ZN.ua journalist Inna Vedernikova reports Telegram smear campagin targeting her

Inna Vedernikova, domestic policy editor at Dzerkalo Tyzhnya (ZN.ua), is being targeted in a smear campaign in anonymous Telegram channels along with her family, the journalist reported in a Facebook post on July 17.

The journalist says the second wave of smear content began recently in the anonymous Telegram channel Joker. The posts, which have signs of fabrication, primarily concerned her husband Volodymyr Reznikov, former deputy chief of traffic police who is now serving in the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Inna Vedernikova discussed her husband’s case in her post.

“Responding to Joker's drivel is self-disrispect. But their budget must be quite large. Today (July 17 — Ed.) there was a second wave of attempts to discredit me as a journalist, the news outlet where I have worked for 20 years, and my family… It's just that I can see that this is not just a smear campaign commissioned for money, because there has been an attempt at enforcement-by-phone: a prosecutor has already called me, saying that their office is already keeping tabs on my husband, who serves in the UAF,” she wrote.

Vedernikova added that she was lost in guesses as to who might be the initiator and the perpetrator the commissioned campaign, but believes that the authorities were involved: “Bankova St., who did not like Dzerkalo Tyznia's statement on Vitaliy Shabunin and who have long been offended by our demands for reasonable public administration and fighting corruption? Lawyer Borzykh, whose actions we exposed and whose team is being charged with continued illegal interference in the work of the Unified State Register of Court Ruilngs?”

Inna Vedernikova declined the Institute of Mass Information's request for a comment, arguing that she had told everything in her Facebook post and that discussing the numerous attacks on the news outlet's chief editor and other journalists that have been posted by Joker in recent months meant giving them undue weight and significance.

Inna Vedernikova also clarified to IMI that this was not the first wave of attacks on media workers and anti-corruption activists by the Telegram channel. According to her, the people running Joker's first channel, which was deleted by Telegram on March 30, 2025, for posting personal data, actively smeared Yuriy Butusov, Yuriy Nikolov, and Vitaliy Shabunin. The second iteration of the channel, created on March 31, continued the attacks on Shabunin and focused their "attention" on Dzerkalo Tyzhnia journalists, namely Yulia Mostova, Yulia Samayeva, and Inna Vedernikova.

Posts about Inna Vedernikova and her husband in the anonymous Telegram channel Joker, screenshots from Joker by IMI

Analysis by IMI representative Kateryna Lysiuk showed that on July 15–18 alone, Joker’s posts mentioned ZN.UA, Yulia Mostova, Inna Vedernikova, and her husband Volodymyr Reznikov more than 30 times. All posts were overtly derogatory.