‘Destroying our memory’ — YouTube wipes Ukrainian channel honoring soldiers killed by Russia
Editor's note: This story has been updated since publication after the Memorial of Heroes YouTube channel was once again restored.
Memorial of Heroes, a Ukrainian memorialization and documentary project that records the stories of those killed by Russia's war against Ukraine, has had its YouTube channel deleted six times over the previous month.
"Five times this month, our channel has been deleted," the project's deputy editor, Kateryna Maiboroda, wrote on Instagram on Nov. 10.
"The formal reason — 'spam and fraud.' Without a single example, without any sense."
According to Maiboroda, after the sixth and most recent deletion, the appeal option —previously followed by quick restoration — was withheld, with no immediate explanation.
Several hours later, the channel was once again restored.
The Memorial of Heroes' channel, part of a larger project that includes a website, social media pages, and an event, hosted 18 documentary films and over 100 profiles in memory of fallen Ukrainian soldiers.
Maiboroda said the accusations behind the mass reports, which are unrelated to the channel's actual content, indicate a coordinated Russian operation.
"They are not only destroying our cities, but our memory, too," she said in an Instagram story in connection to the deletion.
The mass reporting of Ukrainian channels and social media accounts is only one of many widely documented tactics used by Russian disinformation networks, which often employ hundreds of bot accounts.
The Memorial of Heroes project is a keystone in Ukraine's broader challenge of memorialization: forming the nation's culture of remembering the names, faces, and events of Russia's war even as fighting continues and opportunities for closure are scarce.
Some initiatives are completely grassroots — even organic — like the flag memorials on Kyiv's Independence Square and in other major cities, while others, including the long-awaited construction of a national memorial complex outside Kyiv, are led by the state, but are often mired in scandal.
