Here's what you helped us achieve last week

Dear Kyiv Independent community members,

Thank you for your continued support! It's thanks to our readers that we're able to continue our reporting – and also to be preparing for the winter. Pictured above is the generator for the Kyiv Independent's office, that was finally delivered this week. It means that we will be autonomous and able to continue working, even if Russia targets the energy infrastructure again this winter.

We’d like to thank you, including the 81 new members that joined us this week, for standing with us.

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

• Our most popular story last week was Alexander Khrebet's piece on a Russian prisoner of war camp in western Ukraine, describing the work the POWs are assigned, the conditions in which they live, and the food they're served.

• We published an investigation into the global diamond industry, showing that Western jewelry brands likely keep buying Russian diamonds even though they publicly pledged to stop.

• We reported from Hroza, in Kharkiv Oblast. Alexander Khrebet covered the aftermath of the recent Russian missile strike that killed over half of the village's remaining population. Residents say every family was affected.

• We reported from Donetsk Oblast. Francis Farrell's story looks at the "dead villages" in Ukraine's south near the Velyka Novosilka axis – due to Russia's war, many settlements in the region no longer have any residents left or any buildings intact.

• We wrote about the recent Hamas terror attacks on Israel. Anastasiia Lapatina's story explains that while the Kremlin may benefit from a war in the region, there is no evidence for its direct involvement, while Alexander Query's piece looks at Ukrainians living in Israel, who fled due to Russia's war and are now caught in the crossfire of the Hamas-Israel conflict.

• This week Belarus Weekly includes the request of the International Red Cross for the Belarusian branch to dismiss its chief, after he bragged about forcibly deporting Ukrainian children from occupied territories to Belarus. A group of these abducted Ukrainian children were also recently shown by Belarus to foreign diplomats.

• Episode 29 of "This Week in Ukraine" is about the declining support for Ukraine internationally. Host Anastasiia Lapatina and deputy chief editor Oleksiy Sorokin discuss how internal issues in other countries may impact support for Ukraine, with your questions starting at 22:15.

• We added digital posters to our Patreon online shop for the first time. The two posters, by Ukrainian illustrators Daria Filippova and Liza Yablonskaya, designed for the Kyiv Independent, are available for purchase here.

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