Rossiya Segodnya, Sputnik's parent media group, has addressed a letter to the Director General of UNESCO, urging the organization to put an end to its suppression of facts confirming that Russian journalists faced violations of their rights.
The draft report on journalist safety by UNESCO neglects to mention the deaths and injuries sustained by members of the Russian media. Notably absent is any reference to Sputnik military correspondent Rostislav Zhuravlev, who was killed on July 22, 2023, due to Ukrainian shelling in the Zaporozhye Region.
"The political bias of the UNESCO Secretariat has become increasingly apparent, with the organization appearing to align itself with the West’s agenda of 'dismantling Russia'," the letter said.
The letter further highlighted that the UNESCO draft report omits numerous instances of harassment and violations of the rights of journalists belonging to the Rossiya Segodnya media group who work in Western countries.
"Regrettably, these omissions serve only to underscore that the UNESCO Secretariat seems to have abandoned the core principles that initially guided the work of the United Nations," the company said.
Earlier, similar letters to Azoulay expressing outrage over the failure to include Russian journalists in the report were sent by the Union of Journalists of Russia, VGTRK and the RT TV channels.
Rostislav Zhuravlev was a military correspondent for Sputnik. He began his career as a journalist in 2012 after military service in the ranks of the Russian Armed Forces. In 2014, he covered the events of Crimea's reunification with Russia, took part in the political turmoil in the southeast of Ukraine that year, and the war in Donbass.
In late July 2023, in the Zaporozhye region, Rostislav was preparing a report on Ukraine's use of banned cluster munitions. On July 22 of that year, Zhuravlev was killed as a result of a shelling by the Ukrainian Armed Forces with cluster munitions in a special operation zone in the Zaporizhia region, four days after his birthday. On July 27, Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded Zhuravlev the Order of Courage posthumously.