Journalism group ‘quietly’ preserves Crimean news service’s archives after armed incursion

Global Investigative Journalism Network

This weekend, the Global Investigative Journalism Network “quietly worked with the Archive-It service of the San Francisco-based Internet Archive to back up” the entire archives of the Crimean Center for Investigative Journalism. GIJN took the step, it says, after gunmen in masks took over the Crimean Center’s headquarters.

A Russian soldier behind a Ukrainian Orthodox archbishop in the village of Perevalne, outside of Simferopol, Ukraine, on Sunday, March 2, 2014. . (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)

After breaking a window and forcing their way through the front door, militia leader Konstantin Knyrik announced that the offices would now house crimea2representatives of “The Crimean Front,” because from “this building does not come true information.”

“We do not need to escalate this,” Knyrik told the journalists, according to the Crimean investigative center’s website. “All employees can come to work. We promise them, if their sponsors refuse to pay the salary, we will find them entrepreneurs. We will try to agree on the correct truthful coverage of events.”

Crimean Center staffers left and are still posting news, GIJN reports.