Thank you. Today I stand here – with a tremble in my voice and a deep sense of responsibility in my heart. Because this award is not about me. It is about all those who keep writing, filming, and telling the truth – even when missiles are falling nearby.

It was 1957. My great-grandmother Stepanida Brovko sent a letter to the Kremlin, to Moscow. She was searching for her husband, who was arrested for anti-Soviet activities 20 years before, in 1937. She did not know that a week after the arrest, Soviet executioners shot him to death. She did not know that no one would tell her the truth. She simply did not lose hope.

My great-grandfather was a worker at the railway station in a small village in the Zaporizhzhia region. For generations, our family had lived there since 18th Century. Today, that village is occupied by Russia.

These days, other wives of other arrested, captured, or missing Ukrainians write the same letters searching for their husbands. They look for their names or faces in photos in Russian Telegram channels, staring at lists of bodies returned from Russia.

Almost 90 years later, same tragedy happens with my colleague – Ukrainian journalist Victoriya Roshchyna. Who went to the occupied territories to document life under Russian control. In 2023 she was illegally attested, tortured with electric shocks, stabbed, her weight dropped to just 30 kg. Then she disappeared. Only this February, her family received her dead body from Russia.

Nothing has changed. Nothing will change as long as Russia exists in its current form.

I come to you from a country where journalism is not just a profession – it’s a way to survive.

I stand here because I survived. But that doesn’t mean I’m safe.

In Ukraine, even silence is temporary. And it’s the silence we fear the most.

Because journalism in wartime is no longer about headlines – it’s about holding on to life itself.

Let me show you what our “news” looks like:

“Without him, we would have burned” – a schoolboy saves people during shelling in Sumy.

Children in Kherson region taken to Russian camps for forced re-education.

Black-and-white body bags: a volunteer shares the darkest moments of her work.

These are real headlines, printed in Ukrainian newspapers last month. Behind each of them is not just a story – but a shattered life, a broken home.

We are not just fighting for territory. We are fighting for the right to call things by their names.

This is war.

These are Russian crimes.

This is independent Ukraine.

We are Ukrainians.

I do not stand here alone. I stand with hundreds of Ukrainian journalists. Some still reporting, some imprisoned, some killed, some never found.

You often ask: How do you endure this? My answer is simple: we don’t write because we are brave. We write because silence is not an option. We preserve the memory of who we are – for ourselves and for the world.

I’m not just the head of a media association. I’m a mother of four children who are growing up in war. A woman who checks the path of enemy drones before sending her kids to school. And every morning, I ask myself: What if tonight I don’t come home?

When the full-scale invasion began, editors messaged not “Hello,” but: “A missile hit my house. Where do I run?”, “We escaped occupation. What now?”

With my colleagues, we evacuated newsrooms. We found bulletproof vests – not for soldiers, but for journalists. Starlink – not for the army, but for the press. We found housing, equipment, funds. We sourced paper and deliver it across the border – so frontline media could print.

Each newsroom we saved was a point of resistance. Because when journalists fall silent – the occupiers speak instead. And we pay for this right to speak, every day.

In the past three years in Ukraine: 332 media outlets have been closed, 97 journalists have been killed – 12 during reporting, over 30 media workers remain imprisoned.

While a journalist in London reports on a new museum – a reporter in Sumy runs toward a missile strike. While a broadcaster in Oslo covers election debates – an editor in Kramatorsk, without power or internet, fights to print tomorrow’s newspaper.

These are different realities. But we share one responsibility.

In a world where disinformation spreads faster than truth – where machines can mimic human voices and faces – real journalism is our last line of defence.

Today the war is in Ukraine. Tomorrow it could be in your country. And journalists will once again be the first to speak. And the first to be targeted. That’s why journalism must be prepared – everywhere. And protected – everywhere.

Recently, we spoke with Lyuba, a 20-year-old war reporter from the Sumy region. She said: “FPV drones fly over us constantly. My helmet draws attention. So I have taken it off – to stay alive.”

That is what journalism looks like in Ukraine.

And that’s why this award is not a celebration. It is a responsibility.

Last night I have thought about various quotes of Ukrainian freedom leaders what I could use during the speech, but chose to use the quote from the soul of Ukraine – its’ hymn:

Душу й тіло ми положим

За нашу свободу

We will lay down our body and soul

for our freedom.

And this is exactly what we fight for as media organizations. We support hundreds of local independent newsrooms so that we Ukrainians survive not as individuals, but as a nation.

We do not provide food to eat, we provide food for the brain. We do not fight with soldiers, we fight with propaganda and disinformation. Our job is to publish independent news. And this is the thing that forms the mindset of a nation of freedom.

Freedom is not something you have from birth. It does not fall from the sky. It must be fought for – every day. With every word. Every choice. Sometimes, with your life.

Ukraine is proving that.

Now more than ever, we need strong, clear, united voices – your voices.

Thank you for standing with us.

[Speech in Ukrainian]