For the TV-7 channel from Mariupol, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began with powerful explosions at 5 am on 24 February 2022. This was the beginning of the unbelievable tragedy of one of the biggest industrial cities of Donbas, home to nearly half a million Ukrainians, and the start of dramatic changes for TV-7, one of the key regional TV channels. Despite the non-stop bombardment of Mariupol during the first few days of the war, the entire TV-7 team worked in an enhanced mode providing timely updates on the situation in the city and believing that it would change promptly. However, on 27 February the team received instructions from the management not to come to work. Then, the TV channel had to stop broadcasting and kept providing the information through social media until 2 March, the day when the city lost all communications and power supply. Today, Mariupol is half-ruined and occupied by Russian Federation troops. According to the official data, more than 30,000 civilians have been killed, while unofficial data show that there are more than 80,000 dead.

For the TV-7 channel from Mariupol, Russia’s full-scale invasion began with powerful explosions at 5 am on 24 February 2022. This was the beginning of an unbelievable tragedy for one of the biggest industrial cities of Donbas, home to nearly half a million Ukrainians. This was also the start of dramatic changes for TV-7, one of the key regional TV channels.

Despite the non-stop bombardment of Mariupol during the first few days of the war, the entire TV-7 team worked in an enhanced mode providing timely updates on the situation and believing that it would change promptly. However, on 27 February the team received instructions from the management not to come to work. The TV channel had to stop broadcasting and kept providing the information through social media until 2 March, when the city lost all communications and power supply. Today, Mariupol is half-ruined and occupied by Russian Federation troops. According to the official data, more than 30,000 civilians have been killed, while unofficial data show that there are more than 80,000 dead.

Since there was no centralized evacuation arranged by the TV-7 management, its employees were hiding in their own apartments, basements, bomb shelters and gradually getting out of the city on their own. Unfortunately, some of them stayed in Mariupol. Before the full-scale war, the TV channel employed 31 people. Of them, 12 voluntarily stayed in the occupied city and 19 left Mariupol and kept living in other regions of Ukraine and abroad.

Because of the rapid pace of Russia’s invasion, there was no way to remove or hide equipment and archives. Everything remained in the TV channel’s building that was then occupied by the Russian military.

Nevertheless, having evacuated in early April 2022, the TV-7 team of seven specialists reunited and resumed the media’s operations in digital. Over the summer, new employees were joining the team. In autumn, the channel managed to resume daily news broadcasts. Currently, it has four camera crews in Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro and Lviv producing stories and recording interviews with Mariupol residents who managed to leave the city.

Thus, TV-7 is actively growing and developing on digital platforms following a clear strategy to remain a source of reliable information for more than 200,000 people from Mariupol who were forced to abandon their homes. For all those who stayed or left the city, TV-7 continues its work under the slogan “Far from home – next to you”, without TV broadcast and its own office, but with a strong belief in the city’s liberation and restart of the full-fledged work of the channel.