On February 3, 2026, the website volodymyrboyko.wordpress.com by blogger Volodymyr Boiko published the material titled “Kolomoiskyi’s Rag.” The publication is illustrated with a photograph of Kateryna Kobernyk, editor-in-chief of the Babel online media outlet.
In the publication, Kateryna Kobernyk’s name and the name of the media outlet she leads are repeatedly brought up in a derogatory, offensive context bearing the hallmarks of discrediting the honor, dignity, and professional reputation of the journalist, as well as undermining confidence in the media as an institution.
Among other things, the author uses the following expressions (the list is incomplete): “worthless crotch cricket,” “prominent journalist K. Kobernyk” (in inverted commas, i.e., sarcastically), “the bullshit published by K. Kobernyk,” “a media whore,” “K. Kobernyk, who never had to do anything with true journalism in her entire life,” “an online outlet, even as shameless as Babel,” “money that K. Kobernyk gets to publish primitive commissioned stuff,” “a media dumpster,” and comparing the activity of Babel with that of “Al Capone’s nighttime laundries,” which hints at the use of a media outlet for money laundering. All of these phrases are clearly derogatory and discrediting in nature.
In addition, the same thing was published by the author on his Telegram channel, Zapysky Paskvilianta (Lampooner’s Notes – eng), with an audience of over 17,000 followers at the time, which significantly expands the scale of offensive content distribution.
The comments to the author’s publication also include a brief AI-generated video.
The video features a superimposed AI-generated audio saying “I was the star on Epstein’s island!”
It was made on the basis of Kateryna Kobernyk’s photo taken during the panel discussion “Media of the Future: The Role of Social Media and Messengers” at the annual conference “Georgi Gongadze Award Media Days” in 2024. The right to the image belongs to the Award.
This statement creates a false and discrediting association with the publicly known scandal involving American financier Jeffrey Epstein. It refers to the case where the publicized materials mentioned that he organized sex parties with the involvement of public figures on his private island, including ones with underage girls.
Thus, the use of an AI-generated video based on a real image of the journalist without her consent in combination with an audio track with sexualized, criminalized content indicates deliberate discrediting, defamation, and technology-facilitated gender-based violence targeting the journalist in connection with her professional activities.
This is not the first online attack against Kateryna Kobernyk by Volodymyr Boiko recorded on the Women in Media online map. The previous incident of this nature was documented on November 11, 2025.
Thus, this case is an example of a systemic online attack against a woman journalist, combining defamation, misogynistic language, gender-based insults, and the use of technological tools for humiliation. The focus of the publications is deliberately shifted from the editor’s professional activities to discrediting her personally through sexist and sexualized labels.
The repetition of attacks by the same author indicates long-term harassment and systematic online bullying, rather than an isolated case of criticism or evaluative judgments.
“We are not recording an isolated incident; it is a systemic online attack against a woman journalist, combining defamation, misogyny, and the use of AI to humiliate. This is not criticism — it is a form of online harassment that directly threatens the safety of women in media. At the same time, many journalists do not record such incidents, trying not to draw attention to the attacks and focusing on their professional activities instead, which only highlights the scale and underrepresentation of the problem,” says Liza Kuzmenko, head of Women in Media NGO, member of the Commission on Journalistic Ethics.