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

Dear Kyiv Independent community members,

Thank you to everyone who has sent in photos with their Kyiv Independent merch! It's been great to see everyone! 

Besides just the merch, we've also received messages from members sharing how their community is working to help Ukraine. Pictured above is a photo from one of our members Bill of his house with a Ukrainian flag made by his local stitchery. The stitchery stopped making Maine's state flag and switched to making Ukrainian flags after the full-scale invasion started, and it sends all profits to the World Kitchen. 

We're still asking for photos, so if you haven't sent one in yet, it isn't too late! You can email the pictures with your merch to our community manager Brooke, at  brooke@kyivindependent.com. 

We'd also like to say welcome to our 184 new members this week! Thank you for standing with us and for supporting our reporting. We really appreciate it!

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

We reported on Ukraine's loss of Soledar, Russia's first notable success since July. Illia Ponomarenko's article explains how Russia captured the small salt-mining town with human waves and the how this impacts the battle around the Ukrainian fortress city Bakhmut in the coming weeks.

One of our most popular stories this week was our investigation into private European arms dealers brokering deals for Ukraine driving up weapon prices, limiting allies' spending power, and increasing arms dealers' profits. 

We wrote about the biggest government reshuffle since the start of Russia's full-scale war, with the Cabinet of Ministers dismissing six government officials and approving the firing of five governors. Oleg Sukhov's story looks at who these dismissed officials are, including Deputy Defense Minister Vyacheslav Shapovalov. 

Despite drastically reducing consumption of Russian energy, Europe still paid more to Russia in 2022 than the year before. Alexander Query's piece explains how the EU remains dependent on Russia's natural gas and how Russia continues to increase its profits. 

We also revisited the Mariupol theater bombing 10 months later. Asami Terajima's story follows a family and their seven-year-old son who survived the tragedy and their struggles to lead a normal life afterwards. 

In Ep. 10 of our podcast Power Lines, co-hosts Nastya and Jakub discuss some of the problems with international aid. They speak with Melaniya Podolyak of the Serhiy Prytula Foundation about her work bringing aid to Ukrainians and John Spencer of the Modern War Institute about specific mistakes in a 2022 Amnesty International report.

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