We reported on Russia's fuel crisis and Ukraine's win at NATO summit — Here's what you helped us do this week
Dear Kyiv Independent community members,
Thank you for your continued support. This week, our team reported from the NATO summit in Ankara, where U.S. President Donald Trump clashed with allies over the future of the alliance. Ukraine, however, secured new defense commitments, including an $80 billion NATO aid pledge and Trump's apparent backing for Ukraine’s domestic production of Patriot missiles. Above is a photo of our reporter, Martin Fornusek, during the summit in Ankara, where he covered the key meetings and developments firsthand.
We're grateful to have our members with us. We'd also like to give a warm welcome to the 459 new members who joined this week. You're giving us the stability we need to keep going!
Here's what you helped us do at the Kyiv Independent this week:
One of our most-read stories this week was on Russia's spiraling fuel crisis. Jimmy Rushton took a wider look at the impact of the campaign against Russia's refineries, where daylong queues and rationing have affected more than 40 regions. Chris York and Yuliia Taradiuk wrote about how Putin is now urging his government to rush subsidies to occupied Crimea, where fuel prices are soaring, and much of the peninsula is facing blackouts.
We covered the NATO summit in Turkey. During the summit, Dominika Ozynska and Martin Fornusek sat down with Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten, who said Europe has been "too naive and too lazy for way too long." We'll have more interviews published next week.
On a related note, we looked at the harder security questions facing Europe. Martin Fornusek wrote about how some members of NATO fear a ceasefire in Ukraine could free a battle-hardened Russian army to rebuild its forces and shift its attention toward testing the alliance's eastern defenses.
We reported from the ground after yet another Russian mass attack on Kyiv. After not a single Russian ballistic missile was downed on Sunday night amid a shortage of interceptors, Jimmy Rushton covered how Russia exploits one of Ukraine’s most urgent vulnerabilities, with Kyiv being left largely defenseless against the latest wave of Russian ballistic missile attacks. Yuliia Taradiuk and Asami Terajima also reported on the situation in Vyshneve, a quiet suburb on Kyiv's western edge, where residents described fleeing through fields in the middle of the night as secondary explosions tore through the town.
We explained how one questionable photo let Russian propaganda cast doubt on the strike that hit the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra. Linda Hourani traced how a likely AI-generated image, spread by pro-Kremlin channels alongside fake "staging" photos, ended up triggering a Meta fact-check that wrongly labeled real reporting on the attack, including ours, as false information.
We also reported on Ukraine's mobilization push and training of new recruits. Asami Terajima examined how the 66th Mechanized Brigade is preparing new recruits for front-line service, and the growing challenge of motivating and training soldiers as Ukraine grapples with a worsening manpower shortage. Meanwhile, Tania Myronyshena wrote about how a standard street check by military recruitment officers in Lviv spiraled into a 200-strong crowd overturning their vehicle, a flashpoint one expert warned could turn mobilization from a social problem into a genuine domestic security threat.
We reported on growing concerns about how power is being wielded in Kyiv. Oleg Sukhov examined how President Volodymyr Zelensky is increasingly using sanctions against Ukrainian citizens, prompting legal experts to question how a tool created to target Russia is now being used domestically. Oleg also reported on what appears to be an unprecedented court order blocking the publishing of a media investigation into the brother of the head of the State Bureau of Investigation before it was released, prompting warnings that the ruling could set a dangerous precedent for investigative journalism in Ukraine.
In an exclusive, we found that one of Ukraine's largest state shipping firms is being run into the ground. Luca Léry Moffat uncovered leaked documents suggesting that the Ukrainian Danube Shipping Company has been undermined by alleged mismanagement, governance failures, and corruption risks. The story explores how one of Ukraine's most strategically important companies has declined despite its vital role in wartime exports.
In another exclusive, we spoke with Ukraine's economy minister about the country's investment future. Economy Minister Oleksii Sobolev explained how Ukraine is developing new investment tools to attract foreign capital during wartime and revealed that the U.S.-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund is set to announce a major investment in a critical minerals project this fall.
We covered the controversy over Russia's return to international sports. Chris Powers reported that major sports organizations are moving to readmit Russian athletes and teams, claiming that there are no problems as long as athletes from occupied parts of Ukraine don't participate under the Russian flag.
We went inside a POW camp to find out what motivates Russians to continue voluntarily joining the army after staggering losses over four years of war. In a new video, Francis Farrell and Dominika Ozynska visit a prisoner-of-war camp in western Ukraine and speak directly with captured Russian soldiers about their backgrounds, how they were recruited, what pushed them to enlist, and how their view of the war has shifted since. You can watch the video here.
We also went behind the scenes of a Ukrainian drone competition. Kateryna Hodunova and Nick Allard attended Wild Drones, a unique competition where active-duty Ukrainian military drone pilots tested the skills that they use on the battlefield. You can watch the video here.
We unpacked the legal limbo facing Ukraine's adult content creators. In the latest episode of “Ukraine This Week,” Kateryna Denisova looked at the legal paradox: Platforms like OnlyFans have become a source of tax revenue during the war, yet producing adult content remains a criminal offense. You can watch the video here, or listen to the episode as a podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
Thank you for standing by our side as we bring independent, locally sourced news from Ukraine to the world.