings to a wider audience, we organise a kitchen talk dedicated to the topic. How do Russian occupying authorities treat the local civilian population? How has this land turned into a land of severe human rights violations? How is it possible to collect evidence of Russia’s crimes conducted against civilians? Why is it important to make the international audience aware of the collected data?
The project “Life Under Occupation” is supported by the German Federal Foreign Office.
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