On November 8, the Kyiv Post unexpectedly announced that it would shut down for a “for a short time” and that chief editor Brian Bonner was retiring. A bigger story began to unfold when the newsroom put out its own statement. In it, they declared that they had been fired because of some pushback they gave to the owner, Adnan Kivan, who sought to expand the paper to include a Ukrainian-language outlet overseen by someone they did not perceive as an independent journalist. They accuse Kivan of firing them because they were “inconvenient, fair, and honest.”
It’s a shocking development. Ukraine no longer has an English-language newspaper. Matthew Kupfer, Central Asia regional Editor, Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, Igor Kossov, former journalist, Kyiv Post, and Toma Istomina, former features editor, Kyiv Post joined the Atlantic Council’s Melinda Haring on Twitter Spaces to discuss the development and provide their perspective.
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Resilience in the face of adversity
Ukraine’s transformation
Ukraine has moved tentatively toward an open society and market economy since independence. The country has held several democratic elections and made halting progress in addressing corruption and state control in its economy. Since the 2014 Maidan Revolution, Ukraine has undertaken significant governance and economic reform and moved decisively toward a Europe-Atlantic foreign policy. Since 2022, Ukraine has resiliently continued to advance some reforms despite fighting for its very existence against the full-scale Russian invasion.
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The Eurasia Center’s mission is to promote policies that strengthen stability, democratic values, and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe in the West to the Caucasus, Russia, and Central Asia in the East.
Image: The office of the Kyiv Post newspaper is seen in Kyiv, Ukraine on Febaruary 20, 2020. (Photo by Jaap Arriens/Sipa USA)No Use UK. No Use Germany.