On March 5, 2022, the journalists of TV channel “New Chernihiv” from Chernihiv city (northern Ukraine, 60 km from the Russian border) were making a report about two schools recently bombed by Russians. The planes dropped at least 6 bombs onto the city center. 47 Ukrainians died that day. The cameraman of the TV channel Andriy Kuzmenko managed to capture the moment when the Ukrainian defenders shot down the Russian plane that caused so many casualties.

The massive attack on Chernihiv in early March 2022 was covered only thanks to local journalists who, risking their own lives, were reporting under fire in order to film the crimes committed by Russians. Driven by the goal to inform Ukrainians that the city was fighting and not giving up, TV channel “New Chernihiv” did not stop its work for a single day even without electricity and water. Today, the city of Chernihiv continues to suffer from systematic shelling due to its close proximity to Russia. Russian ballistic missiles can reach the city just in a few minutes.

“New Chernihiv” keeps operating under such conditions and even created new content formats requested by the audience. However, for high-quality and full-fledged work, the team lacks people. In particular, the channel needs employees able to shoot live stories and reports. Most of the men who worked as cameramen and video editors joined the army. That is why, Nataliia Levochko, CEO, started to teach women to work with a camera. She also established a partnership with a university to train camerawomen, but the problem still remains: “The shortage of personnel has a strong impact. The training process is too long and complicated. Meantime, we need to shoot videos every day. Our reports are not only the history but also the record of Russia’s war crimes”, – Nataliia says.

Constant shelling, lack of personnel and slow recovery of advertising market are not the only challenges for “New Chernihiv”. The newsroom also faces financial pressure from local authorities that reduced the TV channel’s budget in favor of military needs. “New Chernihiv” considers this as an attempt to pressure the media with the intention to further close it down. This is an alarming sign of limiting the access of local communities to critically important information.

Despite all the tough challenges and risks, “New Chernihiv” continues to search for opportunities and create important content for the region. From the first day of the Russian full-scale invasion and until now, the residents of Chernihiv are eager for local information.