Ukrainian journalist and soldier Alla Pushkarchuk, call sign "Ruta," was killed in action in Donetsk Oblast on April 25.
Her death was reported by her former colleague, Dmytro Krapyvenko, a soldier and chief editor of the Ukrainian news outlet the Weekly.
Krapyvenko said that Pushkarchuk was hired at the Weekly in 2018. She was already a veteran at that time, having joined the Armed Forces in 2014. At the Weekly, Pushkarchuk grew from a news reporter to a cultural columnist.
Pushkarchuk also worked for the publication Chytomo, where she coordinated the Empty Chair People project, focused on authors suffering political imprisonment.
Pushkarchuk's background was in theater studies and her dream was to become a theater critic, Krapyvenko said.
According to the Institute for Mass Information (IMI), Pushkarchuk is the 77th media worker killed as a result of Russia's war against Ukraine.
Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Russian forces have committed 567 crimes against journalists and media in Ukraine, IMI reports.
Krapyvenko shared an excerpt from a Facebook post Pushkarchuk wrote in June 2023, expressing frustration with Ukrainians who evade military service.
"By the way, I'm a theater scholar by profession, but for more than a year I've been working in a mortar crew, dealing with the relevant software, with a bullhorn, with an endless stream of numbers accompanied by explosions, sleepless nights, and exacerbation of certain chronic sores," Pushkarchuk wrote.
"I also don't understand and don't tolerate why young, capable women who don't have children went abroad as refugees."
Dinara Khalilova
