Here's what you helped us achieve in the past week

Hello to the Kyiv Independent Community! 

Thank you for your support! We'd like to extend a warm welcome to our 124 new members and a huge thank you everyone who has stayed with us. 

Here are some highlights from the last week at the Kyiv Independent: 

• One of our most popular stories of the week was Igor Kossov's "Russia masses forces in south ahead of counterattack," which looks at how the third phase of the war might develop as Ukraine plans to liberate Kherson. 

• We also reported on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Alexander Query's "Occupied Ukrainian plant becomes epicenter of Russia’s nuclear blackmail," another major development in the south.  

• Two other important stories were Asami Terajima's "Over 100,000 Mariupol residents trapped in dire conditions under Russian occupation" and Alexander Khrebet's "Escaping Russian army: The story of one Ukrainian forced to fight against his homeland." 

• This week was the two-year anniversary of the Belarusian elections that led to historic protests in the country. Yesterday, we spoke with our Belarus reporter Maria Yeryoma about this topic and her article "2 years after dictator Lukashenko stole the election, Belarus is a grim place."

• This week our podcast "Did the War End?" discusses how Russia has used food as a weapon, both in the present day and in the past. 

Thank you for standing by our side as we are bringing independent, locally-sourced news about Ukraine to the world.