We're back from our mental health retreat in the Carpathians and launching our mental support program for our team: Here's what you helped us achieve this week (Patreon)

Dear Kyiv Independent community members,

Thank you for your continued support.

Last weekend, our team was able to go on a mental health retreat in the Carpathian mountains. For four days, 50 members of our team were able to rest, hike, attend mental health workshops, and access one-on-one therapy — and, perhaps most importantly, sleep without the sound of air raids or explosions. Pictured above is some of our team on the retreat.

We also have enough funding to help provide on team members with additional one-on-one therapy sessions for the next months. And, it's all thanks to the members and readers who helped us fundraise for this.

We'd like to give a warm welcome to the 232 new members who joined this week. Thank you for supporting our work and helping us bring reliable and accurate information from Ukraine to the world.

Here's what you helped us accomplish at the Kyiv Independent this week:

We reported on Monday night’s attack on Kyiv, one of Russia's largest mass missile and drone attacks so far. We spoke to locals on why they still live in Ukraine’s capital, despite Russia's intensifying attacks. You can also watch the video version here.

Our most widely read story was about the West's inability to keep pace with Russia's ammunition production. Kollen Post's article explains that as Putin's war machine is speeding up, the West is failing to catch up to the production of the most basic unit of war for the past half-millennium — gunpowder.

Yesterday, Russian losses in Ukraine hit 1 million. While this figure is unlikely to make the Kremlin change tactics, Chris York's article explains the potential economic time bomb that Russia faces as it has to offer more and more money to recruit new soldiers.

We wrote about how a new region in Ukraine might soon be at war. Asami Terajima's story looks at how Russia is inching closer to Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, after months of a grinding offensive in that direction — meaning that soon a new oblast might become a war zone.

This week, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that U.S. military aid to Ukraine would be cut. We spoke to Ukrainian lawmakers and soldiers about what this reduction might mean. "Reducing American aid is bad for the front line. We depend on it, on their intelligence," said one Special Forces sniper on the front line.

We interviewed British journalist and author Peter Pomerantsev. Editor-in-chief Olga Rudenko sat down with Pomerantsev to discuss why Russia invests in all forms of information warfare, as well as the techniques that make Russia's propaganda work so effectively, helping fuel its war against Ukraine.

We interviewed Artem Chapeye about culture during war. The Ukrainian author turned soldier said that he stopped writing when the full-scale war broke out. "I’d say that during the first year, in 2022, I couldn’t even bring myself to read. So yes, I do feel — and still feel — that I lost about three years." This week, we also interviewed author Yuri Andrukhovych on Ukrainian dissident art in Soviet times.

We wrote about Putin's suspected daughter who was found working in an anti-war art galleries in Paris. Earlier this month, a Paris-based Russian writer took to social media to share what she learned about Luiza Rozova — a manager of art galleries which feature Russian and Ukrainian anti-war art — and whose father is allegedly Putin.

We launched a new membership benefit: our how to help Ukraine newsletter. We’ve heard from you that there’s interest in getting more involved to help Ukraine. We plan on regularly sharing organizations with you that are already working to help Ukraine and giving a closer, in-depth look at their efforts. The first organization we highlighted was the Leleka Foundation, and if you have any feedback for us, we’d love to hear from you.

Finally, to end on a positive note, we added the 603,628 km² T-shirt to our online store. Russia continues to demand that Ukraine surrender territory as a condition for ceasefire — which is why we designed this T-shirt. It delivers a clear message: 603,628 square kilometers is the only correct size of Ukraine. We're also donating the profits for at least the first month to the Ukrainian charity East SOS, which provides assistance to Ukrainians in front-line regions and internally displaced people (IDPs). And, we've already raised over $1,500 for East SOS. (Don't forget, as our member, you're eligible for a 15% discount with the code WELOVEYOU at checkout.)

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