We had some visitors from Saint Javelin! Here's what you helped us achieve this week (Patreon)

Dear Kyiv Independent community members,

We hope everyone is doing well. Today we had some special visitors in our office from Saint Javelin, an organization that raises funds for Ukraine through selling merchandise like T-shirts, socks, and hoodies. We collaborated with Saint Javelin in December 2022 to launch a special collection of merch, which raised $22,000 for the Hospitallers Medical Battalion.

Pictured above from left to right are Christian Borys, the founder of Saint Javelin, Zakhar Protsiuk, our COO, Anastasiia Mozghova, our communications manager, and Julia Tymoshenko, who runs Saint Javelin's marketing and communications.

We'd like to welcome our 70 new members this week. We wouldn't be here without your support.

Here are some highlights from the Kyiv Independent this week:

We looked at the state of Ukraine's publishing industry after a Russian attack on a major printing house in Kharkiv,  which killed seven employees, injured 22 others, and destroyed over 50,000 books. Business reporter Dominic Culverwell shows the wider impact of these attacks on Ukraine's publishing industry and Ukrainian-language literature.

One of our most popular stories this week was a look at Russian military personnel losses in Ukraine. As estimated Russian casualties hit the 500,000 mark, Chris York explains the potential demographic and economic time bomb that will be hard for Putin to ignore.

We published a video report from the front line in Kharkiv Oblast.  After Russia launched its new offensive to the north of Kharkiv on May 10, war reporter Francis Farrell spent time with Ukrainian forces who had been quickly redeployed to the area to fend off Russia's attacks. Watch the video here.

We interviewed Oxford professor and historian Timothy Garton Ash, who was visiting Ukraine for the annual Lviv Media Forum. Garton Ash sat down with Martin Fornusek to discuss the West's fear of escalation and Russia's war against Ukraine from a historical perspective.

We published a guide on what to see in wartime Kyiv. While tourism is largely on hold because of Russia's invasion, there are still foreigners living in Kyiv, or visiting on diplomatic or aid missions. We put together a two-day guide for visitors with recommendations about where to go and what to see.

We launched a new video series highlighting the top news of the week. Anna Belokur breaks down the top stories from Ukraine over the last week, from Russia’s newly-opened front in Kharkiv Oblast to a botched proposal to redraw the international maritime borders in the Baltic Sea.

We wrote about what a second Trump presidency could mean for Ukraine. Amid headlines about former U.S. President Donald Trump's hush-money trial in New York City, we look at the foreign policy implications of a Trump presidency.