A newspaper on Russia’s radar

Before delivering news along the shattered roads of northeastern Ukraine, Vassyl spent years reporting from Zolochiv. He wrote poetry when he was a teenager, studied literature at university in Kharkiv, and joined the local Zolochiv newspaper at age 20. At 31, he stepped away to work for the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources, where he investigated corruption in the district. Ten years later, he returned to the weekly.

“I can’t imagine doing anything other than journalism,” he says.

Vassyl is proud that his newspaper was among the first to be de-nationalised in 2017. He helped draft the legislation that allowed Ukrainian local newspapers to be privatised, a step he saw as essential to reducing state pressure and safeguarding editorial independence.

Throughout the war, he has continued to investigate local political corruption, though he acknowledges that much of his focus has shifted to the war.

“Russia feeds on our internal divisions. Even if holding our own authorities to account remains part of the job, currently, my priority is to counter the enemy’s lies,” he says.

The fight against Russian disinformation has put his life at risk more than once.

On April 5, 2022, at 9:30am, two Russian shells hit the weekly's newsroom, partially destroying the 140-year-old building that housed it. Vassyl would normally have been sitting at his desk at the time, but he was spared because he stayed in bed longer than usual that day.

“I was running late to work ... The night before, we partied with one of my friends and drank a lot of terrible vodka,” he says with a dark laugh. “It is a time of war. The quality of the alcohol is very bad, but this is all we had.

“That’s what saved me. I usually wake up early, but I was hungover.”

When he finally got moving and was walking with a friend, two shells passed overhead.

"Half a second later, everything exploded.”

Luckily, nobody was in the newsroom at the time. Vassyl’s old desk is still covered in debris more than three years later, and he knows he had a lucky escape.

“Given the shrapnel marks in the room, I would have been dead,” he says.

His newsroom has been targeted 10 times — twice with artillery, eight times with guided aerial bombs — with the latest strike hitting in spring 2025.

At the beginning of the war, Kremlin news outlets claimed that Vassyl was responsible for spreading disinformation.

“Apparently, I run a propaganda outlet,” Vassyl says ironically. “In 2022, Russian state television aired a report accusing me of illegally entering one of their villages to spread false information.

“I have never been there. What I have done, since the start of the war, is document missile remnants embedded in the ground to show where they came from.”

Tracing the origins of missile remnants could expose Russian attacks as war crimes or violations of international law.

“This work is the reason why my newsroom has been targeted,” Vassyl says.

Kostyantyn Neoneta, the newspaper's accountant, delivers the weekly edition in Zolochiv, far from first-person view (FPV) drones near the Russian border [Louis Lemaire/Al Jazeera]

Following the 2022 invasion and the bombing of its printing press in Kharkiv, the newspaper ceased publication for nearly half a year. Russian forces were closing in, prompting many from Zolochiv to flee to safer areas, at least temporarily. But Vassyl chose to remain.

“I had to stay and bear witness, but I couldn't do it if my loved ones were also in danger,” he says, explaining how he sent his family to western Ukraine and then began documenting the destruction engulfing his hometown.

At the time, enemy forces were less than 10km (6.2 miles) away. With his phone, he filmed bombings, civilian evacuations and shattered buildings.

“If I didn’t film what I was seeing with my own eyes, who would have done it? We live in very remote areas. I had to show the world what was happening to us.”

Vassyl taught himself how to edit videos, which he posted on YouTube and social media to reach more people.

“The Russians were claiming they were striking command posts or tank repair facilities,” he says, still outraged. “In reality, they were hitting residential buildings, the hospital and a kindergarten.”

Kostyantyn delivers the newspaper in Zolochiv [Louis Lemaire/Al Jazeera]

When the Ukrainian army began liberating the first villages near Zolochiv, Vassyl became determined to restore access to news in areas that had been deprived of it for six months. He found a new printing press and got to work.

“In these rural areas, there is often no alternative source for reliable information. People trust us, and we cannot walk away from that,” he says proudly.

Two members of the newsroom returned to work remotely, while Kostyantyn Neoneta, the newspaper’s accountant, remained in Zolochiv like Vassyl.

“I didn’t want to leave,” says Kostyantyn, who distributes the newspaper in the town every week by bicycle. “I knew I was far more useful here than in other cities.”

In those villages where Russian signals bleed into people’s homes, “people are left with propaganda,” Vassyl says, adding, “My mission is to make sure it does not happen.”