On March 6, 2026, freelance journalist Olha Khudetska posted on her X account saying she wanted to see financial reporting from the Hospitallers medical battalion on how the donations they collect are spent. To illustrate her point, she attached screenshots from Monobank, which she said showed that fundraising jar accounts were being duplicated and that money was regularly being withdrawn from them. Other screenshots, she said, showed which legal entities were directly connected to the Hospitallers’ activities.
“It took 14 legal entities to run one organization. LLCs, NGOs, charitable foundations. And those are only the ones I managed to find in one evening. The lion’s share of these entities are either run by, or founded by, the parents, father-in-law, husband, or at the very least friends of one person. Brilliant — a very healthy and transparent situation,” Olha Khudetska wrote on X.
The post sparked widespread discussion on social media and in the media. Yana Zinkevych, head of the Hospitallers medical battalion, also responded, saying she was open to an investigation and ready to provide all relevant information: “I support public oversight, because it is precisely what safeguards against corruption and abuse. But any investigation requires dialogue and the presentation of evidence, not a one-sided accusatory monologue.”
Later, Olha Khudetska said she had begun receiving threats. On Facebook, she posted screenshots of comments and messages she had received after publishing her post about the Hospitallers. These messages contain signs of technology-facilitated gender-based violence, including hate speech, sexualized harassment, and gendered disinformation. As Khudetska told Women in Media, the comments also reveal a broader narrative: she is being cast as an “enemy” supposedly “attacking volunteer forces.”
Some of the comments have direct threats of physical violence, with phrases such as: “I hope your leg gets blown off,” “watch your back,” “your legs will get broken anyway,” “any decent soldier would just spit in your face,” and so on.
“A large number of people in the comments were saying all sorts of things — not only direct threats, but also various wishes for bad things to happen to me. One of the main lines of “defense”, as I understand it, is the claim that I’m doing this on someone’s orders, whether from the Russians or from the President’s Office. They are also demanding that I report my income. They say someone paid me, and that such reporting would somehow ‘expose’ me,” Olha Khudetska said in a comment to Women in Media.
Yana Zinkevych also responded publicly to the threats against the journalist. In a Facebook post, she spoke out against harassment and insults: “To everyone who decided to chase hype and hide behind defending my name to threaten or insult a journalist — that is your personal choice and your shame. I did not authorize anyone to speak rudely on my behalf on any issue. I support criticism, discussion, even argument, but I am categorically against harassment, threats, and insults. At the same time, I am categorically against harassment, threats, and insults regardless of whose side a person is on. Let us remain human, even when emotions are running high.”
The journalist has also been accused of allegedly violating journalistic standards. Khudetska says those standards apply only to journalistic materials:
“A screenshot showing money being withdrawn from a fundraising jar, posted on my own social media page, is not a journalistic piece. It is impossible to seek comment from both sides before every single tweet. Besides, in my view, it makes sense to ask for different sides’ positions when there are differing views or different interpretations of events. But what exactly was I supposed to ask about here, when there are official registers and there are screenshots confirming the information from those registers?”
Olha Khudetska also added that in her own post, the founder and commander of the Hospitallers medical battalion suggested that the journalist was avoiding communication. That came the day after Khudetska and Zinkevych had been in extensive written contact. In addition to the threats, Khudetska also documented attempts to hack her Telegram account. Despite the large-scale online attack, she is still hesitant to go to the police, as she is not convinced such a step would be effective.
It is worth recalling that in June 2025, Olha Khudetska published a post on X pointing to alleged fraud with donations collected by Lviv-based activist Nazarii Husakov, who lives with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). That post also received wide media attention. Husakov later left for Italy, and the National Police subsequently issued him with an in absentia notice of suspicion on fraud charges related to charitable fundraising.