14 May 2025

Mykola Semena: 75 Years in Service to Freedom of Speech

Today, 14 May, Mykola Semena celebrates his 75th birthday — a distinguished Ukrainian journalist, contributor to the Crimea.Realities project, Honored Journalist of Ukraine, recipient of numerous journalism awards, and a member of PEN Ukraine and the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine.

Mykola Semena has worked in journalism for over half a century. He began his career in Chernihiv and Zaporizhzhia. He spent more than 30 years in Crimea, where he co-founded and served as deputy editor-in-chief of the first Ukrainian-language newspaper on the peninsula, Krymska Svitlytsia. His writing has also appeared in Dzerkalo Tyzhnia, Den, and the BBC. He is the author of several books, including the political biography Mustafa Dzhemilev: Man Who Overpowered Stalinism and the collection Crimean Report: Chronicles of the Occupation of Crimea in 2014–2016, published in English in 2018.

In 2014, Mykola Semena became a contributor to Crimea.Realities, a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty project focused on human rights violations, resistance to occupation, and Russian policy in Crimea. Because of his journalistic work, he became a target of the Russian Federation’s repressive machinery. In April 2016, his home was illegally searched, and he was unlawfully charged with allegedly making “public calls to violate the territorial integrity of Russia.”

On 22 September 2017, an occupation “court” in Simferopol sentenced the journalist to two and a half years of suspended imprisonment with a three-year probation period, along with a ban on any public activity. The verdict was widely recognized as politically motivated by numerous Ukrainian and international human rights organizations, including the European Parliament, Russian groups Memorial and Agora, and more than 30 civil society organizations. In 2020, his conviction was lifted early, and in February of that year, Semena was able to leave occupied Crimea and return to mainland Ukraine.