On June 27, 2025, Sofia Cheliak, a journalist and contributor for Ukrainska Pravda, published a post on her Facebook page directly addressing Member of Parliament Oleksii Honcharenko. The post was prompted by a recent public scandal involving Honcharenko, who had previously criticized Kateryna Mykhalko, Executive Director of Technological Forces of Ukraine, an association of defense companies, for being appointed to a senior position at the age of 22.
Sofia Cheliak’s post drew significant attention, including comments containing clear signs of sexism, misogyny, gender-based trolling, and gendered disinformation. Among them were such references as “little girl”, “the young heroine of the Ivano-Frankivsk Maidan”, “big shot”, and “half-witted”.
Sofia Cheliak shared with with Women in Media that social media users also tried to imply they knew details about her private life, including information about her partner, whose identity had not been made public. These insinuations included comments mentioning her partner’s age.
On June 29, 2025, Cheliak’s original post was republished as an opinion column by the online outlet ZAXID.NET and shared on the outlet’s page on X.
Users left more than two hundred comments under that publication, many containing sexist slurs, gendered disinformation, misogynistic insults, and defamatory statements directed at the journalist, including:
- “This hag wants a position like Alfiorov too?”
- “So, you whores found yourselves a predecessor? You snotty bitches didn’t “take responsibility” for anything, this loud-mouthed little brat never took responsibility and never will.”
- “And WHO is this Sofia.whatever? Some escort girl for Yermak?”
- “In which field of sexual services is she a professional?”
- “She’s totally fucking nuts”
Users also posted an image captioned “I’m not your dear girl, I’m a cheap whore” — a reference to the “I’m not your darling” campaign from 2018, when Ukrainian women journalists publicly condemned sexist remarks made by Ukraine’s fifth president, Petro Poroshenko.
Speaking to Women in Media, Sofia Cheliak said that after her post, she also received abusive comments with the signs of online attacks on her personal Instagram page, including “a sick, defective creature”.
“This is the first time during the full-scale war that I’ve faced an attack of this magnitude. Honestly, I didn’t react much — at first, I didn’t even notice it had spread to X. I replied to some of the Facebook comments but ignored others. Some made me laugh, for example, when people compared me to Greta Thunberg,” the journalist said.
The problem is deeper than it appears. According to Her Voice, Their Target study conducted by Women in Media in 2025 with support from UNESCO:
- 81% of Ukrainian women journalists have faced online violence.
- Among those who have actually experienced online violence, only 64% clearly recognize it as such.
- 14% experienced threats that escalated offline.
Women with a public political presence, who host opinion programs, or cover sensitive topics are particularly vulnerable.
“We see the classic signs of a gender-based online attack: a focus not on what was said but on a woman’s appearance, age, personal life, and the use of sexualized imagery and insults. These attacks not only violate human dignity but have a very clear goal — to push women out of the public space,” commented Liza Kuzmenko, Head of Women in Media and member of the Commission on Journalistic Ethics.
It worth noting that Women in Media NGO has launched a platform to document cases of online violence against Ukrainian journalists targeted for their professional activities. From now on, the interactive map allows users to track and analyze such attacks, helping to assess the scale of the problem and work toward its resolution.
This case was documented under the initiative supported by the Dutch Foreign Ministry as part of the project “Strengthening the Resilience of Women Journalists in Ukraine: Combating Online Violence and Gendered Disinformation,” implemented by the Women in Media NGO.