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

Dear Kyiv Independent community members,

Thank you for your continued support! We were able to raise $22,000 and buy 815 tourniquets for the Hospitallers, a Ukrainian voluntary organization of paramedics who save lives at the front line of Russia’s war, through our initiative with Saint Javelin.

Pictured above are members of the Hospitallers wearing merch from the Kyiv Independent and Saint Javelin joint collection.

Even though our brand merch is no longer available, the discount code will remain active on the Saint Javelin website, and members are still eligible for a 10% discount using KYIVINDEPT_10%SLAVAUA at checkout.

We'd like to give a warm welcome to our 84 new members this week! Every contribution counts, and thank you for standing with us.

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

We reported on Russia's March 9 mass missile strike, the 16th mass strike and the largest in months. In the strike, Russia launched 81 missiles and 8 Shahed drones.

Our most popular story this week was Igor Kossov's piece "Ukrainian soldiers in Bakhmut: ‘Our troops are not being protected’," which looks at accounts from Ukrainian soldiers that the troops in Bakhmut are under-prepared and facing "extreme ammunition scarcity."

Another story from the front lines was Asami Terajima's piece about a brigade that spent two months in Bakhmut and the conditions they survived.

We wrote about the anticipated Ukrainian and Russian offenses this spring. Both sides have reason to expect successes on the battlefield and the result of the spring/summer offensives will likely set the tone for the rest of the war.

We also interviewed Michael Kofman and Rob Lee about what the war will bring in 2023. Illia Ponomarenko sat down with the two military analysts and discussed the current situation as well as Ukraine's planned counteroffensive and Russia's attempts to stop it. Watch the video here.

The recent edition of Belarus Weekly covers the sentencing of opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya in absentia to 15 years in prison and that of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski to 10 years.

We wrote about a 57-year-old kindergarten teacher who resisted Russian occupation in Kherson. Daria Shulzhenko's piece about Olena Naumova, a teacher and an active protester, looks at how she survived Russian captivity and shared the truth of the occupation through TikTok.

We launched our war crimes investigative department. Award-winning investigative journalists Yevheniia Motorevska, Danylo Mokryk, and Olesia Bida will be working to produce documentaries about Russia's war crimes in both Ukrainian and English – the first of which is expected this summer.

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