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Serhiy Starushko and his journalist colleagues had just finished their morning editorial meeting in early March when Russian military vehicles drew up outside.
Within minutes, soldiers stormed through the front doors of the three-storey building, home to a local news station in the occupied Ukrainian port city of Berdyansk.
About 50 employees were held hostage for five hours.
They had become victims of the real-world fight to control the flow of information.
Russian forces are occupying towns, threatening journalists and demanding they spread pro-Kremlin views. Those who refuse are forced to close down their operations.
The strategy to replace Ukrainian media with pro-Kremlin press coverage includes capturing transmitter towers and switching off access to national Ukrainian news programmes in areas controlled by Russian forces. Instead, signals for pro-Russian broadcasts are switched on.
The State Special Communications Service of Ukraine told the BBC that eight stations are being used to air "propaganda and disinformation" to the local population in southern Ukraine.
In Berdyansk, Serhiy - a broadcast journalist - was forced to lie on camera and announce he was declaring a war against so-called ''Ukrainian nationalists". The Russians said they would post this coerced declaration online if he refused to co-operate.