“We no longer have a military license and have not been able to work for more than ten days.” talking is Alfred Bosso the together with Andrea Scheresiniis actually in it Ukraine without being able to document what is happening in the country at war. Let’s rewind the tape for a moment and go back to the day it all began: February 6th. After returning from Bakhmut, the two reporters who have reported from Donbass in the past for InsideOver and ilGiornale.it ask the fixer who accompanies them for new accreditations in order to be able to go to the front. Everything seems to be going as usual, but after a few hours the fixer announces that he no longer wants to work with them because the Ukrainian secret service SBU has informed him that one of the two (without specifying who) was a collaborator with the Russians.
Bosco and Sceresini receive two emails from the Department of Defense informing them that they will not receive accreditations. In fact, they are being asked for a new letter from their publishers to justify their presence in Ukraine. The two reporters do what Kiev asks of them. Then silence. They try several times to get in touch with their Ukrainian contacts, but get no answer. You will be forgotten. held in abeyance. You wonder why this sudden change is probably due to an old banned list published in Ukraine a few years ago. This is a list compiled by Mirotvorets and the “Center for Investigation into Crimes against National Security of Ukraine, Peace and Security of Humanity” containing the names of over 4,000 journalists from around the world who (and apparently still) blamed for coming to the Donetsk People’s Republic to document what was happening on the other side of the fence: that of the separatists. At the time, the Mirotvores website read: “At the end of 2015, the so-called propaganda ministry of the terrorist organization DNR (the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, editor’s note) created a database with the names of 7,901 journalists. They are thus accredited. Now that list is in our hands. We do not know what the consequences of their publication will be, but without a doubt it is a real initiative because these journalists work with the militants of a terrorist organization”. A little further down, still on the same page: “A superficial analysis of the list leaves We realize that some of these people, who proudly call themselves journalists, have been seen with guns in their hands while fighting against the Ukrainian army of the Lugansk region, George Tuka, who at the time set himself the goal of “checking out all terrorists” who “plan” against the Kiev government.
Now someone has dusted off that list and the two Italian reporters who must have been in the DNR ended up in the crosshairs, but it’s just as true that they also reported what didn’t work. Like the illegal mines. Or they described realistically, that is, objectively, the Separatist commanders like Givi whom they encountered. The two have always done their job: to tell what they saw without filters or censorship: “We were arrested twice in Donbass,” says Bosco, who adds: “The fact that this list, on which we are described as dangerous collaborators become Russians, has now been withdrawn and that we are in a country at war does not make us feel safe at all”.