Access to Ukrainian parliament restored for journalists

The speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, Ruslan Stefanchuk, signed an order allowing journalists to work in the Verkhovna Rada under martial law, reported the website of the legislature.

No more than 30 people will be able to work in the press center of the parliament at the same time. This is due to the limited number of seats in the parliament shelter.

On Tuesday, Stefanchuk, together with the chief of the Rada staff, Vyacheslav Shtuchnyi, met with parliament correspondents and told them about the working conditions in the press center, in particular, regarding actions during the announcement of an air raid alert.

Restrictions on the work of journalists in the Ukrainian parliament have been in effect since March 2020, when the quarantine due to the COVID-19 pandemic began.

In 2022, a complete ban on their work in the building of the Verkhovna Rada was introduced due to the outbreak of the full-scale war.

From March 2024, the parliament began to seriously consider the possibility of returning journalists to the sidelines of the parliament.

Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, head of the Verkhovna Rada's Committee on Freedom of Speech, attributed this to a drop in the level of trust in the Ukrainian legislature. "The absence of journalists in the parliament definitely does not increase trust. We have a unique situation when the parliament does not stop its work during the war. But does the Verkhovna Rada inform about it enough? No," he told LIGA.net.