We reported on Ukraine's attacks on Russia: Here's what your contributions have helped us accomplish this week (Patreon)

Dear Kyiv Independent community members,

We hope everyone has been doing well. This week, we kicked off the first days of J-School, our training program for the next generation of Ukrainian journalists who want to do English-language journalism. Pictured above, you can see the participants attending a session with Editor-in-Chief Olga Rudenko and Deputy Chief Editor Toma Istomina on ethical dilemmas faced by Ukrainian journalists due to the war.

We'd like to give a warm welcome to the 95 new members who joined our community this week. Your support makes the difference as the majority of our funding is from reader contributions.

Here are some highlights from the Kyiv Independent this week:

We covered the last few days of the campaign of the U.S. Presidential election ahead of the vote on Tuesday. Our U.S. correspondent Owen Racer highlighted the difficulties in changing narratives on Ukraine aid and visited Pennsylvania, where Ukrainian diaspora voters in Philadelphia region could sway the result.

One of our most popular stories this week was on Ukrainian long-range strikes targeting Russian ethanol distilleries. Ethanol is a component in producing military-grade products like fuel and anti-icing agents. Chris York looked at the logic of drone strikes on industrial alcohol distilleries.

We wrote a profile on Sergey Kiriyenko, the Kremlin official who is reportedly in touch with Elon Musk. After the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin since late 2022, reporter Oleg Sukhov covered the biography of Kiriyenko, one of Musk’s alleged points of contact with Putin.

We covered the posthumous memoir of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Culture reporter Kate Tsurkan reviewed the book, which Navalny began writing in Germany after recovering from being poisoned in 2020 and continued writing during his imprisonment.

We reported on the damage sustained to Kharkiv’s historic Derzhprom skyscraper by a Russian aerial bombardment. Built in 1928, Derzhprom was one of the first skyscrapers built in eastern Europe. Architectural experts from Kharkiv spoke to us about the importance of the building and highlighted Russia's repeated attacks on Ukraine's cultural heritage.

We discussed Russian imperialism with Botakoz Kassymbekova, a historian of Eastern European history at the University of Zurich. Reporter Dinara Khalilova spoke with Kassymbekova about Russia's national ideology and why Russian opposition doesn't want to talk about decolonization. Watch the video here.

This Thursday, Nov. 7, at 8 p.m. Kyiv time (1 p.m. EDT), we will host an online event for our community on what awaits Ukraine after the U.S. elections. Deputy chief editor Oleksiy Sorokin and reporter Francis Farrell will answer your questions about Ukraine's next steps, both politically and militarily. Register here.

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