A dark week for Ukrainian journalism

And, the Ramstein meeting gets postponed because of Hurricane Milton.

Hello and welcome to this week’s Ukraine briefing. 

Before we get started, I wanted to ask your opinion about the timing of the briefing’s release. Are you happy with Sunday? Or is there a different day that works better? 

I would also appreciate it if you left a comment below with brief feedback about this format – is the length okay, are the topics interesting? Anything I should add or get rid of? Would you prefer this in a podcast format? Whatever comes to mind, I’ll be grateful to hear it. 

Alright, let’s get to the news. 

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This week was a dark one for Ukrainian journalism. 

On Oct. 9, Ukraine’s leading news outlet Ukrainska Pravda (UP) said the President’s Office was threatening their work by exerting “long-term and systemic pressure” against the newsroom. 

UP said Zelensky’s office was blocking government officials from talking to the outlet or taking part in its events, as well as pressuring businesses to stop advertising collaborations with the outlet. 

“These and other non-public signals indicate attempts to influence our editorial policy. It is especially outrageous to realize this at the time of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, when our joint struggle for both survival and democratic values ​​is extremely necessary,” UP said in a statement.

The statement also referenced the outright disrespectful exchange between Zelensky and UP’s star political reporter Roman Kravets during a press conference in late August. The President was visibly annoyed with Kravets, interrupted him, and eventually accused the outlet of having a secret agenda to undermine him with negative coverage. 

It’s worth noting that all governments, even democratic ones, try to control media narratives and restrict access to journalists. All those anonymous American officials giving comments to journalists without authorization risk getting fired when doing it, for example. 

However, what is happening to UP is worse than just normal politics. Pressuring businesses to stop collaborating with the outlet directly undermines UP’s ability to stay afloat, at a time when advertising already plunged because of the war. 

To be frank, apart from being objectively worrying, this situation is also quite embarrassing. Every public-facing Ukrainian spends countless hours persuading the world that Ukraine is a democratic country that’s defending European values and is worth the world’s help. Why the Ukrainian government would shoot itself in the foot when the world’s patience and money for Ukraine are running out is a mystery to me. 

Yet this wasn’t even the worst piece of news. On the next day, we learned that Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna died in Russian captivity.

She was only 27, and was supposed to be included in the upcoming prisoner exchange, the government said. She was reportedly held in a brutal detention facility in the Russian city of Taganrok, known for its torture of prisoners. 

I never met Viktoria, but her former colleagues say she was the embodiment of her profession – brave and determined, always the first one at every scene, working and bothering editors about her work 24/7. 

She was taken captive while reporting from Russian-occupied territories in August 2023. But that wasn’t her first time in Russian captivity. 

Viktoria was first detained by the Russian Federal Security Services (FSB) for 10 days in March of 2022. To the dismay of her colleagues, she was trying to get into occupied Mariupol, which was being obliterated by Russian fighter jets back then. 

“Nothing could stop Vika if an idea was born in her head. Nothing was more important to her than journalism,” her former colleague Yevheniia Motorevska wrote on Facebook. “She was a force of nature that we failed to tame.”

On the geopolitical front, Ukrainians were disappointed with the postponement of the Ramstein group meeting because of Joe Biden’s preoccupation with Hurricane Milton.

The Ramstein group—which is called the Ukraine Defense Contact Group but steals the name from Germany’s Ramstein Air Base, where its meetings happen—is a coalition of more than 50 states who militarily support Ukraine in its war against Russia. 

The group was scheduled to meet this Saturday, Oct. 12, at the level of state leaders, for the first time ever. Zelensky hyped up the meeting beforehand, saying it would be “special”, while the media reported that President Biden may even be ready to advance Ukraine’s NATO bid before he leaves office, perhaps making significant decisions during the Ramstein.  Biden was supposed to chair the meeting. But it didn’t happen: The US President had canceled to stay in the US and deal with the hurricane.

With Ramstein postponed indefinitely, Zelensky went on a European tour with his “victory plan”, presenting it to leaders of France, the UK, and NATO.

Presidential Office advisor Mykhailo Podoliak said on Saturday that the President might reveal the plan to the Ukrainian public within days. I’ll keep you updated as soon as that happens.

That will be it for today. I’ll be back next week,

Cheers, and Glory to Ukraine

— Yours Ukrainian