Vienna, December 14, 2023
The intrepid Russian website Meduza website today includes Reporters Sans Frontières‘ annual report: in 2023 Russia was world’s fifth-largest jailer of journalists, Belarus ahead as the third-largest.
Between January 1, 2023, and the beginning of December, 45 journalists were killed around the globe in connection with their work, about half (23) of them in war zones, 17 in Israel, Lebanon, or the Gaza Strip, and two killed in Ukraine.
At the same time, RSF noted that 2023 has so far seen the lowest number of reporters killed in the line of duty since 2002.
A total of 521 journalists are currently imprisoned worldwide, according to RSF, with 39 behind bars in Belarus, 28 in Russia.
- Meduza today includes reports on new laws criminalising information and vacuous more than four-hour Putin chatathon including planted “difficult” questions about his alternative reality.
- Prospects of Putin as a “stone guest when Hungary takes over EU presidency in July: Otmar Lahodynsky in Die Presse, Vienna (in DE, and in English here)