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

Dear KI community members, 

We hope your week has been going well so far. Thank you for your continued support.

We'd like to welcome the 135 new members who joined this week – we're glad you're with us! 

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

• The first episode of our new podcast Power Lines was released on Thursday. Co-hosts Anastasiia Lapatina and Jakub Parusinski discuss Ukrainian identity, and how the war has affected it, and interview people across Ukraine and in the diaspora. You can find the podcast on your preferred listening platform, here.

• We interviewed retired U.S. General Ben Hodges. He spoke about the Kharkiv counteroffensive and his analysis of the war. In his words, "we've reached irreversible momentum for Ukraine." 

• We reported from recently liberated towns in Kharkiv Oblast. Illia Ponomarenko covered the occupation in Balakliia and Verbivka, the towns where the counteroffensive started, and Francis Farrell covered the occupation in Izium. Pictured above is a view of destroyed apartment buildings in Izium by our photographer Kostyantyn Chernichkin.

• Two popular stories covered Russia's mobilization. Oleg Sukhov's "Russian hawks criticize regime's war effort as Putin raises stakes" and Igor Kossov's "Russia’s sham referendums, mobilization, nuclear threats: What it all means" both analyze Russia's responses to the Kharkiv counteroffensive and what the war might look like in the future. 

• On Friday, we published Belarus Weekly, which this week looks at Belarusian troops on "high alert" after Moscow announced mobilization, as well as Belarus's decision to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization this week. 

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