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

Dear Kyiv Independent community members,

Today marks the one year anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. War is long, expensive, difficult, and scary, but we're grateful for the support we've received from all of you. Thank you for being on our side.

This week, we also held our company-wide strategy meeting for 2023. Pictured above are Kyiv Independent team members at the strategy meeting on Wednesday, Feb. 22.

We'd also like to give a warm welcome to our 129 new members this week! Your contributions keep us going, and we're so grateful for all the support we've received. Thank you for standing with us.

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

We covered the one year anniversary of Russia's all-out war, including publishing a month-by-month timeline and looking at what could have been for Ukraine in 2022, had Russia not invaded.

We published the personal stories of the Kyiv Independent team, as they remembered the first moments of the war. We also held a Twitter Space today, moderated by defense reporter Illia Ponomarenko, where team members shared their personal experiences about the first days of the war. Listen to the recording here.

Our most popular story this week was Illia Ponomarenko's summary of how Russia came to fail in Ukraine, battle after battle, which explains how Ukraine still stands a year later, after the start of Russia's "special military operation" which was only planned to last several days.

We published an investigation based on a leaked document that shows the Kremlin's alleged plan to take over Belarus by 2030. The 17-page document outlines Russia's steps to take control of Belarus, including Belarus using the same currency and tax system and transferring key military production to Russia. You can also subscribe to our Investigative Stories newsletter here.

We wrote about the decorated fighter pilot who was killed in a combat mission in Donetsk Oblast this January. Daria Shulzhenko's story looks at Danylo Murashko, who diverted his plane from residential buildings after being hit with a Russian rocket. The 24-year-old was unable to eject safely.

Our investigative reporters Anna Myroniuk and Alexander Khrebet were nominated for the 2023 #AllForJan award. Their investigation into alleged misconduct in the International Legion is one of three stories shortlisted for the award, named after Ján Kuciak, a young Slovak investigative journalist killed in 2018.

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