Olga Rudenko, editor of Ukraine's leading English-language news site, has said that while readers “really want Russia to suffer,” the outlet must not let that desire downplay the military and political problems facing Kyiv.
Speaking to the Guardian before an event in London, Rudenko said many of the Kyiv Independent's most-read stories describe Ukrainian deep strike attacks into Russia, potentially distorting its coverage.
She argued, however, that the site cannot afford to become propagandistic and marginalise Russian military successes or reduce reporting on Ukrainian corruption because those subjects are not so well read.
Balancing popular stories with the full picture
“We had a conversation in the newsroom when somebody raised that our website, in the mornings, is all about Ukrainian attacks on Russian Wildberries warehouses and so on,” Rudenko said.
“But it's misrepresenting the full picture when you don't balance it out with enough stories about attacks on Ukraine, which are, by the way, far less popular with our readers.”
The challenge is that “people really want Russia to suffer” and read about “something going boom,” but it was the Kyiv Independent's duty to “not just to feed them more of what they like.”
No expectation of early end to war
The “core idea of the Kyiv Independent is that we're not Ukrainian propaganda, we're not affiliated with the government, we're not doing we're not Ukraine's PR service,” the editor said.
Rudenko said she had “no expectation” that the war would end any time soon, with Russia stepping up its bombing of Kyiv before winter and Ukrainian strikes denting its neighbour's economy while diplomacy is stalled.
That feeling has hung over journalists at the site for some time. This year employees did not bother planning for a peacetime scenario in their annual strategy session. “It was the first time when this question wasn't really arising,” Rudenko said.
London event and membership model
On Friday, Rudenko will host a “live story-telling event” in London where reporters, including frontline correspondent Francis Farrell, will give their personal experience of Ukraine in the midst of the biggest war in Europe since 1945.
The title relies on readers to make monthly contributions for its revenue, an idea also used by the Guardian. London was chosen as a venue because it “is probably the biggest city in terms of membership,” the editor said.
Media freedom and criticism of Zelenskyy
Media freedom in Ukraine has not worsened under Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Rudenko said, but added: “I would struggle to say it has gotten better.” Reporters can write freely without “fearing some immediate consequences,” but the editor said a concentration of power around the president remains.
Zelenskyy has not held a press conference for independent Ukrainian media since February 2025. There is also a bitter legacy from the president's attempt a few months later to neutralise Ukraine's two anti-corruption agencies, which had to be reversed in the light of public protests.
“We've been casting a critical look at Zelenskyy and his government for a while now,” she said, highlighting an editorial written last July at the height of the crisis, headlined “Zelenskyy just betrayed Ukraine's democracy.”
The president and his allies, Rudenko said, had “brazenly and stupidly” sought to take away a central achievement of the Ukrainian revolution of 2014, after which the independence of Ukraine's anti-corruption bodies was introduced.
Despite this, she said, “a critical mass of Ukrainians” do not think it is time to hold a presidential election, as called for by the former defence minister Mykhalio Fedorov in August. Elections have been suspended under martial law, though Zelenskyy's term expired more than two years ago.
The Kyiv Independent has not come out in support of elections, Rudenko said, partly because support for holding them is running at about 15%. Protests this summer against Fedorov's firing by Zelenskyy were “of the size that the president can still afford to ignore,” she added.
Growth since founding
The Kyiv Independent was founded three months before the full-scale Russian invasion by journalists who had lost their jobs when the rival Kyiv Post was temporarily closed by its owner.
Launched with a $100,000 grant, it rapidly became an essential English-language news source for Ukraine as the country was attacked and the war with Russia became global news.
The number of contributing readers, or members, most of whom pay $5 a month, has risen from 14,000 at the beginning of 2025 to 25,500 a year later and to 36,000 now, allowing staff numbers to grow to 99 and the title to move to bigger offices.
