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

Dear KI community members,

We hope everyone has been safe this week. Just after 8 a.m. on Monday, here in Kyiv, Russian missiles hit the city's center.

Our office has a new decoration, courtesy of our reporter Francis Farrell. Pictured above is a piece of Russian missile that Francis found, from the closest strike to our office so far.

We also wanted to say welcome to our 203 new members who joined this week! Thank you for your support – you make our work possible, and we wouldn't be here without you.

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

• We covered the Russian missile strikes on Monday, which was the largest coordinated missile attack since the full-scale invasion began. Igor Kossov's "What’s behind Russia’s unusually big missile attack on Ukraine?" explains the goal of the attacks, which were not in response to the Crimean Bridge explosions, and also estimates Russia's missile supply. 

• Some of Russia's missile attacks targeted the energy sector, with reports that 30% of Ukraine's energy infrastructure had been hit earlier this week. Alexander Query's "Naftogaz CEO Vitrenko: ‘Russian gas is a weapon’" looks at what this means for Ukraine as winter approaches.

• Two other articles about the Russian missile attacks this week include Igor Kossov and Francis Farrell's "Flashbacks of first day of war as Russia strikes central Kyiv," and Asami Terajima's "Ukrainians react to Russian missile barrage: ‘We won’t break’" which both feature first-hand accounts of the strikes.

• One popular article this week was Oleg Sukhov's "Could mobilization, battlefield defeats cost Putin his regime?" – which analyzes growing public discontent in Russia and how this might affect the stability of Putin's regime.

• This week, Belarus Weekly looks at thearrival of Russian troops to the country after Belarusian dictator Lukashenko began the process of creating a joint regional military command with Moscow. 

• Crimean Tartars continue to be persecuted during the war, with Russia instigating sham trials, taking political prisoners, and forcing military mobilization. Anastasiia Lapatina's "In the shadow of war, Kremlin continues terrorizing Crimean Tatars" looks at the long history of Russia's oppression of Crimean Tatars, from the eighteenth century until present day.

• We also wrote about Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation Mykhailo Fedorov. Daryna Antoniuk's story explains how Ukraine’s prodigy minister is innovating the battlefield, including his goals for more military tech development within Ukraine and better defense against cyberattacks. 

• Finally, we have a new member of the team! Dinara Khalilova will stay with us after her internship and will work as a news reporter.

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