Nastya Stanko - attack 25.03.2026

On March 25, 2026, journalist and editor-in-chief of Slidstvo.Info, Nastya Stanko, published a post on X (Twitter) addressing the issue of mobilization and Territorial Recruitment Centers (TCCs). In particular, she wrote:

“Mobilization is truly one of the most important issues in the country. For the authorities — first and foremost the president and then down the chain — it is a huge elephant in the room that both the president and his subordinates try to ignore. This leads to increasingly worse consequences, such as attacks on TCC military personnel, the authorities’ silence regarding these attacks (including those with fatal outcomes), partial corruption within the TCCs, and attacks on journalists covering these topics. Much of this responsibility lies with the president and his direct subordinates. The worst part, as frightening as it is to say, is not only the deaths of people, but the growing sense of danger for everyone — and not only because of Russians. It also seems that the state is more inclined to appease those who do not want to defend it than to care for those who already do. To put it mildly, this is sad.”

The post triggered a strong reaction among X users. In the comments under the post, as well as in mentions across other accounts, signs of technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) against Nastya Stanko were recorded, including gendered disinformation, hate speech, and sexualized harassment. In particular, the journalist was targeted with insults such as “so-called journalist,” “bimbo,” “pathetic creature,” “prostitute,” “hypocrite,” “media whore,” and was told to “go do porn,” among others.

One of the accounts that reposted the post was the X account “69th Honcharenko Center” (@flaming_mace). In the caption, the authors referred to the journalist as “worthless” and expressed “regret” that she had been “returned by the LNR militants.” This likely refers to a 2014 incident when Nastya Stanko and Hromadske cameraman Illia Bezkorovainyi were captured by militants of the self-proclaimed “LNR.” In the comments, one user suggested that the separatists “returned her because she is one of them.”

Thus, this case represents a complex online attack with clear признаки technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV), combining several forms of abuse: gendered disinformation and the discrediting of the journalist’s professional position through distortion of her statements on mobilization; hate speech and misogynistic insults aimed at humiliating her as a woman, including through sexualized labeling; sexualized harassment as a tool of dehumanization; as well as reputational attacks involving references to her traumatic experience of captivity to mock and delegitimize her.

The amplification of these narratives through reposts by popular accounts further increases the scale of the attack, giving it features of coordinated online harassment.