Here's what you've helped us achieve in the past week (Patreon)

Hello to the Kyiv Independent community! There's less than a week until Independence Day – Wednesday, Aug. 24 – which also marks sixth months since Russia's full-scale invasion began. A lot has happened since then, but we're glad you're with us. We want to give a warm welcome to the 107 new community members this week, and a big thank you to everyone for your continued support. 

Here are some highlights from the Kyiv Independent in the last week:

We have two new team members! We're happy to announce that Francis Farrell, a reporter, and Olena Makarenko, a video reporter, are now part of our team. 

We published the first story from our newly-created investigative desk, "Suicide missions, abuse, physical threats: International Legion fighters speak out against leadership’s misconduct." The piece looks into the legion of foreign fighters defending Ukraine – and how one of the unit’s commanders is an alleged former member of a criminal organization from Poland.

Journalists Alexander Khrebet and Anna Myroniuk will talk about how they reported the investigation on Thursday, Aug. 25 in our next community event. We'll be publishing the announcement shortly.

We reported on the series of explosions in Crimea with Asami Terajima's article about explosions at an ammunition depot. In case you missed it, she's also written about the explosions at a military base in Crimea last week. 

BBC visited our office on Wednesday. They filmed our morning meeting and interviewed us for a story they're currently working on about the Kyiv Independent in connection with Independence Day. 

In the week leading up to Independence Day, we are using our platforms to help Ukrainian charities. Every day, we are publishing several charities that need donations, based on topic. So far, we've tweeted about charities for animals and for children. 

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