The Ukrainian police have searched a major military drone manufacturer and the home of its owner, who is also a part owner of a prominent news outlet that has been critical of the military, escalating concerns about government pressure on independent media.
The police action targeted the drone company Vyriy, whose owner, Oleksii Babenko, said officers had searched 40 locations on Tuesday, including the company’s offices and his home. Prosecutors said they were investigating price gouging in military contracts, which Mr. Babenko denied, and the company said in a statement that a commercial rivalry with another drone maker may have caused the raids.
But the police searches came at a tense moment for Babel, a news outlet co-owned by Mr. Babenko, which last month published an investigation documenting abuse of conscripted soldiers during training and the noncombat deaths of 25 soldiers in one military unit.
Ukrainian journalists drew a connection between the police raids and Babel’s investigation. The searches came on the heels of a recent court order banning another news site from publishing details of a corruption investigation.
Both actions were meant to “exert pressure on the media,” Sevgil Musaieva, the editor in chief of Ukrainska Pravda, wrote in a commentary.
Mr. Babenko said he was cooperating with investigators and that he had no evidence the searches were tied to the Babel report.
“I can say right away that we’re not fighting anyone except the Russians,” he said.
Ukraine’s media landscape includes multiple investigative outlets and independent news sites. Ukrainian journalists pulled punches early in the Russian invasion to avoid stirring internal divisions but more recently have broken major stories of corruption and abuse that led to personnel changes and policy overhauls.
But journalists and groups monitoring press freedoms have raised alarms for years over government restrictions and pressures on the news media in Ukraine that they say go well beyond the country’s wartime needs for secrecy.
Babel’s investigation into abuse at a boot camp for the 425 Separate Assault Regiment, which is known as Skelya, documented multiple cases of beatings and harsh punishments, such as handcuffing two soldiers together for days at a time. The investigation found one new conscript had turned up at a hospital from a training site with broken fingers and open lacerations, and within days had died.
Much of the abuse was inflicted on people recovering from drug addictions who were conscripted into the military. The story documented the withholding of methadone replacement therapy for opiate-addicted soldiers, who suffered withdrawal during training.
The report cast doubt on medical reports listing the causes of death of soldiers outside of combat as pneumonia. The Skelya regiment denied mistreating soldiers in training.
Before the police searches, the news outlet and Mr. Babenko had been subjected to a flood of abuse on social media sites.
The police action coming on the heels of the publication follows a pattern of pressure on news outlets during the war.
A Ukrainian reporter was served with a draft notification after revealing government meddling in editorial policy at a provincial newspaper. Ukraine’s domestic spy agency in 2024 installed secret cameras in hotel rooms used by journalists with an investigative news site. And a public television broadcaster has said it has been subjected to political pressure on its reporting.
President Volodymyr Zelensky decried the hotel spying incident and fired the intelligence officer responsible. But his administration has also consolidated formerly independent television stations into a single, state-controlled broadcast during the war, drawing criticism that it is stifling independent reporting.
Media rights groups gauge the risks of covering the Russian invasion as the gravest threat to Ukrainian journalists but have also raised concerns about official pressure. “Investigative journalists are facing an increase in aggressions, both physical and online, from the authorities,” Reporters Without Borders wrote in its summary of press freedoms in Ukraine.
