CEO Daryna Shevchenko and CFO Jakub Parusinski talk about what is sustaining live reporting: crowdfunding campaigns, encrypted messaging platforms and a lot of anger
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Russia's invasion of Ukraine has stolen the headlines over the past few weeks. For those on the ground, like Ukraine's English-language news organisation Kyiv Independent, it is a dire situation.
The outlet was created by 30 journalists who were fired from the Kyiv Post — a publication that shut down in November 2021 after the owner attempted to undermine its editorial independence.
Now, the three-month-old organisation is at the centre of the Ukrainian war, posting live updates on its website, on Twitter where its following has ballooned to 1.6m followers, and also on the encrypted messaging platform Telegram, which has amassed 40k subscribers in a little over a week.
In this week's podcast, we are joined by Kyiv Independent CEO Daryna Shevchenko and chief financial officer Jakub Parusinski, to talk about how the team is faring, the significance of encrypted platforms and the impact of crowdfunding campaigns.
Parusinski has organised GoFundMe campaigns for both Kyiv Independent's own operations and also for the wider Ukrainian media (at the time of writing raising £960k and £630k respectively). These funds provide crucial resources while there are fears over supply routes to Ukraine and Kyiv being cut off by Russian forces.
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