At The Kyiv Independent, Reporting On Russia’s Invasion Of Ukraine Hits Close To Home

^{A group of young journalists and editors founded The Kyiv Independent right before the war in Ukraine. Since then, the name has taken on an even deeper meaning.}

Most war correspondents choose to place themselves in conflict. They travel to foreign countries to tell stories of places they don’t live or people they don’t know. But for the journalists of The Kyiv Independent, every story told and every crisis encountered is far too close to home.

Founded in November 2021, the English-language publication began not long after more than two dozen journalists left the Kyiv Post—Ukraine’s oldest English-language newspaper—after the entire newsroom staff was fired for defending editorial independence.

Several reporters and editors under the age of 30 have been with the Independent since its inception and are among its many cofounders. The journalists wanted to fill a void in coverage about business, politics, technology and culture. After starting a newsletter, they then created a podcast and a website. And in the past few months, the Independent has quickly become a key source of news about the Russian invasion for a global audience.

“Even if you were writing about kittens and pubs in Kyiv, now you’re a war correspondent,” says Oleksiy Sorokin, the Independent’s political editor and chief operating officer.

As recently as February, the Independent’s website had just 27,000 visits per week, according to Sorokin, but total weekly traffic grew to 1 million during the war’s first week. The busiest day was 600,000 visits on February 24—when the attacks began—but Sorokin says the Independent is now averaging around 2.1 million weekly visitors with around 10 million during all of March.

Although the Independent has more than two dozen cofounders, three are under 30 years old and have been named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe 2022 list for the Media & Marketing category. Anastasiia Lapatina, who didn’t found the publication but has issued heartbreaking, on-the-ground war reports, joins them on this year’s list.

Meet these young journalists who, along with their colleagues, have shown bravery, tenacity, sensitivity and strength while reporting on a brutal war in their home country.

Toma Istomina, Cofounder and Deputy Editor

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eputy editor Toma Istomina has helped the reporters tell stories of war with both detail and sensitivity. A former staff writer and lifestyle editor at the Kyiv Post, she’s brought a balance to the nature of topics with the importance of showing the complete picture.

Earlier in the war, the newsroom focused on short-form content such as summaries and dispatches. Since then, staffers have been more focused on in-depth stories and investigations. Istomina helps determine which stories staffers should focus on, which range from humanitarian and social stories to field reporters going into hot spots. The Independent’s reporters don’t have specific beats—at least in the traditional sense like they would during times of peace, but nobody is sent into conflict zones unless they want to go.

One of the pieces she’s proudest of was an op-ed just days before the invasion, which called on the European Union, the United Kingdom and the United States to impose sanctions on Russia even before attacks began. When reporters heard EU Parliament leaders quote the publication’s piece in a session before sanctions were announced, she said their “jaws just dropped.”

“That means they read, they know, they listen, and that means there’s an impact,” she says.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Istomina’s hometown of Sumy—just 40 kilometers from the border in northeastern Ukraine—was one of the first to be attacked. She recalls being on the phone with her mom and hearing explosions in the background. And although her family has remained safe and the city’s situation as improved, the personal connection to the conflict adds another layer.

“I never could imagine that I would be posting news about my hometown—where my parents are—about how it’s being shelled,” she says. “Some of our reporters would write about the atrocities of Russian soldiers where their parents are staying as well.”

Istomina was one of many people who took shelter in Kyiv’s subway stations, which have been used as bomb shelters.

“It’s important to keep telling these human stories,” Istomina says. “Because at the end of the day, that’s what this comes down to.”

Oleksiy Sorokin, Cofounder, Political Editor and COO

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long with reporting and editing for The Independent, Oleksiy Sorokin has led the newsroom in other ways, such as finding funding for staff and other operations. So far, they’ve raised $1.9 million on GoFundMe from 26,200 donors and also have 6,800 backers on Patreon that collectively contribute $72,000 per month. Backers can spend as little as $5 a month for a weekly email blast or can pay at least $100 for additional benefits ranging from exclusive content to ways to interact with the editorial team. Other money has come from grants secured before the war, and the Independent will also soon sell its own merchandise for people to buy. They’re also accepting donations in cryptocurrency.

Last fall, the Independent’s cofounders were deciding on a name for the publication. Sorokin says they considered variations like “Kyiv Chronicle,” “Kyiv Dispatch,” “Ukrainian Dispatch,” and “European Dispatch.” However, experiences at the Kyiv Post and the desire to bolster independent media in Ukraine helped them to choose The Independent. (The current fight against Russia gives the name an even deeper meaning.)

“We want to be 100% dependent on readership so we’ll be truly independent and only serve the interest of our readers,” he says.

After getting everything up and running, Sorokin suggested everyone take some time off to relax and reset, but war came soon after. It was initially difficult to keep everything running, as staffers sought to keep everyone and the publication online, but Sorokin says IT experts in Ukraine, North America and elsewhere have volunteered their time to bolster defenses against cyber-attacks. (The outside assistance has also been helpful especially if the internet in Kyiv goes out.)

On April 12, Sorokin and cofounder Anna Myroniuk, reported from Chernihiv Oblast after the northern city was the victim of Russian airstrikes, which local officials said at the time killed at least 700 people including 200 civilians. For a story about the aftermath, the journalists interviewed people who survived while hiding in a bomb shelter for weeks. Sorokin and Myroniuk also published photos they both took during their assignment, which provided harrowing portraits of the horrors of war. When European Union Council President Charles Michel visited the site of Russian attacks last month, Sorokin interviewed him for a story about the potential for new sanctions and allegations of Russian war crimes.

Safety is a constant concern and consideration. Sorokin says people are still stuck in regions surrounded by Russians or in regions that are being shelled or occupied. (Just last week, the Independent had two or three staffers evacuating a war zone, according to Sorokin.)

“I hope people are not going to be numb to war crimes, to the tragedies that are happening,” Sorokin says.

Anna Myroniuk, Cofounder and Head of Investigations

The ongoing invasion isn’t the first time Anna Myroniuk has reported from conflict zones. From 2014 through 2017, while working as a TV journalist, she frequently visited the frontline in the Donbas during Ukraine’s previous war with Russia.

A few weeks ago, Myroniuk reported on accounts of Russian soldiers raping and torturing Ukrainians in Bucha, a city northwest of Kyiv. Other recent stories include claims of war crimes in Borodyanka—a city 40 kilometers northwest of Kyiv—stories and photos of other villages destroyed by Russian troops, and a report on Ukrainian marines demanding more support from Zelenskyy in the besieged city of Mariupol. For Myroniuk and others, it’s taxing to be a victim of a war while also reporting on it.

“When you are living in a war zone,” she says, “there is nowhere you can go to stay safe. It’s not a work trip.”

The Independent’s lead investigative journalist, Myroniuk says people joke about how she’ll be back to “light reporting” on other topics like corruption whenever the war ends. (Pre-war stories earlier this year included reports about members of Ukraine’s parliament allegedly accepting bribes.) Her investigation into tobacco giant Philip Morris International during the Covid-19 pandemic led to becoming a finalist in 2020 for the Thomson Foundation Young Journalist Award. She’s also been nominated for the 2022 European Press Prize.

Myroniuk has also penned opinion pieces for publications including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and OpenDemocracy.

One of the first stories Myroniuk wrote after the current war began was about a group of friends in their 20s who were killed by Russian troops while delivering food to a dog shelter in Bucha, the same city her mom lived in before relocating.

“To be fair, every story is shocking,” she says. “And it’s not (just) me. Every story is shocking and horrible and blows your mind. It breaks your heart into pieces.”

Anastasiia Lapatina, National Reporter

Even before the war, Anastasiia Lapatina has sought ways to write stories about global events in ways that also provide a local lens.

Although she’s wanted to be a conflict reporter for a while, never expected to first be one in her own country. Especially while still in college.

The 20-year-old international studies student is finishing her junior year at the University of British Columbia—she moved back to Ukraine from Canada during the pandemic—and has written a range of stories for the Kyiv Independent including one in December about how Ukrainian political prisoners in occupied Donbas region were in critical condition.

In addition to her stories for The Kyiv Independent, she’s also written op-eds for The Guardian and The New York Times, including a piece about the refugee crisis on the Poland-Ukraine border. An international studies student, she says it’s also important to remember how events feel to people experiencing them, even while reading information about it.

“I care about how humans put themselves in groups to solve problems and how that makes us feel and how we go about it,” she says. “It’s one of the reasons I’m obsessed with the Middle East. It’s a horrifically war-ridden place, but then also has so much beauty and hope and love and perseverance in it.”

When the war began, she only had 15,000 Twitter followers, but that number has now surpassed 600,000. And though she’s, at times, felt her large audience was “ludicrous,” she says she wants to use the platform to inform the world about the human aspects of the invasion. At first, she was tweeting about the war, but now she also tweets her own thoughts and emotions, or those of others. (Her viral tweet on April 4 was a photo of where a child’s mother had written contact information and date of birth on her back in case her mom was killed, along with Lapatina’s commentary: “Ukrainian mothers are writing their family contacts on the bodies of their children in case they get killed and the child survives. And Europe is still discussing gas.”) Other times, she says it’s “therapeutic” to interact with strangers that offer words of encouragement.

Lapatina jokes that she “kind of [has] a nickname of a human suffering reporter,” but there’s maybe some truth to that. She recalls reporting a story about an oligarch with a highly polluting power plant, but rather than focusing just on the environmental cost, she also wrote about the people that were affected by it.

“I’m only here to pay witness,” she says. “I’m only here to pass this history to the next generation.”

Stories yet to tell—and others left to live

The Kyiv Independent’s cofounders also wonder what their readership might be like in the coming months. One worry they have is that people might grow tired of reading about the crisis and begin to tune out. But even if readers grow tired of war and misery, the journalists hope people remember that war and misery are still a daily reality.

“I won’t get angry if I see our website openings decline, since it’s a natural thing,” Myroniuk says. “Yes, it’s unfortunate, but it’s natural. I just hope that the war ends soon with the defeat of Putin and I hope that Ukraine wins and that there will be no more war reporting on our part.”

Between having their country invaded, writing about the war and staying safe, it’s no surprise that the past few months have taken a toll on the staff’s own mental health. Staffers have organized Zoom calls beyond just for story-planning so they can check in with each other.

“We’re joking a lot about having a staff psychologist and staff therapist when we go back to normalcy because we’ll probably need some sessions,” Istomina says. “We’re joking about it, but we’ll probably need it.”

When discussing what they want to report on whenever the war is over, answers are varied. Sorokin says that his colleague Illia Ponomarenko, the Independent’s defense reporter who’s gained a following of 1.1 million users on Twitter—jokes that he wants to quit after the war and go somewhere like Antarctica where he can relax without any news.

Sorokin says he’d like to go work from the beach. Istomina, a fan of techno music, fashion and architecture, says she spends part of her extremely limited downtime reading about art shows around the world that raise awareness about what’s happening in Ukraine.

“I can’t wait to go back to Kyiv and for all this vibrancy that I’ve covered in the past to be back in the capital,” Istomina says.

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