Baulina was “an amazingly courageous Russian journalist”. tweeted Christo Grozev, an investigative reporter at Bellingcat, added that she was “killed by her own country’s army shelling civilian areas in Kyiv’s Podol district.”
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There are few details about the strike, which the insider said killed the journalist: her newspaper said a civilian was also killed and that two others accompanying Baulina were injured and hospitalized.
Baulina previously worked as a producer for the anti-corruption foundation set up by Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny. The organization was declared “extremist” by a Moscow court last summer, and Baulina “had to leave Russia to continue reporting on the corruption of the Russian government for The Insider,” according to the news site.
As a war correspondent in Ukraine, she filed reports from Lviv and Kyiv, and shared her last update shortly before her death about Russian forces approaching Kyiv.
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“The Insider extends its deepest condolences to Oksana’s family and friends,” the outlet said. “We will continue to report on the war in Ukraine, including Russian war crimes such as indiscriminate shelling of residential areas, resulting in the deaths of civilians and journalists.”
Yevhenii Sakun, a cameraman for the Ukrainian broadcaster LIVE, was killed in a Russian shelling on March 1. Brent Renaud, a documentary filmmaker, was fatally shot on March 13 while working for Time Magazine. And Oleksandra Kuvshynova and Pierre Zakrzewski, who worked for Fox News, were killed when their vehicle was hit by an approaching fire.
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The journalists’ committee said several others had disappeared or been arrested.
Before Baulina got involved in political activism, she worked at Time Out Moscow, InStyle Russia and Glamour, said Alexey Kovalyov, a former collaborator and friend. When they first met, Kovalyov recalled Baulina asking if she would cover a bike ride for Time Out Moscow. He chuckled at the suggestion, Kovalyov later recalled.
“What would this girl with her flashy makeup and impossibly high stilettos know about cycling?” he said. “It was only later that I found out that Oksana was much more resilient, both physically and morally, than I could ever be. Always put others first, often on yourself [risk].”
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A few weeks ago, while Kovalyov was planning the logistics for another reporter traveling to Kyiv, Baulina, then in Warsaw, focused on arranging the delivery of a flak jacket and helmet for a colleague already there.
“She was an incredible person in many ways,” said Kovalyov. “The most reliable person I know, both personally and professionally.”
Michael Elgort had just spoken to Baulina at least a day before her death when she left Lviv for Kyiv. She gave Elgort advice for his relatives who were evacuating Odessa to flee to Prague.
Baulina didn’t mention any concerns about her safety during their last conversation, Elgort recalled. Instead, she sent a meme about how difficult the year had been.
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“She was joking, as always,” Elgort said.
“Oksana was one of the most positive and humorous people I’ve ever met,” he added, “with a lot of self-deprecation. I know it’s a cliché, but she really was something special.”
In a voice message shared hours before her death, Oksana told a friend that she was in Kyiv, staying in an apartment on the corner of Independence Square, where she heard the thunder of Ukraine’s air defenses countering Russian attacks. She said she has no hot water and a bit of food she scraped together before curfew. She described the debris she saw from a rocket hitting a residential building.
“The glass fell out and left a huge crater,” she said. “And as you know, they bombed a shopping center in the Podolsk district at night.”
She said Kiev’s streets — speckled with metal, concrete barricades and sandbags — are empty of civilians or cars.
“To tell the truth,” she continued, “even on Sunday and Monday when we could still go outside, I never once risked filming in the street.”