Support the mental health of the Kyiv Independent's team (Patreon)

Dear Kyiv Independent community members,

You have stood with us through fundraisers before — you’ve supported the injured photojournalist’s recovery, donated to preserve our video archive, and supported multiple Ukrainian initiatives. Today we’re asking to support the people who make the Kyiv Independent.

We are raising $68,000 to fund a full year of mental health support for our entire team.

DONATE HERE

Journalism takes a mental toll before you add a war to it. Reporters face traumatic events, footage, and testimony almost every day; it is built into the job. In Ukraine, that trauma hits closer to home — our journalists live through the attacks they report to the world.

And it is not only the reporters. Our newsletters get coded from bomb shelters, community letters written from subway stations, marketing campaigns launched from behind a bathroom wall — the safest corner of an apartment during a strike. Everyone here carries the same weight.

The world calls Ukrainians resilient and unbreakable. We are resilient. We are not unbreakable. In the first year of the full-scale invasion, 93% of Ukrainians surveyed reported a mental health issue at a moderate or severe level. That was year one. We are now in the fifth — and the pressure accumulates.

This past winter was one of the hardest yet: power came and went for weeks, apartments did not warm above 16°C (around 61°F), and the team worked by laptop light. Then came May, when Russia's ballistic missiles gave almost no warning — sometimes the sirens sounded only after the hit. When the subway station you shelter in shudders from a strike, you start to wonder if anywhere is still safe. Through all of it, the newsroom keeps working.

So we built a mental health program to meet what our people carry. It covers sessions with a personal therapist and access to an online support platform. Some rely on it all year; others only in an emergency. Either way, it is part of what keeps the newsroom running.

"I believe in this program because I have felt what it does. Just knowing the support is there — already taken care of, whenever you need it — lifts a quiet weight, in work that never really switches off. For anyone on the team who wants it, that reassurance is essential."

— Daryna Shevchenko, CEO of the Kyiv Independent

These funds cover a full year of therapy for the team — and for the people we add as it grows. You have heard us many times before and asked how you can help. This is one way.

DONATE HERE

As always, if you have any questions or just want to say hello, reply straight to this email or reach us at community@kyivindependent.com. 

Thank you for standing with us — and with the people behind this newsroom.