Here's what you helped us achieve this week (Patreon)

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Each Friday, we inform our community about the work of the Kyiv Independent, a new Ukrainian English-language media outlet. (Read this one through for a special announcement at the end!)

We are extremely grateful for your help in carrying out our mission: bringing quality stories about Ukraine to the world.

We welcome 39 new members of our community who became patrons this week.

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Here’s what we at the Kyiv Independent did this week:

We began our week by drawing out a contingency plan. Given the ongoing Russian military escalation, we had to prepare for any possible outcome, divide roles, discuss coverage for the worst-case scenario and make plans to keep our team safe.

We were able to do it thanks to you, our patrons. The funding we are getting through Patreon is a reliable source of cash that will be essential if there is a full-out war. We can use it to pay for things like body armor or cover relocation costs if it comes to that.

On Monday, we also had our first professional photoshoot. We will use the portraits we took for the Meet the Team campaign that we will soon launch to introduce the public to the people behind the Kyiv Independent.

The second episode of our joint project with Bihus.Info is out! Our head of investigations Anna Myroniuk again joined the head of the Bihus.info investigative project, Denys Bihus, to talk about how foreign media have been covering Ukraine this week. The new episode of this Ukrainian-language show is available on YouTube. It has already been viewed nearly 50,000 times – and that’s just eight hours after the release.

On Thursday, we published the recording of our second online event on SoundCloud. During the event, chief editor Olga Rudenko and political editor Oleksiy Sorokin discussed how President Volodymyr Zelensky is responding to the ongoing Russian military build-up, as well as the changes in his approval rating and some recent scandals in his party.

This week, we learned what Macron and Scholz told Zelensky and why he didn't like it. According to our sources, on Feb. 8, French President Emmanuel Macron tried to persuade President Volodymyr Zelensky to hold direct talks with Russian-controlled militants, an idea that would effectively echo the Russian-promoted fake narrative of a “civil war” in Ukraine.

Read our exclusive story here.

We covered the powerful cyberattacks that Ukraine endured this week – supposedly from Russia. On Feb. 15, Ukraine suffered what the Ukrainian government said was the most powerful cyber attack in its history. The websites of Ukraine’s defense ministry, armed forces and two largest banks – PrivatBank and Oschadbank – were down for hours.

On Feb. 17, there was an escalation in eastern Ukraine, with  Russian-led militants carrying out over 60 artillery strikes. The shelling damaged a kindergarten, a school and several houses, leaving two Ukrainian soldiers injured, and three civilians concussed.

As always, you can find all the updates on Russia’s war against Ukraine here. Make sure to be checking our homepage, where we have a running news digest.

Our journalists remain a key source of interviews and expertise for the international media covering the threat of the further Russian invasion of Ukraine. This week, our journalists gave interviews and comments to BBC, Sky News, MSNBC, Euronews and other media.

We launched commercial projects. To advertise with the Kyiv Independent, please reach out to our CEO Daryna Shevchenko at daryna.kyivindependent@gmail.com.

We now have 3,692 subscribers to our newsletter, Ukraine Daily. Make sure you’re subscribed to it. It is out six days a week, at 8:30 a.m. Kyiv time.

Special announcement: From now on, our patrons from level 2 and higher can place ads in our Jobs and Opportunities section free of charge!

The section will launch next week. If you already have an important announcement to share – about a job opening, event, tender, grant or award opportunity – send it our way via commercial.kyivindependent@gmail.com. Our commercial manager will be in touch with you to figure out the details and make sure we publish it as soon as possible.

Thank you for standing by our side as we are bringing independent, locally-sourced news about Ukraine to the world. Tell us how we can do better.

Thank you for your support and have a wonderful weekend!