Nastya Stanko

Anastasiia Stanko is а Ukrainian journalist and TV presenter and a member of the “Stop censorship” movement, an anti-censorship group made up of journalists and media organizations in Ukraine. In 2013, she co-founded the independent media channel, Hromadske, which is registered as a non-governmental organization.

Since the early days of the Maidan Revolution, anti-government demonstrations in late 2013 that led to the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych, Stanko has covered the protests in Kiev streaming hours of video. She previously worked for the national TV channels First national tv channel and TVI. In March 2014, Stanko was in Crimea covering the so-called referendum and annexation of the peninsula. Two months later, she became a war correspondent, reporting on the conflict that began in the Donbass area of Ukraine. In June 2014, she and her cameraman were taken hostage by the so-called Luhansk People’s Republic and held in the basement of a building in Luhansk city. Two days later, they were freed.

Stanko has authored various video reports and articles about the war, with a focus on civilians living in and around the conflict zone. She started a project called “Hromadske.East,” which focuses on the stories around the conflict. She has also authored several investigations about the mass shooting on Maidan Square in early 2014, which feature interviews with the police’s special forces unit who were charged with killing unarmed protesters. These works led to Stanko winning the main prize at the 2016 Mezhyhirya Festival and being a finalist at another journalist competition.

Stanko continues to report on human rights violations by police and Ukraine’s Security Service in the conflict zone. Her latest documentary, “The Secret Compound” is about people illegally detained by Ukraine’s Security Service.

In 2018 she received the international press freedom award from the committee to protect journalists.