Here's what you helped us achieve last week
Dear Kyiv Independent community members,
Thank you for your continued support! We just want to remind you that we've added two posters to our Patreon online shop. The posters, by Ukrainian illustrators Daria Filippova and Liza Yablonskaya, designed for the Kyiv Independent, are available for purchase here.
We'd also like to welcome the 49 new members that joined us this week.
Here are some highlights from the Kyiv Independent over the last week:
We have a new format for our video explainers, hosted by deputy chief editor Oleksiy Sorokin. Let us know what you think of the explainers on the results of the Polish elections and Ukraine's first use of ATACMS. Pictured above, the Kyiv Independent team shoots the new format earlier this week.
Our most popular story last week was Daria Shulzhenko's piece about the inequality women face in the Ukrainian army – female soldiers are supplied with male uniforms, body armor, and even ill-fitting underwear, which does not provide the protection and mobility needed in combat, endangering their lives.
We wrote about a 25-year-old Crimean Tatar who tried to visit her sick father in occupied Crimea, but who now faces 20 years in prison for alleged espionage charges, showing another instance of Russia's systemic persecution of Crimea Tartars. We also published an explainer about Crimean Tartars, their identity, and their repression by Russia over the centuries.
We also wrote about the Ukrainian archivists collecting Russian graffiti as evidence of war crimes. Alexandra Keeler's story looks at the Wall Evidence Project and their documentation of graffitied messages left by Russian soldiers, what they mean, and how they can be used in court.
Another popular story was Katie Marie Davies' story about how Russia’s Western-facing, liberal tech companies – which many hoped would become a disruptive and modernizing force – are instead an integral part of Putin's regime: censoring information, suppressing dissent, and giving security services data.
We interviewed Former Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid, who said NATO has an incentive to be ambiguous about the conditions for Ukraine to join, so Russia won’t know how to prevent Ukraine's membership.
This week Belarus Weekly includes the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) summit in Bishkek, marking Putin's first trip abroad since the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for his role in forcibly transferring children from Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine.
Episode 30 of "This Week in Ukraine" looks at recent front-line updates. Host Anastasiia Lapatina and reporter Francis Farrell discuss Ukraine's first use of ATACMS and Russia's offensive on Avdiivka, with your questions starting at 21:10.
Thank you for standing by our side as we bring independent, locally-sourced news about Ukraine to the world.