"We Suspected Everyone, We Feared Everyone": How Journalist Valentyna Fedorchuk Broke Through the Information Blockade in Occupied Kherson
Access to truthful information in occupied cities and villages is as scarce as basic human rights.
When Russian forces seized Kherson in March 2022, 5 Kanal correspondent Valentyna Fedorchuk decided to stay in the city and broadcast live from the streets, risking being sent to FSB torture chambers. Today, she works at the only local radio station in Kherson, which also broadcasts to the occupied territories. The station’s mission is to maintain a connection between the regional center and the left-bank areas of Kherson Oblast.
Valentyna shared how she managed to film pro-Ukrainian stories without being caught, why it was crucial for her to appear on camera with her face uncovered and in recognizable city locations, and how she continues to stay connected with people who have endured more than two and a half years of occupation.
Openly Filming the Occupiers with Their Phones
In February 2022, just days before the full-scale invasion, Valentyna resigned from the Kherson television channel VTV Plus. Despite her years in media, the 26-year-old didn’t believe that a major war was imminent. The news on the morning of February 24 caught her off guard.
“My husband and I woke up terrified,” Valentyna recalls. “The first thing we did was rush to fill up the car. The lines at gas stations in Kherson were massive — we waited about an hour and a half. Then my friend called, saying there was a chance to leave through Mykolaiv Oblast. But I told her I needed to stay — for work. I had this feeling that I had to stay because the channel would call, and I’d have to report. I didn’t fully understand what lay ahead.”
In the first days of the full-scale war, Kherson was relatively calm. Residents could hear fighting in the suburbs and strikes on Chornobaivka Airport, but residential areas were not yet under attack as the Russian forces focused on breaking through Ukrainian defenses. By February 25, the battle had reached the Antonivskyi Bridge. During this time, Valentyna went live on 5 Kanal from the streets of Kherson, reporting on the mood in the city and the enemy’s advances.
On March 1, Russian troops broke through the defenses and rolled tanks and armored personnel carriers into the city center. For Valentyna, this marked the beginning of eight long months of occupation and high-risk journalism under oppressive conditions. Though it was still possible to leave the city, she and her husband, Vladyslav Radkovskyi, chose to stay. Someone had to tell the world what was happening. Vlad quickly took on the role of cameraman to help Valentyna produce her reports — now working covertly.
Meanwhile, their eight-year-old daughter Katya was staying with her grandmother in the village of Borozenske, 135 kilometers from Kherson, which was also occupied. At first, Valentyna was determined to go and bring her daughter back, but ultimately decided it would be safer to stay.
During the occupation, Ukrainian journalists were frequently detained. As of late October 2024, the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine reports that 30 media workers are still being held in Russian captivity. Russian troops entered villages with lists of ATO/OOS veterans, activists, and journalists. Valentyna suspected she was also on those lists, so she feared being arrested while passing through the rural checkpoint, where inspections were stricter than within Kherson itself.
“We didn’t know for sure if they had lists of journalists,” she says. “It’s one thing to stay home and film in secret; it’s another to go through a checkpoint. I begged my mother to take my daughter to Ivano-Frankivsk while I stayed behind. It was a tough decision. I was so anxious I almost went gray waiting for them to leave safely.”
Valentyna didn’t see her daughter again for eight stressful months. In the meantime, her work kept her grounded. Protests against the occupation erupted in Kherson, and Valentyna and Vlad attended every single one to show the world that the city hadn’t given up.
At first, filming was relatively safe. Many people recorded videos on their phones, and the journalists blended in with the crowd. Only once did the 5 Kanal team use professional cameras and a microphone, narrowly escaping arrest when a crowd suddenly parted, exposing them to Russian soldiers nearby. Fortunately, they weren’t noticed.
The most memorable pro-Ukrainian protest took place on March 5 in the city’s Freedom Square. Thousands of people rallied against the occupation, still hoping to appeal to the Russian soldiers and show them they weren’t welcomed as liberators.
“We’d seen footage of protests being violently dispersed in Russia, so we feared the same would happen to us,” Valentyna recalls. “When I arranged with the channel to go live, I thought there wouldn’t be many people. But when we arrived, we saw a crowd of five thousand. It was incredible! The energy and atmosphere were electrifying. I wasn’t afraid of anything. Ordinary people were there — the elderly, even parents with kids. And when you see them walking straight up to the occupiers, you absorb their courage. You realize you’re not alone.”
At first, the occupiers didn’t interfere with the protests. Valentyna remembers filming a local elderly man shouting at a Russian soldier to leave Kherson, and the soldier did nothing.
"My paranoia saved me."
The word "terror" originates from Latin, meaning "dread." That atmosphere of pervasive dread is the reality in the occupied territories.
Valentyna Fedorchuk recalls how, after just a few weeks of occupation, her circle of trust had shrunk to three of her closest friends. She didn’t tell colleagues or relatives that she was still reporting for a Ukrainian TV channel. Instead, she claimed that she and her husband were unemployed and living off their savings — a common situation among Kherson residents at the time, which didn’t arouse suspicion.
In the early days of the full-scale war, Kherson’s journalists communicated through Telegram. Still, over time, the chat grew quieter until it was eventually deleted entirely.
“There was so much mistrust among us — no one knew who had started collaborating with the occupiers and who hadn’t,” Valentyna explains. “We were afraid of everyone, suspicious of everyone. Someone might not even want to turn you in, but if the enemy shows up at their house or threatens their family, anything can happen. So we understood that nobody needed to know anything.”
Valentyna had seen firsthand examples of journalistic collaboration. Her former boss at the "VTV+" channel, Tetiana Kamenska, had joined forces with the occupiers. In early spring, Kamenska gathered the newsroom staff and invited Valentyna, who had recently resigned but kept in touch with her former colleagues.
During the meeting, Kamenska proposed continuing their work in a "neutral tone." The entire team refused, angering their editor-in-chief. Left without a team, Kamenska had to hire unqualified replacements. Later, when Valentyna saw Kamenska interviewing Kherson’s puppet governor Volodymyr Saldo, she realized what her former boss meant by "neutral tone."
In March 2023, Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) formally charged Kamenska in absentia with collaborationism. Investigators determined that her interview helped “legitimize and promote a positive image” of the occupation authorities. The video is no longer available, and Kamenska is believed to be hiding in Russia.
Distrust wasn’t limited to professional circles in occupied Kherson — people were wary of saying too much, even to their families.
“A relative called me and asked if I was still working,” Valentyna recalls. “My paranoia saved me — I told her I wasn’t. Later, I scolded myself for being so distrustful. I thought, ‘How could I be like that? She’s family!’ But as it turned out, she was a collaborator, heavily involved in the so-called referendum. After Kherson was liberated, she fled to Russia.”
In such an environment of absolute mutual distrust, it was hard to find anything that could uplift those who remained loyal to Ukraine. One of those lifelines connecting the occupied city to the “mainland” was Valentyna Fedorchuk’s reporting.
Stories for Those Who Had Lost Hope
After the Russians began dispersing protests and installed a puppet “government” in Kherson, it became increasingly difficult for journalists to work. Yet, Valentyna and Vlad continued to document life under occupation.
When mobile internet was still available in the city, they devised a system: Valentyna would take her phone on assignments, while Vlad left his at home. After filming, they’d send the footage via Telegram to the device left in the apartment and delete it immediately. This way, they could cross checkpoints with “clean” chats.
When the mobile internet disappeared, they had to take greater risks. Despite this, the journalists kept filming recognizable locations in the city — not only to inform the world about Kherson but also to support those who remained.
“I knew what it meant for them to see a Ukrainian journalist on the streets,” Valentyna recalls. “We tried to cover daily events in occupied Kherson from familiar spots, choosing streets every local would recognize. For example, 200 Rokiv Khersona Street, where all the bus routes pass, or behind the Ukraine Cinema, or the little square by the market where everyone gets coffee — an inconspicuous place, but so familiar to Khersonians. I hoped someone who had lost all hope might see the footage and think, ‘It’s okay, we’re holding on.’”
For Valentyna, the underground resistance movement became her source of hope. She searched for spray-painted symbols on walls — signs that patriots were still in the city, awaiting the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
In summer, their work became even more perilous. One day at the market, they were filming a story about prices. Valentyna held the phone while her husband asked questions of the vendors. Suddenly, one of them noticed the filming and began aggressively questioning them about it.
Valentyna told her they were recording a video for relatives who had fled the city. Still, the vendor clearly didn’t believe her. When they left the market, a so-called “civilian Z vehicle” — a Niva car marked with the Z symbol often used to detain civilians for interrogation — was waiting. Valentyna suspects one of the vendors had called the occupiers. Fortunately, the couple managed to get to their car unnoticed.
The final decision to leave Kherson came during the illegitimate referendum on annexing the Kherson region to Russia from October 23–27. Valentyna and Vlad had planned to document the voting process but were unable to. Rumors spread that all polling stations were staffed with Russian security agents disguised in civilian clothing.
“I just couldn’t bring myself to turn on my phone camera,” Valentyna admits. “There were so many of them. We knew there’d be police not only in uniform but in plainclothes too. I was too scared to even lift my phone, knowing an FSB agent could be nearby.”
After the so-called referendum, Valentyna realized she could no longer work in Kherson as before. She and Vlad decided to escape to Ivano-Frankivsk to be with their family, leaving Kherson on September 29 at six in the morning. However, she wouldn’t see her daughter and mother until October 27.
The Russians did everything they could to prevent people from leaving the occupation. At the ferry crossing, they had to wait overnight, followed by endless days in Vasylivka, where their car was 500th in line. On a good day, only a handful of vehicles were allowed through. At first, people slept in their cars, then began renting spaces in nearby villages. However, when locals started helping the travelers, the occupiers cut off electricity to the villages.
Before the illegitimate referendum, people could register to leave occupied territories directly at the Vasylivka checkpoint. Afterward, the Russians changed the rules. To get a permit, one had to travel to Tokmak in the Zaporizhzhia region and then return to Vasylivka with the permit.
Valentyna and Vlad went to the town. Initially they would sleep in their car. Later, a local Protestant church offered shelter to them and a few others. After three and a half weeks of waiting, they found their names on a list of those permitted to leave for unoccupied Ukraine. These lists were posted by the illegal occupation administration.
The couple then underwent a grueling process of vehicle inspections, personal searches, and an FSB interrogation, including phone checks. Luckily, the Russians never discovered their work as journalists. Finally, they reached freedom and reunited with their family.
“What we went through was a living nightmare,” Valentyna recalls.
In Ivano-Frankivsk, Valentyna quickly found work at a local media outlet. Then, on November 11, she received the news: Ukrainian forces had liberated Kherson. Joy was tinged with sadness, as she had clung to the dream of filming Ukrainian troops entering the city. But it wasn’t meant to be.
“We Must Build Bridges of Understanding”
By February 2023, Valentyna and Vlad had returned to Kherson, even as Russian shelling of the city continued. By June, they had brought their daughter home as well.
Valentyna resumed filming reports for 5 Kanal and other Ukrainian broadcasters. By then, no local media outlets remained in Kherson. Only the newsroom of Suspilne eventually returned, along with a handful of online platforms operating sporadically.
Her focus shifted to documenting the aftermath of Russian shelling. This work proved as challenging as reporting under occupation — if not harder — because it required confronting human suffering daily, interviewing people who had lost homes and loved ones.
“My last assignment was a turning point,” Valentyna remembers. “People were crying — some had lost their homes, others their family members. We entered an apartment where a neighbor described how a woman had been standing in the hallway when a shell struck. I looked down and realized we were standing in a dried pool of blood. I glanced around, and there was blood on all the walls.”
Eventually, Valentyna herself came under fire. In October 2024, while she was filming a children’s soccer practice where her daughter trained, the area was hit by drone strikes, forcing her to flee amidst explosions. By then, she had transitioned to a new role.
Exactly one year after Kherson’s liberation, the city’s first and only local radio station, “X.ON,” began broadcasting. Valentyna joined as a host.
The station airs entertainment programs and news, reaching even the occupied territories of the Kherson region. According to Valentyna, the Russian occupation regime on the left bank of the Dnipro is far harsher than what the regional center endured. Residents are pressured to take Russian passports, and security forces aggressively target pro-Ukrainian individuals.
Sending video footage from the left bank, as Valentyna once did in Kherson, is now impossible. However, the radio station relies on informants to gather news from occupied areas. These sources have confirmed that their broadcasts are heard across the river.
Each program aims to provide useful information for residents of Henichesk, Kakhovka, Oleshky, Skadovsk, and other towns and villages, reminding them that they are not forgotten and are still awaited at home.
“This is why we’re focused on radio broadcasting,” Valentyna says. “When we reclaim the left bank, we’ll need immense efforts to build bridges of understanding.
“For two years, people have lived under occupation and propaganda. Finding common ground between them and Ukrainians who haven’t faced these conditions will be even harder than it was in Kherson. I’ve experienced this firsthand. When we left the occupation, there was a barrier between us and people with different wartime experiences. I remember discussing the early days of the invasion with a friend from Ivano-Frankivsk. She was upset about not being able to buy a certain kind of cat food, while I was thinking about how we couldn’t even buy bread.
“Ukrainians have vastly different experiences of this war. We’ll need to bring them together after de-occupation, and that will be the job of the media.”
