Valeriia Pavlenko - attack 27.05.2026

On May 27, 2026, Valeriia Pavlenko, a journalist for the online media outlet Texty.org.ua, reported in a Threads post that she had received threats from an unidentified internet user.

“In every journalist’s life, there comes a day when you are threatened. For me, that day came yesterday. For those who are used to speaking aggressively online, a reminder: threats against a journalist because of their work are a criminal offense,” Valeriia Pavlenko wrote.

The screenshots published by the journalist contained a comment from a user with the nickname @michael010307. The comment read: “Ms. Host, will you feel okay walking down the street after videos like these? Aren’t you afraid your work for the Presidential Office will come back to haunt you someday? Or simply, aren’t you ashamed?” (original punctuation preserved).

In a comment to Women in Media, the journalist stated that the online attacks began after Texty.org.ua published a video investigation titled “The Invasion of Migrants into Ukrainian TikTok. A Texty Study.”

“At Texty, we published our monitoring of social media narratives on migration and found that the recent wave of anti-migrant posts showed many signs of a Russian propaganda campaign. One viewer disliked this so much that he decided to leave several critical comments, one of which contained threats directed at me. After the author posted that comment, I communicated with him in the comments section: I explained that threats against journalists for their work carry criminal liability and asked him to provide his real identity instead of hiding behind an anonymous account,” Valeriia Pavlenko said.

The exchange with the user ended when he deleted his comments under the video. However, in the Threads comments under the journalist’s post, some readers questioned whether the screenshots she shared actually contained threats.

Thus, this case demonstrates signs of technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV), combining online threats, gendered disinformation, reputational attacks, and the dismissal of the journalist’s experience as a victim of online abuse. A characteristic feature of TFGBV in this case is also the reaction of part of the audience — denying the existence of threats and downplaying the journalist’s lived experience.