From reporting under occupation and captivity to testifying in The Hague: the story of journalist Anzhela Slobodian

As of the beginning of 2024, 16 journalists have been killed in the line of duty during Russia’s full-scale invasion, according to the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine and the International Federation of Journalists. They include media workers from Ukraine, France, Lithuania, and the United States. Another nine journalists have been killed as civilians, while 54 have been killed fighting in the Defence Forces of Ukraine. According to Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, head of the Committee on Freedom of Speech, more than 25 journalists are currently being held in Russian captivity.

Kherson journalist Anzhela Slobodian survived Russian captivity and witnessed Russian crimes in Ukraine. After her release, she filmed a documentary and testified before a People’s Court hearing accusations against Russian dictator Vladimir Putin in The Hague. We spoke to her about her ordeal, the occupation of her city, and her documentary, Invasion.

Reporting on Russian crimes

On the morning of February 24, 2022, an acquaintance from the village of Chonhar, located on the boundary between Kherson Oblast and Crimea, warned Anzhela that Russian troops were racing towards her. She decided to remain in Kherson. By the next day, it had become impossible to leave the city safely.

Russian forces occupied Kherson on March 1. They moved towards the city center along Perekopska Street, which leads from the Antonivskyi Bridge [the now-destroyed bridge across the Dnipro River connecting Kherson with the left bank of the river]. On the road, they shot a car that happened to be on the way, killing a young couple. A 17-year-old girl named Anastasiya, who was with them, was injured and ran out of the car. The Russians caught her a few hundred meters away and murdered her. In a few days, Anastasiya's mother found her daughter's body in a city morgue. Slobodian told this story on Ukraine’s unified national news broadcast.

"This blackened, shot-up car remained on the street for a long time. It stood there for 10-12 days, as a sign of the Russian invasion and a monument to its victims," Slobodian explains.

Anzhela took it upon herself to report on the situation in Kherson and the region. She had worked before as a correspondent for one of Ukraine’s main TV channels, but without a camera crew, she had to do everything by herself. Anzhela regularly appeared on the unified national news broadcast from her cell phone, and relayed news and messages from her network of contacts.

"Filming in secret was a whole art. I remember how I came to an event held for May 9 [known in Russia as Victory Day, celebrating the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II], where correspondents of the central Russian channels were brought to make a propaganda story. I'm standing behind the crew of Rossiya 24 and I just want to smack the cameraman with something. I thought to myself that if I went out with my equipment, with my microphone from the channel Ukrayina, it would be my last day."

Captivity

Anzhela worked under occupation for six months. Activists and politicians were gradually rounded up by Russian security services. Eventually, they came for Anzhela. She was held in a detention center for 31 days. No one knew what had happened to her, and the Russians refused her requests to at least inform her family. During this time, she was interrogated several times with a hood completely covering her eyes and head. The hood allowed her to hide her emotions from her interrogators.

"Heroism makes for a great story. But at that moment it was necessary to survive there. I had to formulate my answers so that I neither betrayed myself nor let them enjoy mocking me," says Anzhela.

Anzhela lived in a cell with several other women, namely wives of soldiers, volunteers, and activists. The conditions were difficult, with no heating, a lack of ventilation, cockroaches everywhere, and no hygiene products. They were fed once a day with a portion of poor-quality pasta. Medicine and medical assistance were prohibited. However, at that time, women were not subjected to physical violence, unlike men. At one point, when the team guarding her slipped up, and Anzhela managed to see one of the cells which she calls a “suicide cell”. Six wounded men were kept there without medical assistance. When Kherson was liberated, she returned to the location with Ukrainian law enforcement officers during their investigation into Russian war crimes during the occupation. She says the cell was no more than two by two meters in size.

One of the most difficult things Anzhela faced in captivity was her complete isolation from the outer world and uncertainty. "This was not a prison where a person knows their term of imprisonment. We knew that they could just take us out and ‘lose’ us somewhere, as they say. And that would be all. None of our relatives would find out about our fate," she explains.

Freedom

Anzhela never found out why the Russians eventually decided to let her go. Unlike her cellmates, she was released merely on the condition that she pledged not to leave Kherson. Anzhela asked to be permitted to travel within Kherson Oblast, where she had a dacha, but she was forbidden to cross the Dnipro. After her captivity, it was difficult to remain under Russian surveillance in the occupied city. After three weeks, Anzhela made a break for Ukrainian-controlled territory. She used the day when the IAEA mission left Kyiv for the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant, as the Russians had slightly relaxed their control over crossing the contact line.

"I was very stressed when it came time for the document check, as they had earlier taken my photo, DNA sample and fingerprints. However, on that day, the Russians wanted to show their "humanity" and let our last column pass without special checks. They didn't even take my passport," says the woman.

Documentary: Invasion and future projects

After arriving on Ukrainian-controlled territory, Anzhela set herself the task of informing people about Russian crimes in occupied Kherson Oblast. During the first days of the occupation, she followed the story of a local paramedic who survived a Russian attack on their ambulance. The story was passed on to her by a friend who worked at a local emergency department. The ambulance’s patient died as a result of the strike, but his daughter survived. To tell this story, Anzhela decided to try her hand at documentary filmmaking.

"It was a challenge for me. I have always been a reporter and wanted to make several reports from the materials I had left," says Anzhela.

The documentary was filmed with the help of a grant by the German public broadcaster, Deutsche Welle. Shevchenko Prize laureate Serhii Masloboyshchykov served as the director. The film Invasion tells the story of a mother and daughter who lost their husband, the patient in the ambulance struck by the Russians. Anzhela explains that despite all the horror of the war, the recurring message of the story is love. The film uses actual recordings of the victims' conversations with the ambulance operator, which were provided by Anzhela's friend. The plan for the film was for the mother and daughter to meet the surviving paramedic in the village where the car was fired upon. Unfortunately, these plans were ruined by Russia’s destruction of Kakhovka Dam, which made it too difficult to reach the village.

"Things did not go according to plan. But I don't know what this film would be like without Serhiy's help," Anzhela explains.

While she lost many of her reporting materials during the occupation, Slobodian still has a lot in her archive. She plans to film two more documentaries: Occupation, which will focus on the chronology of Russia’s time controlling Kherson, and Soldier, which will be a monologue by her colleague, a cameraman from Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, who liberated the right bank part of the Kherson Oblast as a soldier in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Testifying in The Hague

After her release from captivity, Anzhela gave remote testimony before the International Criminal Court. She was then invited to travel to The Hague to testify in person before a special Court of the Citizens of the World, as part of a "People’s Tribunal" against Putin, which took place on the first anniversary of the full-scale invasion.

While the rulings of the People’s Tribunal do not have legal force, this symbolic act shows that bringing those responsible for war crimes in Ukraine is possible. Patrons of the Court include the American lawyer Ben Ferencz, who was the prosecutor at the Nuremberg trial against the Nazis, and the Ukrainian human rights defender and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Oleksandra Matviychuk. The tribunal was organized by the German Cinema for Peace Foundation, and the panel of judges consisted of a roster of distinguished international jurists. They included Stephen Rapp, who led the prosecution during the International Tribunal for Rwanda against a local radio and newspaper for inciting the Tutsi genocide; Zak Yacoob, an anti-apartheid activist who became a judge on South Africa’s Constitutional Court; and Indian lawyer Priya Pillai, who served with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. They rendered a verdict on the accusations against the Russian dictator.

"These were unforgettable experiences for me. I understood that this is a model for a trial that must take place at some point," Anzhela explains. She believes that Russia will eventually pay for its crimes in Ukraine and compensate the country for the damage caused. She hopes that her testimony will have a part to play in this.

The article was first published on the website of the Human Rights Centre ZMINA.