It's the 23 February 2022 and investigative journalist Anna Myroniuk is at home in Ukraine's capital Kiev, watching history unfold. President Putin has taken to the airwaves, delivering an address which any Ukrainian would immediately recognise as a declaration of war.

For months there had been troop build ups and a steady drum of warnings that Russia was about to invade. Then, only a couple of hours after Putin’s address, Anna awoke to the sounds of explosions outside her home.

In this - the last episode of the series - Nicola speaks to Anna about how she and her colleagues continued to report from inside Ukraine despite missile strikes, internet shutdowns and an aggressive Russian disinformation campaign. She describes the complexities of setting up the Kyiv Independent after she and fifty of her co-workers were fired from another paper and the ongoing challenges of getting impartial information out of the country.

Presented by Nicola Kelly

Producer: Kevin Caners

It's 2011 and a spark has been lit, the Arab Spring sweeping across the Middle East and North Africa, toppling despotic regimes one by one. In the Syrian capital Damascus, journalist Ali Al-Ibrahim is studying for a master’s degree at university when the protests reach the surrounding streets.

It was a hopeful moment, that something might be about to change. Then the government of President Bashar al-Assad responded. The crackdowns against peaceful protesters were swift and harsh, and reports of torture, disappearances and killings followed soon after.

In this episode of 'Silenced', Nicola Kelly speaks to Ali about his work investigating human rights abuses inside his country, the challenges of gathering evidence from exile, and the importance of cross-border work to hold the regime and ISIS militants to account for the atrocities they have committed.

Presented by Nicola Kelly

Producer: Kevin Caners

Today the Wagner Group is known to many for the role it played in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But in 2018, when Nigerian journalist Philip Obaji Jr began to investigate their activities in Africa, the group was still largely unknown.

What Philip discovered was human rights atrocities on an unimaginable scale. In central and west Africa, the Wagner Group was exploiting the natural resources to fund Russia’s proxy wars, seizing gold mining sites and opening fire on the communities that lived nearby.

One day in December 2023, Philip went on a high-risk reporting trip to the Central African Republic to visit a community of gold miners. But within an hour of arriving in a border village, he was captured, badly beaten and detained.

In this week's episode, Philip tells Nicola about the risks he took to expose the truth about Putin’s paramilitaries and their crimes in Africa.

Presented by Nicola Kelly

Producer: Kevin Caners