Hi, this is Zarina Mykytenko and the Public Interest Journalism Lab.

We are following the protests sparked by the dismissal of Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov and the reaction it provoked. In a new episode of the podcast “When Everything Matters”, you can hear voices from the street, as well as a conversation with Yaroslav Honchar, a service member and head of the NGO Aerorozvidka (only in Ukrainian). Since 2014, the organisation has worked to develop network-centric and robotic military capabilities of the Armed Forces. We discuss what drone warfare is, what underpins it, what needs to be modernised, and the systemic problems that have brought us to where we are. Find out more about the political consequences of these decisions for President Zelenskyy in Nataliya Gumenyuk’s CNN appearances: watch them here and here.

OUR IMPACT AND RECOGNITION

On 7 July, the Dutch House of Representatives adopted a resolution urging the government to work towards the release of at least 28 Ukrainian journalists and media workers unlawfully detained by Russia. Colleagues at Free Press Unlimited explained that this was, among other things, a direct outcome of Nataliya Gumenyuk’s speech in Geneva at the UN Human Rights Council session, “The Truth Is Not a Target: Safety of Journalists in Conflict”, on 19 June, with UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression Irene Khan. The event was organised by the Netherlands Mission. Nataliya spoke about the killing of Viktoriia Roshchyna and about why, alongside honouring those killed, we must above all fight for the release of those still alive.

The European Court of Human Rights has taken up the case Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union on behalf of ten Ukrainian children v. Russia, in which the PIJL is participating as a third party. We were invited to present an oral submission on 22 September in Strasbourg. It draws, among other things, on Nataliya’s work in Crimea from 2014 to 2020, where she documented the displacement of Ukrainian education, the militarisation of children, and forced passportisation. Our subsequent work, including with The Reckoning Project, also showed that practices first developed in Crimea were transferred at speed to other Russian-occupied territories after 2022, alongside the transfer of children.

This year Nataliya has also been awarded the Order of Merit, 3rd Class — a state award for service to the country. Our journalist and war-crimes documentarian Ghanna Mamonova received the Order of Princess Olga, 3rd Class.

A report by Ghanna Mamonova and Anna Tsygyma about Ukrainians abducted by Russian forces in the Sumy region in the first days of the war received the Voices of the Missing award organised by the International Commission on Missing Persons.

MATERIALS AND INTERVIEWS

Our story about 18-year-old Svitlana, who left the occupied Kherson region and described how Russia persuades Ukrainian children that Ukraine does not exist, was published in one of Nigeria’s most influential outlets, Premium Times. Ghanna Mamonova produced the piece in collaboration with The Reckoning Project. Colombia’s El Espectador has also published a story about forced labour in the occupied territories – another outcome of our collaboration with TRP (In Spanish).

Most of our team lives in Kyiv, and we continue to report on the consequences of Russian attacks. Watch a video essay, “In Lukianivka, we were disadvantaged by being used to shelling”, about writers Olenka and Artem Zakharchenko, whose flat in Lukianivka was destroyed, as well as Olena Maksymenko’s photo report, “On the Ruins of a Small World”.

For Journalists’ Day, Nataliya Gumenyuk told Detector Media why journalism is one of the most sought-after professions today (in Ukrainian).

In July, we again worked with Mexican political analyst and columnist Denise Dresser, who first visited Ukraine in 2023 as part of our Connecting Continents project. This time, we explored how Ukraine has become a source of technological innovation and what this means for its role in the global security architecture. We also prepared stories about life under fire and spoke with artists, filmmakers, writers and stand-up comedians about culture as a foundation of emotional resilience. Here are some of Denise Dresser’s materials in Spanish. In an article for Reforma, Denise Dresser writes about life in Kyiv, where night-time sirens, shelters and constant air-raid alerts have become the backdrop to everyday life. On W Radio, she speaks about how Russia’s invasion has changed the lives of Ukrainians.

Nataliya Gumenyuk was also a guest on On the Edge, an English-language podcast by American journalist Philip Ittner, now recorded in Kyiv as a platform for Ukrainian voices. The conversation includes our research on balancing democratic principles and national defence in conditions of total war. She also joined an episode of Deutsche Welle’s Inside Europe to discuss how the war is reshaping Ukrainians’ relationship with the state.

TOWN HALLS, TRAINING AND WORK WITH COMMUNITIES

At the beginning of July, in Zaporizhzhia and western Ukraine, we held two facilitated meetings with people from temporarily occupied territories to discuss the future of those territories. They considered possible scenarios, including a frozen conflict, the status quo and potential agreements. Participants included former detainees, survivors of war crimes, local-government representatives, and former and current service members from all currently occupied territories in eastern and southern Ukraine and Crimea. We are preparing analytical reports based on the findings.

We are sharing our experience. In June, we trained local media outlets from across Ukraine on how their newsrooms can organise public dialogues in war-affected communities, how facilitated discussions can foster understanding and help resolve problems, and how journalists can connect people with different experiences.

On 24 June, at the invitation of Reporters Without Borders and the Arab Network for Investigative Journalism, Nataliya delivered online training for journalists in the Gaza Strip. She spoke about journalistic skills useful for documenting war crimes, how to care for one’s own safety, and how to speak about one’s own pain to sceptical audiences and those who view human suffering through a political and geopolitical lens.

EVENTS, SPEECHES AND DISCUSSIONS

On 3 July in Vienna, during the 50th anniversary Congress of the ALDE Party, two documentary films were screened: “To the Sound of Sirens”, about the attack on the emergency workers in Kyiv, and “Fight and Dance”, about children who survived the Palm Sunday strike on Sumy in 2025. Among the protagonists is Kyrylo Illiashenko, who helped rescue people from a burning bus. Kyrylo continued wrestling in his native Sumy. However, on the night of 24 June, a Russian drone damaged his sports school.

On 25 June, at the think-tank forum held as part of the Ukraine Recovery Conference (URC 2026) in Gdańsk, the Lab and Poland’s Mieroszewski Centre organised a discussion on Russia’s cognitive war against the West. Read more in the IWPR article.

Immediately after the trip to Poland, we recorded a podcast with Polish journalist and publicist Edwin Bendyk about the crisis in Ukrainian-Polish relations and how to overcome it. (Listen i

n English from 12:23). Nataliya later gave an interview to Polish intellectual Sławomir Sierakowski for Newsweek.

Angelina Kariakina, a co-founder of the Lab, traditionally opened and closed Docudays UA, Eastern Europe’s largest human rights documentary film festival. Listen to the podcast with Angelina, “Ukrainian Documentary Cinema During Wartime”. After the Ukrainian premiere of the film Traces at Docudays UA, Angelina Kariakina spoke with director Alisa Kovalenko about conflict-related sexual violence, social prejudice towards survivors and how to speak about experiences that are often silenced (in Ukrainian).

Nataliya Gumenyuk joined the discussions “The Language of Justice in War: Between Survivors’ Expectations and Justice” and “World on the Edge: Visible and Invisible Threats in Times of Uncertainty”, with Oleksandra Matviichuk and Olga Aivazovska, about the fragility of the global order, less visible threats and how Ukraine’s experience is changing the understanding of security.

At the Book Arsenal, Nataliya Gumenyuk moderated the discussion “Freedom: Absolute and Relative” with Marci Shore, Oleksandra Matviichuk, Maksym Butkevych, Anton Drobovych and Oleksandr Komarov.

Podcast “When Everything Matters”

We would like to share several episodes of the podcast “When Everything Matters” on a range of topics, each interesting in its own way.

With Russian journalist Mikhail Fishman (in Russian), we discuss how the fuel crisis in Russia, triggered by Ukrainian strikes, may affect the Russian authorities and mobilisation; an interview with Kremlin-loyal billionaire Andrey Melnichenko in The Economist; and why there is still no sign of Moscow’s readiness for negotiations.

With Foreign Affairs editor Daniel Kurtz-Phelan and author of a book on US policy towards China, we discuss US-China rivalry, the ties between Beijing and Moscow, Taiwan, Russia’s war against Ukraine and the myth of Trump as an isolationist. Conversation in English starts at 12:45. Read the text version.

Mexican journalist Alejandra Ibarra Chaoul is building an archive of work by murdered journalists. Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries for journalists. Through this work, Alejandra has found that local authorities, rather than drug cartels, are often behind the killings; and that those killed are most often not investigative reporters but bloggers and local opinion leaders who sharply criticise the authorities. Her findings help explain why it is so important not to look for “ideal victims”. In the podcast, we also discuss how to preserve the memory of contemporaries. Conversation in English starts at 07:40. Read the text version.

Filmmaker Serhiy Kulybyshev is the creator of the series “Burying The Ex”, which follows a group of men who are not serving in the military as they come to terms with the death of a woman they once loved, killed in the war. In this episode, we discuss humour in wartime and whether Ukrainian popular culture can be sharper and more closely connected to reality than the narratives found in the media. This episode is available in Ukrainian only.

Artist Zhanna Kadyrova represented Ukraine at this year’s Venice Biennale with the project “Security Guarantees”. The conversation is about her work in Pokrovsk, her art and how Ukrainian artists of the Maidan generation became an elite. This episode is available in Ukrainian only.

Support the podcast “When Everything Matters”. Your contribution helps us continue to release new episodes. Make a donation.

For more news about justice, war crimes, freedom of speech and our work with audiences, follow us on social media (Facebook | Instagram | X | YouTube).

Wishing you a peaceful week,

Yours, Public Interest Journalism Lab

Hello, this is Zarina Mykytenko and the Public Interest Journalism Lab (PIJL).

To the Sound of Sirens is our new documentary about the work of State Emergency Service psychologists and rescue workers who help residents of the capital after Russian attacks.

They are the first to arrive at impact sites, often before missile and drone attacks are over, putting themselves at risk. These are stories about shifts during shelling, the loss of colleagues, the unbearable experiences of victims’ families while rescue workers are on call, and also about a deep love for their work and for people.

“It is impossible to fully shut yourself off and not feel human pain. I am a person too, and I can show emotion. When a woman had two sons under the rubble and one of them was pulled out, it was impossible to hold back. I smiled. And I cried with her in the same way when the second was found dead,” explained Anna Yatsenko, a psychologist with the State Emergency Service of Ukraine.

This film by director Anna Tsygyma and journalist Kseniia Savoskina is the result of a collaboration with hromadske.

On May 27, we screened it on the big screen at the Ukrainian House, with the film’s protagonists joining for the discussion. In these days when the capital is enduring some of the most severe strikes, firefighters spoke about their love for their work, while also urging everyone to be cautious and respond to air-raid alerts. “I dreamed of becoming a firefighter. Now it is very hard. It means loss and pain. But we save people. I have saved many. Not alone, of course, it is teamwork. But what could be more important?” said Oleksandr Domarov, a senior rescuer with the State Emergency Service, during the discussion.

Roman Koval, co-author of a new Truth Hounds study on attacks against rescue workers, also joined the discussion and emphasized that these attacks are systematic and are taking place across the country. The film was first screened in Strasbourg during the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on April 21.

On May 30, also at the Ukrainian House, as part of the exhibition Chornobyl: The Shelter Object, there will be a screening of the documentary Special Operation by Oleksiy Radynski and Lyuba Knorozok, edited from surveillance-camera footage that recorded five weeks of the Russian occupation of the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone in 2022.

We also invite you to read Olena Maksymenko’s photo report after the shelling of the Lukianivka metro station, How the Capital Returns to Life After a Massive Attack.

This month, we had many public appearances at Ukrainian and international forums. In particular, as long-standing partners of the Lviv Media Forum, we presented to a wider audience the study Ukraine’s Dual Struggle, about how Ukrainians under the conditions of full-scale war talk about democracy, its limits, compromises, and what must not be lost even while fighting for survival. Read more on the website.

In the forum’s keynote discussion, Nataliya Gumenyuk spoke with Coda Story founder Natalia Antelava in After Visibility: What Remains of Media Power When Algorithms Control Distribution?, a conversation about how journalists can regain control over the narrative. You can watch the recording of the event here.

Earlier, at Europe’s leading journalism festival in Perugia, PIJL initiated a discussion on how media can speak to audiences beyond their own bubble. Participants included Natalia Antelava and Brazilian journalist Patrícia Campos Mello. Patricia, the Folha de S.Paulo reporter, said, in particular, that her reports from Ukraine, produced with our support, unexpectedly became among the most popular stories of her career.

Angelina Kariakina joined the presentation of the Global Misogyny News Media Tracker. After analyzing more than a billion online publications since 2017, the study’s author, Luba Kassova, found that only 1.3% of online stories globally were devoted to these topics, even though an absolute majority of women have experienced violence. More insights are available in the podcast (conversation in English starts at 13:10). Read the text version.

At the event A World Without Rules at Yale University, Nataliya Gumenyuk joined the TRP team in a discussion about the role Ukrainians play in stopping impunity when global norms and legal mechanisms are collapsing. Other speakers included Kenneth Roth, Timothy Snyder, and Peter Pomerantsev. Read the report Inside the Effort to Prosecute Russia’s Ukraine War Crimes.

During her trip to the United States, Nataliya recorded a conversation with Lucian Kim, an American analyst and author of the book Putin’s Revenge: Why Russia Invaded Ukraine. Listen to their conversation about the “root causes of the invasion”: Putin’s imperialism and dictatorship (conversation in English starts at 11:40).

At Impact 2026 in Poznan, one of Central Europe’s largest business and technology conferences, Nataliya moderated the discussion Russia Reimagined: Collapse, Reform, or Reinvention?, which included Zoltan Varga, owner of Central Media Group, one of Hungary’s largest independent media companies.

Meanwhile, Angelina Kariakina spoke with the renowned Hungarian reporter Szabolcs Panyi. His investigation provided evidence of the Kremlin’s direct influence on Hungary’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Listen (English starts at 11:55) and read more about Budapest as a hub for Russian intelligence and the demonization of Ukraine.

On the future of Ukraine, Nataliya Gumenyuk spoke with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Oleksandra Matviichuk during the annual Czech Radio conference. Other speakers included Czech President Petr Pavel and Valerii Zaluzhnyi, former Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces and now Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Kingdom.

Despite the many events and trips, we must draw attention to one event that did not take place. Just a few days before the start of RightsCon, the world’s largest human rights conference, where we were supposed to share a platform with key editors from Africa, the organizers had to cancel the event, which was expected to bring together nearly 3,000 people. The authorities of Zambia, the country that was to host the conference and UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day, demanded that a small number of Taiwanese activists be barred from participating under pressure from China. Unlike UNESCO, the organizers took a principled stand. We are truly sorry about the effort spent preparing for the event, but we welcome RightsCon’s position.

In spring, we remember the siege of Mariupol. This year, Angelina Kariakina spoke with Mykhailo Vershynin, head of the Patrol Police in Donetsk Oblast, who stayed in the besieged city in 2022, was wounded, and survived Russian captivity. The conversation is also about attitudes toward the patrol police and Mykhailo’s current service. Listen in Ukrainian.

Nataliya’s episode with Swedish diplomat Fredrik Wesslau, acting director of the Institute for European Policy in Kyiv, covers the new architecture of European security, including Ukraine’s role as a likely future member of the EU and NATO, and creative solutions for Ukraine’s European integration. Listen (conversation in English starts at 10:05).

We also draw your attention to a podcast episode with Catalina Gómez (English starts at 12:05), a Colombian journalist who lives between Tehran and Kyiv. Catalina has just returned to Ukraine after months of work in Tehran.

On May 27, Angelina Kariakina spoke at a meeting of the Verkhovna Rada’s Temporary Investigative Commission on the investigation of Russian crimes against journalists, including the case of the murder of our close colleague Viktoriia Roshchyna. We are painfully learning that not only the conditions of her detention, but the killing itself, were even more brutal.

We will continue to speak publicly about what matters most.

On May 29 at 18:30, on the main stage of the Book Arsenal, Nataliya Gumenyuk will moderate the discussion Freedom: Absolute and Relative with Marci Shore, Oleksandra Matviichuk, Maksym Butkevych, Anton Drobovych, and Oleksandr Komarov.

On June 10 at 10:00, at the Zhovten Cinema during Docudays UA, Nataliya will take part in the discussion The Language of Justice in War: Between Victims’ Expectations and Justice as part of the Coffee with Human Rights Defenders platform.

Ukrainian independent media and journalists continue to work in conditions where quality journalism requires not only strength, but also additional support. That is why, together with ECPMF, we have opened a new scholarship call for journalists and media outlets.

You can find more news about justice, war crimes, freedom of speech, and audience engagement on our social media channels (Facebook | Instagram | X | YouTube).

Wishing you a calm week,

Your Public Interest Journalism Lab

Hello, this is Zarina Mykytenko and the Public Interest Journalism Lab (PIJL).

“Ukraine’s Dual Struggle: Balancing Democratic Principles And National Defence In A Total War” is our latest study on how Ukrainians understand democracy today, which freedoms they are and are not willing to give up, where they see the line between censorship and self-censorship, and whether there is public demand for elections. Ultimately, we asked how democracy can be preserved in conditions of total war and what lessons this may hold for other democratic societies.

The aim of this qualitative study was to understand the motivations and arguments of different categories of the population. Our partners at the Kharkiv Institute for Social Research conducted focus groups and in-depth interviews with people living closer to and farther from the front line, refugees, military personnel, employees of Territorial Recruitment and Social Support Centers, veterans, and men who are not serving. The lead author of the text is Yaroslava Barbieri, a researcher at the Chatham House Ukraine Forum.

The study is available in Ukrainian and English in several formats, including a downloadable PDF. We especially recommend paying attention to the respondents’ quotations.

On April 7 and 8 in Kyiv, we presented the study and discussed its findings with Ukrainian and international analysts, civil society representatives, and diplomats. We are grateful to our colleagues at One Philosophy and Resilient Ukraine for helping organize the event.

While Ukrainian participants were most concerned with mobilization and elections, our international colleagues were primarily interested in perspectives on European integration and Ukraine’s role in European security.

Security was a dominant theme in much of our work in March and April.

Here is a selection of episodes from our podcast Everything Matters.

Carlo Masala, professor at the Bundeswehr University Munich and author of the bestseller If Russia Wins: A Scenario, speaks about how the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran affected NATO, why Europeans should think not about replacing the United States but about protecting themselves sufficiently from Russia, and what role Ukraine plays in that. Listen (conversation in English starts at 9:30) and read.

On how perceptions of Ukraine have changed in the Middle East, the growing interest in Ukrainian air-defense drones, and Ukraine’s relations with the Gulf states, Iran, and Syria, we spoke with the director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Ihor Semovolos (in Ukrainian).

With The Economist’s Ukraine correspondent Oliver Carroll, we discussed the so-called “peace talks” involving the United States, how Moscow is once again pushing maximalist demands, and how Kyiv is shifting toward a longer-war scenario. Available in audio (conversation in English starts at 10:35) and in text.

Anait Hoperia, deputy head of the Center for Countering Disinformation under Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, explains how Russian disinformation campaigns are currently working to inflame conflict within the country (in Ukrainian).

Incidentally, Anait’s analysis of “Black Winter,” a Russian disinformation campaign tied to attacks on the energy system, also appears in the article by Olena Maksymenko and Angelina Kariakina, “This Brought Us Even Closer Together: How Kyiv Residents Survived the ‘Black Winter’ Under Russian Shelling and Are Preparing for a New One.” The piece was published in Romanian and Russian in Moldova’s largest publication. Our long-standing Latin American partners, the Argentine outlet InfoBae, also published two pieces, which you can read in Spanish here and here.

We continue to work across a wide geography, so in March we once again welcomed in Ukraine the Taiwanese journalist and author of books about Ukraine, Jason Liu. Together, we worked on the themes of social resilience, the role of civil society and independent media in supporting democratic processes, as well as military-civilian cooperation in defending the country in Kyiv and Kharkiv. With Jason’s support, the Taiwanese outlet NewsLens published, in Mandarin, Viktoriia Balytska’s article about drone attacks targeting residents of Kherson.

On March 14, we also held our latest town hall meeting, bringing together victims of war crimes and those investigating them, including representatives of the prosecutor’s office, the Security Service of Ukraine, the National Police, and the Coordination Center for the Support of Victims and Witnesses at the Office of the Prosecutor General. As a reminder, we have been holding such events since 2024, organizing facilitated conversations with victims from Kherson, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv, Sumy, Donetsk, Luhansk, Chernihiv, Dnipro, and Zaporizhzhia region.

Over these years, we have seen a dynamic in which Russia has effectively placed the burden of fighting for justice on the Ukrainian state and on Ukrainians themselves. We have begun work on an analytical report and in the coming months will publish recommendations on how the situation and interaction can be improved.

On the anniversary of the full-scale invasion, Nataliya Gumenyuk spoke about this at the conference “From Testimony to Verdict: Justice in Times of War,” organized by IWPR. A recording of the event is available here.

The Institute has also prepared a guide offering practical recommendations for conflict-sensitive reporting on war crimes in Ukraine, with particular emphasis on the voices and experiences of Ukrainians themselves. Nataliya is among its co-authors, along with journalists who work or have worked with us as part of The Reckoning Project: Oleh Baturyn, Olena Kurenkova, and Viktoriia Matola.

Incidentally, it was from a meeting with victims from Yahidne that the idea emerged to create the audio guide Yahidne: A Village in Captivity, a documentary tour through the site of a war crime, the school grounds and basement, released in March. Its English version was narrated by Timothy Snyder.

We are learning more about the best practices for preserving memory of crimes and violence. One of the world’s best-known scholars, Kerry Whigham, joined our podcast to explain why even the most beautiful memorial is meaningless if it is empty. This conversation is available to listen to (conversation in English starts at 7:02) and read.

Meanwhile, the Japanese historian and author of Terror and Fear in Donbas, Hiroaki Kuromiya, speaks about how to preserve the memory of the destroyed industrial Donbas. In the conversation, we also touched on his new book, which addresses Soviet relations with China, including in the context of the current rapprochement between Moscow and Beijing. Listen (conversation in English starts at 11:45) and read.

Nataliya Gumenyuk was included in the UP 100: The Power of Women list in the “Society” category. Over the past several years, Nataliya has become not only a leading Ukrainian journalist but also an analyst for international media. She is a regular contributor to The New York Times, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, The Guardian, and many other outlets. Nataliya has found ways into leading media and civil societies, without exaggeration, in almost every corner of the world, from South Korea and Taiwan to Latin America and Africa. We are very happy and proud.

A book titled Why We Tell Stories, published by Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, has also been released. In it, 17 journalists from twelve countries in Southeastern Europe explain why they remain journalists. Nataliya also wrote a chapter about her work. Her story begins with her first days at the Institute of Journalism in 2001, when students were demanding the truth about the murder of Heorhiy Gongadze. It goes on to describe the freedom of the Orange Revolution, the slide into paid-for coverage and censorship, later her work in the Middle East, the creation of Hromadske, and also the story of our organization and why journalism should be treated as a form of service.

Incidentally, the story of the Lab, as well as of Nataliya and Angelina, is told in the special foreword to the Ukrainian translation of Maria Ressa’s book How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future, which has just been published by Laboratoria Publishing.

Spring is a time of many events, and we use them to draw attention to war crimes.

On March 10 in Madrid, Nataliya opened a discussion at a seminar organized by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Latin America and Ukraine: Building Mutual Understanding, where she and Latin American colleagues discussed the impact of Russia’s war against Ukraine on countries in the region and its geopolitical consequences.

On March 12 in Strasbourg, Gumenyuk took part in a public event at the invitation of the French University, where she met with journalism students from the University of Strasbourg. During the discussions, a screening was held of the film about journalists under occupation (English subtitles are available), created by the Lab as part of The Reckoning Project.

On April 16 in Istanbul, during the 152nd Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, which brings together parliamentarians from around the world, we are screening the film Fight and Dance about children who survived the largest attack on Sumy and continue pursuing their dreams in sport despite what they lived through. The Palm Sunday attack happened a year ago. In addition to Ukrainian, English, and German, our film is now also available in French and Spanish.

On April 18 in Perugia, at Europe’s largest journalism festival, we initiated the conversation Journalism in a Polarized World: Reaching Audiences Beyond the Information Bubble, featuring our friends and partners Natalia Antelava, co-founder of Coda Story and the ZEG Tbilisi Storytelling Festival, and Patricia Campos Mello, editor-at-large at one of Brazil’s largest newspapers, Folha de Sao Paulo. Follow the livestream here.

On April 21, during the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, we will screen the films To the Sound of Sirens about emergency workers rescuing Kyiv residents after Russian attacks, Fight and Dance, and The Last Family (English subtitles are available) about elderly residents of Sumy and where they find the strength to rebuild their lives after attacks. Please share the invitation with your colleagues and friends and register here.

Marking the anniversary of the Chornobyl disaster, documentary films by Oleksiy Radynski and Lyuba Knorozok about the Russian occupation of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant and the exclusion zone in 2022 will be presented at a number of international events and venues across Europe and the world. In particular, Chornobyl 22 can be seen at exhibitions in Zurich and Lucerne in Switzerland, Potsdam in Germany, and in the film program of the Barbican Centre in London. Special Operation will be screened in Zurich, Potsdam, and at film festivals in Mexico City and Tokyo. Screenings and special events will also take place in cooperation with Ukrainian diplomatic and cultural institutions in a number of countries, including Canada, the Netherlands, Georgia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, North Macedonia, Germany, as well as Mozambique, Chile, and Ecuador.

Wishing you a peaceful week,

Public Interest Journalism Lab

Hi, this is Zarina Mykytenko and the Public Interest Journalism Lab (PIJL).

To mark the anniversary of the full-scale invasion, our team has produced an audio guide, “Yahidne: A Village in Captivity.” It is a documentary walk-through of a war crime site, including the school basement where, throughout March 2022, Russian soldiers held nearly the entire village population in inhumane conditions. The English version is narrated by American historian Timothy Snyder, while testimonies from residents are voiced in English by well-known journalists and authors Anne Applebaum, Peter Pomerantsev, Jonathan Littell, Sabra Ayres, historian Marcy Shore, and Canadian politician Chrystia Freeland. It is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

This audio guide is the result of our work with the community since 2022. That year, our journalists were among the first to arrive in the liberated village; Svitlana Oslavska wrote a dispatch that was on the cover of TIME magazine. We screened our film about Yahidne across the globe and made it available in Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Korean, Mandarin, Turkish, and Russian. In 2024, we gathered the community to hear how they wanted their experience preserved. In the recent essay “Remember that we made it out of the basement” for Eurozine. Angelina Kariakina and Ghanna Mamonova reflect on how the village is building the museum amid the ongoing war.

On March 3, we traveled to the Chernihiv region — because it was on March 3, 2022, that people were driven into the basement — to spend the day with the residents of Yahidne. We also ensured that visiting delegations and guests coming to the school in Yahidne have access to the audio guide and can use it on-site.

Ukraine endured the winter of war. As we prepared for the invasion anniversaries, we published materials about the price that has been paid, particularly by rescue workers and medics who were killed or injured by double-tap strikes on civilian targets during Russian attacks on the energy system. A piece by Oleh Baturin and Kseniia Savoskina was published in English, French, and Italian on Vox.Europe, in Slovak in the respected outlet SME, and in Spanish on the Argentinian platform Infobae widely read across Latin America. Currently, we are working on a documentary about the work of Ukraine’s State Emergency Service during shelling.

Four years ago, two civilians from the Sumy region — Andrii Okhrimenko and Oleksii Melnyk — were taken captive. We met Andrii Okhrimenko’s wife Yulia, back in the spring of 2022. In the time since, their children have grown up, while the men remain in Russian penal colonies without any charges. “When Andrii saw a photo of his son, the whole cell cried,” Andrii’s wife told us. We are doing everything we can to keep attention on their stories. Watch Anna Tsygyma’s video story with English subtitles, and read Hanna Mamomova’s report.

Our work is not only about war crimes. We also address what is happening on the battlefield. A column by Nataliya Gumenyuk in The New York Times describes how Ukrainian troops have adapted to a long war. “The world watches the war against Ukraine as if it were a series or a film, demanding any ending at all—even an unhappy one. For Ukrainians, this is not a film. It is reality,” Gumenyuk writes. One of the people featured is Mykola Serga, a musician who joined the military and now leads the Cultural Desant initiative. Our podcast episode (in Ukrainian) with him is primarily about morale inside the armed forces, military counterculture, and how culture can become a bridge of understanding between the front line and the rear.

For influential Danish analytical outlets, Weekendavisen — also read across Scandinavia — Nataliya wrote a piece titled “Our Fight Against the Russian Disease.” It also explores why it is crucial for Ukraine to develop its own defense technologies and what role Scandinavian partners play. Read it in English and Ukrainian.

In recent months, despite power outages and attacks on critical energy infrastructure, we kept working. We commented on these events for the British magazine New Statesman and the American network CNN. In an online discussion at the Atlantic Council, we spoke about possible scenarios for how the war could develop—along with risks and illusions. At a conference of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard, we joined the conversation “Global Solidarity with Ukraine.” We also suggest watching a reflective discussion (in Ukrainian) featuring Oleksandra Matviichuk, Maksym Butkevych, and Leniie Umerova after the solidarity trip to Syria that we initiated.

In Davos, Gumenyuk took part in a discussion titled “Future’s Frontline: The World Emerging in Ukraine,” as well as a panel on innovation and the future of Europe and the United States.

We followed developments in the United States closely, so we also recommend listening to or reading our conversation with Jeffrey Trimble (the conversation in English starts at 12:07), former deputy head of U.S. international broadcasting, who has worked in the USSR, Russia, and Ukraine since the 1980s.

At the Munich Security Conference, we recorded a podcast conversation with former President of Estonia Kersti Kaljulaid (the conversation in English starts at 11:30). We discussed how much safer Estonia has become thanks to cooperation with NATO—and also how authoritarian regimes use the Olympic Games. Kersti Kaljulaid currently chairs the Estonian Olympic Committee. You can also read our conversations.

To draw attention to the conditions in which young Ukrainian athletes train, we organized a screening of the film “Fight and Dance” (English subtitles are available) about children from the Sumy region. Last year, 13-year-old Kiril Illiashenko rescued people during a strike on Palm Sunday in Sumy. Kiril continues to train in Greco-Roman wrestling and dreams of reaching the Olympics. At the screening at the Maidan Museum, Kiril was supported by Ukrainian Olympic champion in Greco-Roman wrestling and Member of Parliament Zhan Beleniuk.

Also in Kyiv, Svitlana Oslavska presented another book based on testimonies collected as part of The Reckoning Project—“On My Own Skin”—which tells the stories of survivors in Snihurivka, Shevchenkove, and Yahidne.

On February 24, our journalists Oleh Baturin (from Kakhovka) and Ghanna Mamonova (from Luhansk region) drew attention to life under occupation during the conversation “Silenced Freedom: How Russia Restricts Knowledge About Occupation,” held at one of Europe’s largest Ukraine-focused events, Café Kyiv in Berlin.

From February 21 to 24, on the Razom platform, we joined an online marathon where we screened our documentary films in French and English: “Big Water,” “The scariest days of my life. Yahidne,” “Lost paradise. Viktor Marunyak,” “Station Kramatorsk,” “Return me to my dad,” “The mall hit by a rocket.” On February 26 in Warsaw, to mark the Day of Resistance to the Russian Occupation of Crimea, the film Voice of Crimea: Nariman Dzhelyal (English subtitles are available) was screened at the request of the Krymski Dom Foundation.

All these years, we have not simply reported on Russian war crimes. Providing evidence we demonstrate that these are not isolated tragedies, but systematic actions by the Russian Federation against civilians. But these are also stories of remarkable people who inspire us with their strength. We also want to remind you of some of our most important works from this period—pieces that are, in effect, historical documents—such as “How Russian planes attacked residential neighborhoods of Chernihiv,” “Three stories of pregnancy and childbirth in Ukraine,” includes reporting on the siege of Mariupol. Essays “A looming disaster at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant,” and “What were the Russians doing in Chornobyl” tell the story of the Russian occupation of the Ukrainian nuclear sites.

Follow our work, subscribe to our social media (Facebook | Instagram | X | YouTube), listen to the podcast “When Everything Matters,” and read Life in War. You can support our team via LiqPay.

Wishing you a calm week,
Public Interest Journalism Lab

Hi, this is Nataliya Gumenyuk and the Public Interest Journalism Lab (PIJL).

As we come to the end of 2025, we do so with the understanding that despite ongoing talks about the so-called peace deal, both shelling of civilians and active hostilities have only intensified. Throughout 2025, we had to follow the negotiations process closely, but first of all we worked on the ground — documenting war crimes and investigating what is happening in the occupied territories. As the issue of Russia’s accountability is increasingly pushed out of public discourse, through our articles and films for audiences worldwide, we have been explaining why impunity must not be normalized. We sought new ways to connect victims with law enforcement agencies. Finally, in the fourth year of the full-scale war, we began paying more attention to memorialization — creating films, stage performances, and researching how memory can be preserved during the active phase of war.

Thank you for following our work. This newsletter offers a more detailed overview of November–December, as well as a reminder of what has been central to us this year.

In Sumy, we brought together survivors and witnesses of war crimes to meet with law enforcement officials investigating these cases. Many of those affected back in early 2022 were unaware of the Coordination Centers for Victim Support established under the Prosecutor General’s Office in 2024 and 2025. Thanks to our facilitation, they were able to access further support. This year, we held similar meetings bringing together victims and investigators from the Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Luhansk, and Dnipropetrovsk regions.

The film “Fight and Dance” (English Subtitles available), by Anna Tsygyma and Ghanna Mamonova, tells the story of 13-year-old Kiril and 6-year-old Elina from Sumy, who continue practicing wrestling and ballet after a missile strike on Palm Sunday. They live in a border city with Russia, where air raid alerts last more than 20 hours a day. The film premiered in German on the platform of the Austrian public broadcaster ORF. In the spring, an article about the shelling of Sumy was published in outlets around the world — from South Africa to South Korea. It was important for us to bring the film back to the city and screen it for local residents, along with the film “The Last Family” about the shelling of a geriatric care home in Sumy. Together with the local media outlet Cukr, we also held a public discussion with the protagonists of the films.

We believe that the solidarity visit to Syria we organized on the anniversary of the fall of the Assad regime — involving Ukrainian civil society leaders, including human rights defender and former prisoner of war Maksym Butkevych, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and head of the Center for Civil Liberties Oleksandra Matviichuk, former Kremlin prisoner and Crimean Tatar activist Lenie Umerova, and PIJL director Nataliya Gumenyuk — marked only the beginning of longer-term cooperation with Syrian human rights defenders. In Damascus, we held a workshop with the support of the Madaniya Coalition and the Syrian Emergency Task Force. On December 29, while already in Kyiv, participants of the trip shared their reflections with Ukrainian artists, journalists, and human rights defenders to help build international solidarity networks.

In 2025, the PIJL team collected dozens of testimonies of war crimes. In addition to analysis, the creation of a bilingual archive, and the transfer of selected data to lawyers and law enforcement agencies — including for submissions to international bodies — a defining feature of the Lab’s work remains the creation of texts and films that examine patterns of Russian actions and tell human stories in accessible formats.

We drew international attention to how Russian forces systematically hunt civilians in Kherson using drones. In recent months, this material was published in the Philippines, Nigeria, South Korea, and Argentina (please share the Spanish version), as well as in Italy, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Moldova (in Romanian and Russian), and Poland. The text is also available in Ukrainian.

We continue to build cooperation with global partners. In November, we shared our experience of journalism that genuinely serves communities at the Social Good Summit in the Philippines, organized by Rappler, founded by journalist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa. You can listen to the podcast with Maria Ressa in English (conversation in English starts from 13:40), and read the text version in English.

Taking advantage of the trip to the Philippines, Nataliya Gumenyuk delivered lectures and workshops on the strength of democracies, the role of journalism in achieving justice, the risks faced by women journalists, screened PIJL films, and spoke to students at more than a dozen universities in Cebu, Davao, Cagayan de Oro, Zamboanga, and Manila. These events were held with the proactive support of the Embassy of Ukraine in the Philippines.

Among the key events of December were the Impact Summit in Bratislava, focused on the role of media in times of crisis, and the Transatlantic Ukraine Seminar in Loccum, Germany, where discussions centered on pathways to sustainable peace.

Due to the closure of U.S. support programs, funding for participation in international events has significantly decreased. Nevertheless, thanks to invitations from partners, donors, and colleagues from various countries, PIJL continued to expand the geography of its work, establishing and strengthening meaningful cooperation with colleagues in Taiwan, South Korea, Peru, Colombia, South Africa, Brazil, and Malaysia. We organized joint workshops and discussions, began work on joint analytical reports, and held documentary film screenings in these countries. We also spoke about war crimes and the situation in Ukraine at European forums — including in Georgia, Italy, Romania, Sweden, Finland, and the United States.

Among the key publications of December:

• An op-ed by Nataliya Gumenyuk, “What If Trump Wants Goliath to Win?”, published on the blog of American historian Timothy Snyder.

• A conversation with the Ukrainian civic network OPORA — about drone warfare, journalists at the front, global interest in the war in Ukraine, and the cohesion of Ukrainian society. (For English-speaking readers, these themes were also central to our work for The Atlantic and Foreign Affairs).

This year, we released 45 episodes of the podcast “When Everything Matters”, introducing full-text versions first in Ukrainian on the Life of War website, and now also in English. We also launched a platform where listeners can support the podcast with donations.

Among the most recent conversations we would like to highlight. (

• Polish public intellectual Sławomir Sierakowski — on Polish support for Ukraine and populism in Poland. (In English from 10:03)

• Taiwanese journalist Jason Liu — on China’s pressure on Taiwan’s democracy and lessons from the war in Ukraine. (Listen in English from 07:30), read in English.

• Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists — on new forms of attacks on journalists and ways to protect them. (Listen in English from 06:53), read in English.

• Slovak writer Martin Šimečka — on Robert Fico, Slovak attitudes toward Ukraine, and the legacy of Václav Havel. (Listen in English from 10:32), read in English.

• British actor and activist Khalid Abdalla — on solidarity, Palestine, and the limits of public positioning. (Listen in English from 12:45).

In our podcasts, we also want to remember two friends and colleagues we lost this year:

• Artist and anti-authoritarian activist David Chichkan, who joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine and was killed as a result of shelling in August (in Ukrainian)

• Journalist Victoria Roshchyna, murdered in Russian captivity last year and laid to rest only in August this year (in Ukrainian)

As Ukrainians are pressured to renounce their citizenship and accept further occupation of their territories, covering crimes committed in territories controlled by Russia has been and will remain a core focus of the Lab.

In 2025, together with the German network n-ost, we developed a training course and conducted workshops for journalists from Poland, Germany, France, and Ukraine on reporting life under occupation. The result was dozens of publications released toward the end of the year, culminating in a public discussion in Berlin on December 12.

An article by Nataliya Gumenyuk on the cost of Russian occupation — normalized by so-called “peace negotiations” — was included in the print edition of Foreign Affairs among the publication’s most important pieces of 2025, and was the only one devoted exclusively to Russia’s war against Ukraine.

We also want to recall other stories we have told about people who survived occupation — Olena Tiakhtilova from the Zaporizhzhia region, the Shelekhan brothers from Kharkiv region, and Volodymyr Mykolaienko, former mayor of Kherson (available in English). This is all part of our team’s work documenting war crimes — covered separately in the media outlet Voxeurop.

One of the defining releases of the year for us was the film “Special Operation” by Oleksii Radynski and Lyuba Knorozok, built entirely from surveillance camera footage from the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant during the Russian occupation. Its international premiere took place at the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale).

Throughout June, the documentary theater production “The Reckoning”, created by the independent theater Dash Arts based on testimonies of war crimes collected by our team in the Kyiv, Mykolaiv, Donetsk, and Zaporizhzhia regions, was staged at Arcola Theatre in London. Listen to our conversation with the director.

Within our cooperation with the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF), we provided 149 grants to editorial teams and 30 individual journalists from local media, primarily from frontline regions — including Sumy, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions.

The Public Interest Journalism Lab was created to address complex topics, promote human rights journalism, and explore new ways to engage audiences. The lack of attention to crucial issues is not a new problem for us — it is our ongoing task. In 2026, we will continue this mission in Ukraine and beyond.

Wish you all strength, justice, peace, and the victory of good over evil from Kyiv!

Follow the Public Interest Journalism Lab, subscribe to our social media channels (Facebook | Instagram | X | YouTube), listen to our podcast “When Everything Matters”, and read the Life of War website.

More to come in 2026.

With best wishes for the holidays and a peaceful New Year,
The Public Interest Journalism Lab (PIJL) Team

On 5–8 December, leaders of Ukrainian civil society – human rights defender and former prisoner of war Maksym Butkevych, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and head of the Centre for Civil Liberties Oleksandra Matviichuk, Crimean Tatar activist and former Kremlin prisoner Leniie Umerova, and Nataliya Gumenyuk, journalist and head of the Public Interest Journalism Lab (PIJL), which initiated the visit – travelled to Syria on a solidarity mission. The trip coincided with the anniversary of the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime and aimed to support Syrian civil society and lay the groundwork for joint efforts to hold Russia accountable for crimes committed in both countries.

During the visit, the Ukrainian delegation visited Sednaya Prison, where the regime detained and tortured tens of thousands of people, as well as mass burial sites and the devastated suburbs of Damascus. Ukrainian human rights defenders spoke with former prisoners of the regime and survivors of bombings and chemical attacks. They also met representatives of the Syrian government, including the head of the newly created Ministry of Emergency and Disaster Management and former head of the volunteer organisation the White Helmets, Raed Al Saleh, who visited Ukraine in 2023 on a solidarity mission.

At a meeting with the President of the National Commission for Transitional Justice, Abdulbaset Abdullatif, the Ukrainians discussed not only the challenges but also shared solutions – how to build a justice system capable of investigating hundreds of thousands of crimes, and how to create a sustainable system of support for victims. The Ukrainian delegation spoke at city-wide celebrations and met with representatives of Syrian business. They also plan to visit Douma, the city where chemical weapons were used in 2013, as well as Aleppo.

A separate event during the visit was a workshop organised by the PIJL, bringing together Syrian and Ukrainian human rights defenders. It took place on 6 December at the premises of the civil society coalition Madaniya, with the participation of the Syrian Emergency Task Force. The discussion focused on strengthening efforts to ensure accountability for crimes committed by the Russian leadership and military in both countries, and on how civil society can cooperate with authorities and law-enforcement during the transformation and democratisation of state institutions.

“Diplomatic relations between countries are grounded in pragmatism, and that is normal. Yet it is the role of civil society to remind their governments of shared values – and shared threats. What connects us with Syria is not only a tragic past, such as Russian war crimes. It is also the experience of resilience and the work of building a just future: achieving justice and rebuilding a country after massive destruction. When I first came to free Syria in April this year, I wanted to return together with other Ukrainians. And I truly became convinced that whether we speak of former prisoners or human rights defenders, we understand one another from the first word,” said Nataliya Gumenyuk, head of the Public Interest Journalism Lab, who has covered events in Syria since 2012.

“This is my first time in Syria, and it is likely the most important of my trips in quite a long time. There is a great difference between knowing what happened and being present. Syrians who survived crimes against humanity all spoke about the importance of justice and of holding the leaders of the Assad and Putin regimes accountable. This must be one of the crucial tasks of a new Syria – and our duty is to support it,” added human rights defender Oleksandra Matviichuk.

During their time in Russian captivity, both Leniie Umerova and Maksym Butkevych encountered Russian guards who boasted that they had previously fought in Syria.

“In captivity I was held by Russians who had fought in Syria, so this trip is particularly meaningful for me. Russia commits in our homeland the very same crimes it committed here. I was shocked by the utterly destroyed districts of Jobar and Yarmouk, from which the entire population had been forcibly displaced, where even the smallest objects were wiped out. This is especially painful for me as a Crimean Tatar. I saw an incredible number of parallels in which Russia acted as the executioner,” said Leniie Umerova.

“In Syrian society, as in Ukrainian society, there is a huge demand for justice. This is not the only thing that unites us. In some cases, the perpetrators were the same people. A year after the revolution and the liberation of Syria, I also saw that restoring justice is possible when there is respect for the diversity inherent in both our societies. Diversity is an important component of the extraordinary resilience that so impresses foreign observers in Ukrainian society – and which deeply impressed me in Syrian society during my stay here,” shared human rights defender and former prisoner of war Maksym Butkevych. He added that the fall of Assad was one of the first major pieces of news he learned after his release in a prisoner exchange at the end of 2024. In autumn of last year, he could not have imagined that he would one day visit Syria himself – rather than his Russian captors.

On 8 December, Syria celebrates liberation from the regime of Bashar Al-Assad, whose dynasty ruled the country for more than 60 years. In spring 2011, Syrians began protests against the regime after teenagers in Daraa were detained for writing anti-government slogans. The regime launched brutal repression, which escalated into a civil war in which the Russian Federation supported Assad. More than 10 million Syrians were forced to flee the country; according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, over 600,000 people were killed and hundreds of thousands remain missing. In September 2025, Ukraine and Syria restored diplomatic relations.

In March 2022, the Public Interest Journalism Lab founded The Reckoning Project, an initiative to document war crimes, with the participation of Syrian lawyers who had worked on legal processes in Syria. In 2023, to mark the tenth anniversary of the chemical attacks in Ghouta, the Public Interest Journalism Lab hosted a visit of leading Syrian civil society representatives to Ukraine. During that visit, they travelled to Bucha, met with families of missing persons, and spoke with evacuated Mariupol medics.

Hello, this is Zarina Mykytenko and the Public Interest Journalism Lab (PIJL).

Three years ago, on November 11, the Armed Forces of Ukraine liberated the south of the country, including the Kherson region, freeing hundreds of thousands of people from the threat of torture and persecution under Russian occupation. Yet, Russian troops have continued to shell Kherson and the areas along the Dnipro. For more than a year, they have been terrorizing the city, launching an average of 2,500 drones per week.

Our journalist Viktoriia Balytska spoke with dozens of witnesses and victims. Read her investigation “They wanted us to break down and beg to surrender Kherson. How Russians terrorize civilians with drone attacks.” — and help spread it in English, Spanish, Russian, and Romanian. This piece is being published and dissaminated with editorial teams across Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe — including Argentina, South Africa, Nigeria, Moldova, Taiwan, the Philippines, and many other countries.

Former Kherson mayor Volodymyr Mykolayenko has returned from Russian captivity. We invite you to watch (in Ukrainian) and read his conversation with our journalist Oleh Baturin, himself a former detainee from the occupied town of Kakhovka.

In October, after a long illness, our colleague photographer Dmytro Stoykov passed away. He had documented the aftermath of the Kakhovka Dam explosion. Together, we created a documentary about the frontline town of Posad-Pokrovske in the Kherson region (English subtitles available). Dmytro was attentive, sensitive, and remarkably precise in his work. We will miss him deeply.

Our mission is to stay close to survivors and witnesses and to ensure that war crimes are not forgotten. Marking another anniversary — the liberation of the Kharkiv region — we revisited the story of the Balakliia torture chamber, particularly that of the Shelekhan brothers. We also published an excerpt from Svitlana Oslavska’s book “In One’s Own Skin” — a story based on testimonies collected within The Reckoning Project (in Ukrainian)

As always, we actively engage at public events. At the Donbas Media Forum, we initiated the discussion “Justice as a Process: Dialogue Between Survivors and Investigators” (in Ukrainian), where we shared insights from our project facilitating meetings between victims from frontline and liberated areas and representatives of the Prosecutor’s Office, police, and Security Service of Ukraine. We also recommend listening to or reading (both in Ukrainian) our conversation with Veronika Plotnikova, head of the Coordination Center for Supporting Victims and Witnesses at the Office of the Prosecutor General.

At the forum, we also screened the film “The Last Family: How Russia Destroyed a Home for the Elderly in Sumy” (English subtitles available). Meanwhile, our legal team became the only Ukrainian organization to submit a report for the UN Independent Expert on the Enjoyment of All Human Rights by Older Persons in Armed Conflict and Peacebuilding, focusing on the impact of war on the lives of the elderly.

In October, we launched the project “Justice, memory, trust: building on social cohesion through community dialogue”, supported by the Partnership Fund for a Resilient Ukraine. Its goal includes researching and sharing the best practices of preserving the memory of human rights. Check out our first podcast (conversation in English starts from 08:00) and accompanying text (in Ukrainian) featuring Tali Nates, founder of the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre, on how such museums can become popular.

Listen to — and read the text versions of — our podcast “When Everything Matters,” featuring:

• Scottish reporter Jen Stout — on Kharkiv, russification, and de-mining in the South (conversation in English starts from 07:36).

• Moldovan editor Alina Radu — on elections in her country and Russia’s influence (conversation in English starts from 11:20).

• Writer Serhiy Zhadan — on military service, Kharkiv, and post-war literature (in Ukrainian).

• Anthropologist Taras Fedirko — on how the drone war has reshaped Ukrainian elites (in Ukrainian).

• Chatham House analyst Orysia Lutsevych — on civic participation in reconstruction (in Ukrainian).

• Historian Andrii Portnov — on Dnipro, a city that constantly reinvents itself (in Ukrainian).

• Former head of Google Ukraine Dmytro Sholomko — on developing digital technologies amid Russia’s war (in Ukrainian).
  
  

We continue building stronger connections with the global community. In September, together with Brazilian war correspondent Patrícia Campos Mello, we traveled to the Pokrovsk sector — see her report on technological innovation, published in Portuguese.

In the same month, Nataliya Gumenyuk joined a Ukrainian delegation of experts and MPs visiting Malaysia and the Philippines. Alongside the Embassy of Ukraine in Malaysia and the Center for Independent Journalism, we initiated a roundtable on the role of journalism in advancing truth and human rights, including a screening of our documentary “Access to Information” (English subtitles available) about the persecution of journalists under occupation. Nataliya also held working meetings with experts and civil society representatives, including the Malaysian Human Rights Commission, Institute of Strategic and International Studies, Merdeka Center, and Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs.

In cooperation with the Embassy of Ukraine in the Philippines, we organized a series of documentary screenings and talks at security forums, including collaborations with Asia Society, Stratbase Institute, De La Salle University, UN Women Ukraine Forum, and more.

The Syrian and Ukrainian archives Mnemonic involved us in a human-rights webinar exploring how to further counter impunity — particularly in Russia’s case — and strengthen joint Ukrainian-Syrian initiatives.

In September, we facilitated a visit by U.S. historian Timothy Snyder to Ukrainian soldiers fighting in Donetsk region, and presented his book on freedom at the Center for Contemporary Culture in Dnipro.

At the Yalta European Strategy Forum, Nataliya Gumenyuk co-moderated, alongside former Finnish prime minister Sanna Marin, a panel on the future of drone warfare. In Constanța, Romania, she gave a keynote address on how technology has transformed Russia’s war against Ukraine at the security forum “The Growing Importance of the Black Sea,” attended by experts, journalists, and military representatives from across the region. In Odesa, she facilitated a discussion on rebuilding the South, hosted by the Kherson Regional Administration.

Together with PEN Ukraine, we held a conversation on preserving the memory of Ukraine’s defensive war with Croatian poet and veteran Tomica Bajsić.

At the Odesa Film Festival on September 26, the Ukrainian premiere of “Special Operation” by Oleksiy Radynski and Lyuba Knorozok took place — a documentary made entirely from surveillance-camera recordings capturing five weeks of the Chornobyl plant occupation. The film was later shown on November 8 at the House of Cinema in Kyiv. Earlier, we had shared insights (in Ukrainian) about how such video materials serve as evidence in court.

Angelina Kariakina, co-founder of the Lab, spoke at the International Congress on Health Communication about attacks on medical facilities in Ukraine. We also congratulate Angelina — who serves as Adviser to the Chair of Suspilne (Ukrainian Public Broadcaster) — on being re-elected to the News Committee of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) for the 2025–2027 term.

We continue working closely with Ukrainian colleagues, sharing our experience of trauma-informed reporting. Recently, we began a partnership with hromadske.ua, conducting training sessions on interviewing survivors without retraumatization and on the basics of international humanitarian law.

Follow our work (Facebook | Instagram | X | YouTube) Listen to our podcast “When Everything Matters,” and visit the website “Life in War.” Support our team — it’s even easier now via LiqPay!

Wishing you a peaceful week,
Public Interest Journalism Lab (PIJL)

Hello, this is Zarina Mykytenko and the Public Interest Journalism Lab (PIJL).

This August has been a month of farewells to close friends and colleagues.

On August 10, Ukrainian anarchist artist Davіd Chichkan died from combat wounds. Listen to our podcast in memory of David (in Ukrainian), where you will hear the voices of his loved ones, friends, and comrades. You can also read our publication (also in Ukrainian).

Earlier, on August 8, also on Maidan, we bid farewell to our colleague journalist Victoria Roshchyna, who was killed in Russian captivity in September last year.

For our team, it was an honor to take part in both farewells. David’s and Viсtoria’s graves at Baikove Cemetery are located side by side.

We continue to inform the world about events in Ukraine. Nataliya Gumenyuk’s essay in Foreign Affairs, “The Real Limits of Ukrainian Power,” explains why social cohesion and Ukrainian democracy are the foundation of Ukraine’s resilience at a time when U.S. support is waning.

We followed the protests in defense of anti-corruption institutions. Watch our video report for Austrian public broadcaster ORF Topos, as well as Nataliya Gumenyuk’s column for The Guardian and Angelina Kariakina’s for The Ukrainians. The voices of those who took to the streets of Kyiv are featured in the video (english subtitles available) and in the podcast episode (in Ukrainian) When Everything Matters.

We launched the LiqPay service, making it even easier to support our team’s work!

Nataliya Gumenyuk spoke to Volodymyr Yermolenko for the UkraineWorld podcast about her research on the war of drones, and in the U.S. podcast The Delegates’ Lounge about how to pursue accountability for war crimes when the protection of international law is being pushed out of the global discourse.

Our team continues to cover attacks on Ukrainian cities – listen to and watch Nataliya Gumenyuk’s reports for Monocle Daily on how interruptions in Patriot missile supplies affect civilian security. On CNN, she discussed how Ukrainians view the talks between Putin and Trump.

The authors of the documentary The Last Family (english subtitles available), Anna Tsygyma and Ghanna Mamonova, held screenings in Krolevets, Sumy region, and at the Kyiv Veterans’ Home – for the displaced residents of geriatric institutions whose lives were changed by the war. A month ago, the film was also shown at the National Museum of the Revolution of Dignity. The post-screening discussion included representatives of the Ombudsman’s Office, managers of the geriatric institutions, and activists involved in the issue.

As part of artist Maria Kulikovska’s project The House of Permanent Exile, Nataliya Gumenyuk gave a lecture at the Museum of War on preserving memory during wartime – particularly, how stories can be transformed into evidence.

Together with the n-Ost network in July, we organized a five-day training Life under Occupation for 15 journalists from Ukraine, France, Poland, and Germany. The Lab team provided journalists with specialized skills, knowledge, and resources for deep, safe, and responsible coverage of life in Ukrainian territories temporarily occupied by Russia. Among the speakers were human rights defender and former prisoner of war Maksym Butkevych, journalists from occupied territories Oleh Baturyn and Andrii Dikhytiarenko, researcher Jaroslava Barbieri, Crimean Tatar activist Leniie Umerova, Head of the War Department of the Prosecutor General’s Office Yuriy Byelousov, Head of the Victim Support Coordination Center Veronika Plotnikova, and others. Following the training, participants will create both individual and joint reports on life under occupation.

We congratulate our former colleague and friend, The Reckoning Project lawyer Ibrahim Olabi, on his appointment as Syria’s Permanent Representative to the UN! We also invite you to listen to our podcast with Ibrahim (conversation in English starts at 08:34), where he talks about Russia’s “manual” for waging war, Syrians’ attempts to achieve justice, and how to make life harder for war criminals.

Wishing you a peaceful month,
Your Public Interest Journalism Lab (PIJL)

Find more information on our social media (Facebook | Instagram | X | YouTube).

Hi, this is Zarina Mykytenko and the Public Interest Journalism Lab (PIJL).

For us, June was first and foremost a month of important conversations.
We returned to the format launched by the Lab last year and traveled to Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, and Dnipro, where we facilitated meetings between survivors of war crimes in Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, Luhansk regions, and Dnipro, and representatives of local units of the Prosecutor General's Office, the National Police, and the Security Service of Ukraine — the people investigating these crimes. Local PGO units focused on working with victims also took part.

Now, in the fourth year of full-scale war, many survivors and witnesses of war crimes see justice as distant: in absentia verdicts often fall short of their expectations, and in some cases, people don’t even know the status of their cases. At the same time, some investigators are overloaded — in some regions, a single officer may be overseeing over 12,000 cases.
While some victims have gone through the full process, received prisoner of war status and compensation, others may not even know that such options exist — or that, since 2024, regional offices of the PGO’s Victim and Witness Coordination Center have been set up in the areas hardest hit by Russia’s invasion.

We discussed where communication between survivors and law enforcement breaks down — and how to fix it. For investigators, the meetings were also a chance to explain their work.
In the coming months, our team will continue working on this to prepare practical recommendations for the state, civil society organizations, and media on how to make the path to justice less painful for survivors.

Our documentary film The Last Family by Anna Tsygyma and Ghanna Mamonova — about a care home for the elderly in Sumy that was shelled, and how its residents are trying to rebuild their lives — was released in German on the website of Austria’s public broadcaster ORF as part of our ongoing collaboration. It’s also available in Russian via the Current Time project and in Ukrainian, alongside a story about how Russia has affected the lives of older Ukrainians, on our website Life in War. The film is available with English subtitles.

Drone swarms and ballistic missile strikes — these are the realities of the Ukrainian summer in 2025. Our team works on the ground, and we’ve prepared video reports after the June 17 and June 23 attacks.

Watch Nataliya Gumenyuk on CNN’s Amanpour program, where she discussed Russia’s strategy to exhaust Ukraine’s air defense system — and how Ukraine is trying to fight back.

For Life in War, Danylo Lekhovitser published a piece on young veterans, who now make up more than 7% of Ukraine’s armed forces. He spoke with several service members who received veteran status in their early 20s — about why they enlisted, what military service means to them, and how the war has changed their lives. Danylo also wrote about what it’s like to be a mortar operator — and why, in their own words, this weapon is one of the best tools for fighting authoritarian regimes.

Two years ago, our colleague, Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina, died in a hospital in Dnipro. On June 27, 2023, a Russian Iskander missile hit a pizzeria in Kramatorsk. Thirteen people were killed, 64 wounded. Among the survivors was Colombian writer Héctor Abad Faciolince, who later published Ahora y en la hora (“Now and at the Hour”), a book in Spanish about what happened. You can listen to our podcast conversation with him (start of the conversation in English from 16:40).

In June, Nataliya Gumenyuk traveled to Tbilisi for the ZEG Storytelling Festival, where we co-hosted a conversation with Taiwanese journalist Jason Liu on the lessons of democracies — why, in a time when authoritarianism appears to be advancing globally, pluralism and decentralization still matter.

In Georgia, Nataliya also spoke with the mother of one of the country’s most well-known political prisoners — actor Andro Chichinadze. She described unprecedented levels of repression, but also why over 200 people continue to take to the streets every single day.

During a brief visit to New York and Washington, we recorded a podcast with American journalist and Washington Post editor Damir Marusic about the normalization of Donald Trump in U.S. society (start of the conversation in English from 12:40).

And in a conversation with The Atlantic writer George Packer — we discussed J.D. Vance, Elon Musk, and the MAGA coalition that seeks to return to the past, aligned with techno-futurists from Silicon Valley (start of the conversation in English from 10:15)

Text versions of both conversations in Ukrainian are available on Life in War, along with all our podcast episodes: https://lifeinwar.com/en/podkasty

We’ve launched a LiqPay service to make it even easier to support our team’s work.

On June 28, the run of The Reckoning — a documentary play based on testimonies collected by our team — came to a close at London’s Arcola Theatre. Listen to a special podcast episode featuring 32 audience members who stayed after the performance — not just to talk about the play, but to share what they believe we can do to achieve justice. Among the voices: Tsvetelina van Bentem, senior legal advisor at The Reckoning Project and Oxford lecturer; Luke Harding, journalist and author; Tom Godwin, actor in The Reckoning; and the co-founders of The Reckoning Project, Janine di Giovanni and Peter Pomerantsev.

Wishing you a peaceful month,
Your Public Interest Journalism Lab (PIJL)

Find more on our social media (Facebook | Instagram | X | YouTube).

You can support our work with any contribution here.

Hello, this is Zarina Mykytenko and the Public Interest Journalism Lab (PIJL).

We begin with a big event for us: the premiere of The Reckoning, a documentary play created by Dash Arts at London’s Arcola Theatre. The play is based on testimonies of war crimes collected by our team in Kyiv, Mykolaiv, and Kramatorsk regions. It runs in London daily (except Sundays) until June 28.
Tickets: https://www.arcolatheatre.com/whats-on/the-reckoning/

"This show stays with you long after you leave the theatre... doubtless you will want to tell everyone you know to watch this play.”
“A beautifully crafted elucidation of the human impact of war that blurs the boundaries between audience and story.”
“A beautiful tribute to the lives of Ukrainian war survivors, and a reminder why these stories must continue to be told with deep respect and powerful performances.”

These are just a few of the early reviews. You can listen to how the play was made in a conversation between Nataliya Gumenyuk and director Josephine Burton — in our podcast When Everything Matters (while the episode is introduced in Ukrainian, the original English-language interview begins at 12:50).

We’ve also published a number of stories.
In The Atlantic essay, Nataliya Gumenyuk shares her reporting with drone pilots from three Ukrainian brigades in Kharkiv, Toretsk, and Pokrovsk regions — exploring how drones are reshaping military doctrines.

In a short piece for The Observer, testimonies collected by Viktoriia Balytska highlight how Russian troops in Kherson use drones to hunt civilians.

In Vox Europe, another report by Balytska (prepared as part of The Reckoning Project) investigates how Russian forces profit from unlawful detentions — including in the village of Kurortne, Zaporizhzhia. An earlier version of this text was pubished in Estonia’s Vikerkaar.

In Eurozine, journalist Angelina Kariakina examines Ukrainian fears and hopes around mobilization, based on our survey Mobilizing Minds and Hearts, conducted with the Kharkiv Institute for Social Research. She also reflects on what mobilization can and should look like in democratic societies.

In a Finnish-language article for AAMULEHTI, published as part of the Debates on Europe series marking the 50th anniversary of the Helsinki Accords and the founding of the OSCE, Nataliya Gumenyuk reminds readers of three Ukrainian OSCE Monitoring Mission staff members — Dmytro Shabanov, Maksym Petrov, and Vadym Holda. Despite their diplomatic immunity, they were detained in Donetsk and Luhansk after Russia’s full-scale invasion, sentenced to long prison terms, and transferred to Russian penal colonies.
(The article is available in English on our Life in War website.)

Throughout May, we actively participated in public discussions both in Ukraine and internationally — recordings are available online.

At the Lviv Media Forum, Angelina Kariakina spoke with Colombian war correspondent and France 24 Iran reporter Catalina Gomez in a public talk When Everything Matters: Keeping the Context Behind the Text — exploring how to tell stories about Ukraine and the world in a way which moves audiences.

A panel discussion From Wounds to Words: Reframing Narratives for Peace and Progress featured Rebecca Harms (Germany), Ray Hartley (South Africa), and Aida Čerkez (Bosnia), Angelina also moderated a presentation of a report by Truth Hounds and Reporters Without Borders on Russian attacks against hotels in Ukraine and their impact on journalists’ work.

At the Book Arsenal festival, Nataliya Gumenyuk joined Nobel laureate Oleksandra Matviichuk, American journalist Terrell Starr and Iranian translator Babak Vahedi to discuss why people from around the world can show solidarity with each other — instead of competing over whose suffering is greater.

On May 7, Nataliya participated in the United for Justice. United for Survivors international conference focused on coordinated investigations into war crimes and support for survivors.
We later joined a symposium by the INDEX Institute on Documentation and Engagement The Most Documented War: Activating Archives, which brought together experts from various documentation fields to reflect on how to combat fatigue and stay motivated.

During a diplomatic training course held in partnership with the Center of Excellence in Government Relations and the Hennadiy Udovenko Diplomatic Academy of Ukraine, we shared our experience of engaging global audiences.

Throughout this time, we’ve continued to work on our podcast When Everything Matters.
You can support it financially via LiqPay.

Recent conversations include:
— Gunvor Kronman, head of a Finnish-Swedish cooperation platform, on Finland’s total defense strategy and civil protection system (including bomb shelters and crisis simulation courses for CEOs);
— Natalia Antelava, co-founder of Coda, on the dysfunctional marriage between media and Big Tech — and why she no longer believes in media, but still believes in journalism;
— Bosnian journalist Aida Čerkez on the siege of Sarajevo, solidarity with Ukraine, and why holding a film festival during war is far more natural than having a war during a festival;

All podcast episodes are available at https://lifeinwar.com/en/podkasty

In July, together with the European journalism network n-ost, we launched an open call for journalists from Germany, Poland, France, and Ukraine to join the project Life Under Occupation. The program provides in-depth knowledge and resources to support safe, ethical, and nuanced reporting from Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories.

Stay tuned via our social media (Facebook | Instagram | X | YouTube).
You can support our work with any contribution here.

Wishing you a calm week,
Your Public Interest Journalism Lab (PIJL).

Hi, this is Zarina Mykytenko and the Public Interest Journalism Lab (PIJL).

From May 29 to June 28, the Arcola Theatre in London will host "The Reckoning", a documentary theatre performance by Dash Arts, based on testimonies of war crime survivors collected by our team in the Kyiv region, Mykolaiv region, and Kramatorsk. Directed by Josephine Burton, playwright by Anastasiia Kosodii. On June 2nd, Nataliya Gumenyuk will join the post-show conversation with the director.

On Palm Sunday, April 13th, two Russian Iskander missiles struck central Sumy, killing 35 people and injuring over 125, marking the deadliest attack on the city in the three years of full-scale invasion. Our dispatch “Sumy attack: Burying loved ones, instead of Easter preparations” by Ghanna Mamonova and Anna Tsygyma was published in major outlets in Argentina, South Korea, Poland, Moldova (including in Russian), and in South Africa and Nigeria (in English). The text and video are also available in Ukrainian..

On April 24, Kyiv experienced one of this year's deadliest attacks. Over 200 missiles and drones targeted locations across the whole Ukraine. Nataliya Gumenyuk's column in The Guardian explains why providing Ukraine with ammunition and air defense systems is both a critical component of U.S. military assistance and a bargaining chip in the so-called negotiations.

Using evidence collected by The Reckoning Project, PIJL’s legal team submitted input for the report of the UN Independent Expert on the enjoyment of all human rights by older persons on older persons in armed conflict and peacebuilding. This input is addressing the key challenges, elderly people are facing during the Russian full-scale invasion in Ukraine, according to the testimonies collected by our team.

We’d also like to highlight a two-part long-read series on Ukraine's drone industry produced by Taiwanese journalist Jason Liu during his PIJL-invited visit to Ukraine. His reporting generated significant interest in Taiwan. The first article deals with supply chain, and the second is on drone defense (In Chinese).

At the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, we initiated two discussions that are available online. In the "Justice as a Process" panel, Angelina Kariakina, Nataliya Gumenyuk, and Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma researcher Gavin Rees discussed rethinking human rights journalism in a polarized world, trauma-sensitive journalism, and its role in helping survivors.

We also dedicated a panel, "Abducted, Tortured, Disappeared" to our colleague Viktoria Roshchyna, captured in the occupied territories and killed in Russian captivity. A joint investigation, “Vika’s last assignment” by Slidstvo.Info, Graty and Reporters without borders, uncovers the journalist’s route in the occupied territories, her assignment and the conditions of her captivity in the Russian prison in Taganrog, provided by her former cellmate.

In collaboration with the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, human rights advocates, and war crimes investigators, we discussed ongoing efforts to support victims in the third year of the war. Additionally, on April 29, we participated in the symposium "Russia’s War on Ukraine: Accountability and Disinformation in a Turbulent World," organized by The Reckoning Project and the Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies.

We recommend the latest episodes of our podcast "When Everything Matters", featuring:

• French political scientist Marie Mendras on why Putin cannot negotiate;

• French philosopher Olivier Roy discussing cultural crises, reconnecting society to reality, and the need for social bonds amid political insanity;

• We particularly highlight the episode on Syria after Assad (only in Ukrainian), following Nataliya Gumenyuk’s visit to Damascus and Douma.

Until mid-May, you can pre-order "On Their Own Skin: Stories Told by Survivors", a book by our journalist Svitlana Oslavska. It is a collection of personal accounts of life under occupation (in Ukrainian).

As we're delighted to partner with the Lviv Media Forum every year. On May 15, Angelina Kariakina will join the discussion "From Wounds to Words: Rethinking Narratives for Peace and Progress," and on May 16, she will lead a public talk with Colombian journalist Catalina Gómez: "When Everything Matters: Keeping Context Behind the Text." Panels will be streamed online in English.

On May 17, Nataliya Gumenyuk will participate in "After the Final Act. What’s Next? A New Order for Europe (and the World)" at the "Debates on Europe", marking the 50th anniversary of the Helsinki Accords in Helsinki.

Follow more news on journalism, justice, war, and memory through our social media channels (Facebook | Instagram | X | YouTube).

Wishing you a peaceful week,
Your Public Interest Journalism Lab (PIJL)

Hi, this is Zarina Mykytenko and Public Interest Journalism Lab (PIJL).

Over the past month, we’ve all been following the news about the so-called negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, initiated under US mediation. Amid all the talk about a pragmatic ceasefire, far less attention has been paid to the fate of Ukrainians living under Russian control, and to how Russia continues to instrumentalize the occupation to advance its militarization. This includes how it has used the territories seized after 2014 as a kind of testing ground for the full-scale war, effectively drafting a manual for its methods.

This is the subject of a recent article by Nataliya Gumenyuk in the spring issue of Foreign Affairs, as well as an episode of the magazine’s podcast.

We’ve also been regularly commenting on the development of US-Ukraine relations for international media, including CNN. For a more detailed account of Ukraine’s reaction to the temporary pause in US aid, see our material in The Guardian.

On February 17, the world premiere of Special Operation, a documentary by filmmaker Oleksiy Radynski and producer Liuba Knorozok, took place at the Berlin International Film Festival. The film is based on footage from surveillance cameras at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant during its occupation in 2022. You can read a review in one of Germany’s major outlets and on the website of the International Documentary Association.

On 26 March in The Hague, journalist and war crimes documenter Svitlana Oslavska presented three short documentaries from The Reckoning Project: The Worst Days of My Life. Yahidne, Big Water, and Chornobyl 22. The screening was followed by a discussion on the role of testimony in documenting war and environmental crimes.

We took part in one of the world’s largest human rights conferences — RightsCon 2025 — which was held this year in Taipei. There, we initiated a panel titled Rethinking Human Rights Journalism in a Polarized World, inviting colleagues from Mexico, South Korea, and Taiwan. The recording of that discussion is available here.

While in Taiwan, we also hosted a workshop titled Democratic Resilience to analyze and share joint practices of democratic governance that strengthen societal resilience, and to present our findings on Ukraine’s mobilization experience based on our research, with participation from key Taiwanese experts, think tanks, journalists, activists, and human rights defenders. Among them were The Prospect Foundation, IORG, Forward Alliance, Kuma Academy, Doublethink Lab, the Digital Diplomacy Lab, Taiwan’s Ministry of Digital Affairs, and the Digital Security Lab. We’re grateful to the Liberal Democratic League of Ukraine for their support.

On February 24, marking the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion, we partnered with New Bloom Magazine to screen several of our documentaries at their Daybreak space. The films covered the occupation of Yahidne, the Kremenchuk missile strike, the deportation of children from Mariupol, and the work of journalists under occupation.

As part of the g0v hackath65n, Nataliya Gumenyuk delivered a lecture on Ukraine’s resilience experience for activists from Taiwan and Hong Kong, and screened documentaries on war crimes committed during Russia’s invasion. She also presented The Hospital That Was Taken Hostage, a film about doctors working under occupation in Snihurivka, Mykolaiv region, to medical students at the Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU).

We also released podcast episodes featuring Audrey Tang, Taiwan’s first Minister of Digital Affairs, on how online technologies can foster social cohesion and counter polarization, and with Ttcat, co-founder and director of Doublethink Lab, about the main narratives of Chinese propaganda within Taiwan.

In March, we invited well-known Taiwanese journalist Jason Liu to Ukraine. His first reports from Ukraine include interviews with Oleksandra Ustinova and Pavlo Klimkin, as well as reflections on the peace negotiations. While in Kyiv, he also met with Ukrainian journalists and experts to discuss how democracy has become the foundation of Taiwan’s sovereignty.

We continue our collaboration with international journalists, including organizing a visit by war correspondent Patrícia Campos Mello from Folha de S.Paulo, Latin America’s largest newspaper. This time, together with Nataliya Gumenyuk, she traveled to northern Kharkiv region, as well as the Kostiantynivka and Pokrovsk directions. Her coverage includes stories about drone warfare, underground schools in Kharkiv region, and an interview with Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha. You can hear more in our When Everything Matters podcast.

For our podcast listeners, we’d like to highlight several episodes:

A discussion with Professor Phillips O’Brien on how wars are changing, and the role of Europe in supporting Ukraine, featuring Sylvie Kauffmann, editor at Le Monde. Also, a conversation about the investigation into the disappearance of our colleague Viktoriia Roshchyna in the occupied territories, with the author of the film Vika’s Last Assignment, Yanina Korniienko (Slidstvo.Info). Angelina Kariakina contributed to this film. In April, at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, our team initiated a dedicated discussion on Viktoriia’s case. Also on the agenda is our presentation Justice as a Process, featuring trauma researcher Gavin Rees.

Our podcast does not receive dedicated funding, so we welcome any support you can offer.

We’ve processed 890 applications submitted to the Voices of Ukraine project, and have selected 59 media outlets to receive fellowships of 2 to 6 months, supported by the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF). In making our decisions, we prioritised the work of local newspapers and online media in frontline regions of Ukraine, as well as national editorial teams producing original, public interest content.

You can follow more news about justice, war crimes, freedom of speech, and our audience engagement efforts on our social media (Facebook | Instagram | X | YouTube).

Wishing you a calm and peaceful week,
Yours,
Public Interest Journalism Lab (PIJL)

Hi, this is Zarina Mykytenko from the Public Interest Journalism Lab (PIJL).

On February 16, the world premiere of the documentary "Special Operation" by Oleksiy Radynski and Lyuba Knorozok, which explores the occupation of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, will take place at the Berlinale Film Festival. As part of the Forum Expanded program, the film will have three screenings:

• Sunday, 16.02.2025, 21:00 – Betonhalle cinema at Silent Green

• Tuesday, 18.02.2025, 12:30 – Arsenal 1 at Arsenal Berlin

• Sunday, 23.02.2025, 14:00 – Betonhalle cinema at Silent Green

The film was created as part of The Reckoning Project.

We began the year by hosting the workshop "How the World Commemorates War Crimes and Violence." Together with leaders from key institutions in South Korea, South Africa, and Argentina, we discussed best practices for preserving memory, including how to preserve the memory of crimes while wars and conflicts continue, what role victims should play in creating memorials, what should and should not be done, and why. How do we develop memorials so that society accepts them while avoiding politicization and polarization in memory policies? The English recording of the workshop can be viewed at this link.

In January, we participated in discussions within the YOUR COUNTRY FIRST — WIN WITH US space in Davos during the World Economic Forum. Recordings of the discussions can be viewed here:

• Tectonic Shift? What A New US and Europe Mean for Ukraine

• Food Security in the Changing Times

• A World War Ukraine Must Win

• The Stakes of the War: What Can History Tell Us?

Taking advantage of the invitation to the Hay Festival Cartagena de Indias 2025 in Colombia, where Nataliya Gumenyuk took part in two discussions on the challenges and future of democracy in the world, we made several stops and, in collaboration with the Ukrainian embassy, screened our films in the capital of Peru, Lima, as well as at the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana in Medellín and Universidad de La Sabana in Bogotá, Colombia. Together with the Auguanta Ucrania campaign, we held a discussion at the Universidad Des Los Andes in Bogotá.

We have launched a new season of the podcast "When Everything Matters."

(The podcasts were recorded in English, but the introduction is in Ukrainian. If you'd like to listen, the English version begins at the timestamp indicated in the description)

• Bulgarian political analyst Ivan Krastev spoke about how Donald Trump has changed, what is happening with the plans announced by the American president for his negotiations with the Kremlin, why it is not worth looking for coherency in the actions of various groups in Trump’s team, the role of Europe for Ukraine, the influence of Elon Musk, and the ambitions of Viktor Orban. (English starts at 7:15)

• One of the most renowned international journalists and a contributor to The New Yorker, Jon Lee Anderson, spoke about his latest assignment in Syria, what is happening with Russian troops there, how to build relations between Ukraine and Latin America, and his meeting with Argentina’s President Javier Milei. (English starts at 9:15)

• The most famous Mexican-American TV host Jorge Ramos discussed why almost half of Spanish-speaking voters supported Trump, how his actions could push Latin America toward China and Russia, and whether the US president really wants to control the Panama Canal. (English starts at 9:48)

For the third year in a row, in collaboration with the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF), we administer the "Voices of Ukraine" support program for journalists and local media, funded by the German Foreign Ministry. This includes scholarships of up to 900 euros for journalists and local newsrooms, including those from frontline and de-occupied territories. Right after we reviewed nearly 400 applications received in January, we learned about the suspension of US-funded programs worldwide. Therefore, instead of announcing results, we decided to hold a new competition; the deadline is February 10, 2025, within which we will also consider new applications. See the application form and more information at the link.

Over the five years of the PIJL’s existence, funding from the US government (USAID, State Department, NED) has been key to our work. This year, we were able to start with funding from private foreign foundations. Thus, the reduction in US aid has not critically affected us, but future projects we planned for the second half of this year are now under threat.

Until now, we have not asked for help, but we would be grateful for any support https://www.journlab.online/en/donations

At the end of February, we will participate in the world’s largest human rights conference, RightsCon, which this year will be held in Taipei, where we will present the discussion "Rethinking Human Rights Journalism in a Polarized World" with our colleagues from South Korea and Mexico. During our stay in Taiwan, we will also join the g0v hackath65n Ordinary Life with Freedom Hackathon for participants from Taiwan and Hong Kong, dedicated to digital resilience "David vs. Goliath: The Power of Democracies," organizing screenings of our films and a roundtable discussion.

Also, on February 24, the third anniversary of the full-scale invasion, at the Daybreak space, we will screen our films about the occupation of Yahidne, the shelling of Kremenchuk, the deportation of children from Mariupol, and the work of journalists under occupation. The screening will be accompanied by a discussion with key journalists from Taiwan and Hong Kong. Meanwhile, on February 27 in Taipei, we are also organizing our workshop "The Resilience of Democracies," bringing together key Taiwanese think tanks, security experts, activists, and human rights defenders to share Ukraine’s experience and discuss tools that democratic societies can use to counter internal and external threats.

Expect many of our materials in February and March for the third anniversary of the full-scale invasion — featured in global media and on our Ukrainian-language platform Life in War.

More news on justice, war crimes, freedom of speech, and audience engagement can be found on our social media (Facebook | Instagram | X | YouTube).

Wishing you a peaceful week, Your Public Interest Journalism Lab (PIJL).

Hi, this is Zarina Mykytenko and the Public Interest Journalism Lab (PIJL). Thank you for your attention, cooperation, and engagement this year. We look forward to even more effective collaboration and mutual support in the coming year.

This is our third newsletter, summarizing December while also reflecting on the key milestones of 2024.

In the last month of the year, we participated in a webinar initiated by South Korean human rights activists. We discussed the role of North Korea's military in the war against Ukraine and ways the international community can increase pressure on both North Korea and Russia. For the 30th anniversary of the Budapest Memorandum, we were invited by the Ukrainian Institute in London to moderate a discussion on the lessons the world should draw from this agreement. At the Museum of Image and Sound in São Paulo, Brazil, we screened documentaries about the occupation of the village of Yahidne and the deportation of children from Mariupol to Russia. We also continued to follow how Ukraine is navigating relations with Donald Trump’s team and what the stance is on potential negotiations with the Kremlin. More on this in Nataliya Gumenyuk’s article for the British outlet Prospect.

In 2024, PIJL organized and held 20 lectures at universities and think tanks worldwide, from Argentina to Korea. We hosted 25 film screenings across 15 countries—from Denmark and the United States to Mexico and South Africa—and participated in 53 public events in Ukraine and abroad. These included the International Journalism Festival in Perugia and UNESCO's World Press Freedom Day in Santiago, where we focused on drawing attention to war crimes and the resilience of Ukraine.

As part of The Reckoning Project, we documented 110 testimonies of war crimes, including unlawful detention and torture, double-tap airstrikes, attacks on civilian infrastructure, deportations, and drone targeting of civilians.

One of the key milestones of the year was filing a criminal complaint to the Federal Court of Argentina on behalf of a Ukrainian victim of torture in Russian-occupied territories. This was accompanied by a series of publications in Argentinian media about the systematic nature of Russian torture and the challenges Ukrainian law enforcement faces.

Our legal colleagues also prepared a report titled “Propaganda, Impunity, Destruction, and Repetition: Russia's Violations of International Law in Chechnya, Syria, and Ukraine.” The report was presented, with Angelina Kariakina's involvement, to the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation, and guarantees of non-recurrence.

If you missed it earlier, we recommend watching our documentary “Big Water” on the consequences of the destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant (available with English subtitles) and reading article in New Lines Magazine (in English) or Topos (in German).
We also reported on the occupation of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant for The Atlantic, Russian prisons and torture chambers in Crimea for Vanity Fair, and families seeking justice for their deceased loved ones in The Los Angeles Times. In media materials for Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe, we highlighted how the attack on the children’s hospital Ohmatdyt is part of Russia’s tactic of targeting medical facilities. Additionally, we facilitated visits of journalists from Mexico and Argentina to Ukraine. Their articles in Spanish can be found here, here, here, and here.

Beyond articles, testimonies collected by director Oleksiy Radynski, which became part of the short film “Chornobyl 22” (with English subtitles), also formed the basis for historian Serhii Plokhy's new book “Chornobyl Roulette.”

Looking ahead to 2025, we plan to premiere Oleksiy Radynski's feature-length documentary on the occupation of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 2022, created in collaboration with the Kinotron Group, and Angelina Kariakina’s film “Mariupol-Aleppo-Grozny” about hospital bombings as a wartime tactic. We also anticipate a documentary play by London's Dash Arts, based on our testimonies.

This year, PIJL resumed sociological research. Together with the Kharkiv Institute for Social Research and scholar Yaroslava Barbieri, we conducted a qualitative study titled “Mobilising hearts and minds in wartime: Ukrainians’ concerns and hopes about military service.”

Throughout the year, we produced content for our platforms, creating 50 episodes of the podcast “When Everything Matters.” We developed the “Life of War” YouTube channel and website. Highlights include our research on why widows of fallen soldiers hesitate to have children posthumously, whether Ukraine can meet its prosthetics needs, and how deaf Ukrainians are de-Russifying sign language.

Thank you for being with us this year. We’ll strive to be even more helpful in the future.

For now, we announce a workshop on January 14th titled “Preserving the Memories of Ongoing and Recent Violence: The Best Global Practices of Memorialization.” It will feature top experts and practitioners from South Korea, Mexico, South Africa, Chile, and Guatemala discussing challenges and innovative approaches to memory preservation. You can register via this link.

Stay updated on news about justice, war crimes, freedom of speech, and audience engagement on our social media (Facebook | Instagram | X | YouTube).

Wishing you a Happy New Year and a swift victory,
Your Public Interest Journalism Lab (PIJL).

Hello, this is Zarina Mykytenko and the Public Interest Journalism Lab (PIJL). Welcome to the first issue of our newsletter.

We’ll start with today’s extraordinary news: our director and co-founder, Nataliya Gumenyuk, has been awarded the Press Freedom Award by Reporters Without Borders in the “Impact” category. Nataliya was also recognized for her work on documenting crimes to preserve evidence for use in legal processes within The Reckoning Project. At the award ceremony in Washington on December 3, Nataliya emphasized that this recognition serves as a reminder of the persecution of Ukrainian journalists under occupation.

Here's the full text of her speech.

We also presented the documentary Access to Information, created as part of The Reckoning Project. The film tells the story of our colleagues who were imprisoned –investigative journalist Oleh Baturyn from Kakhovka and reporter Angela Slobodyan from Kherson. The film premiered earlier this year at UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day. English subtitles are available.

In November, we marked the second anniversary of Kherson’s liberation. To commemorate this, as part of the Life in War project, we created a film about one of Ukraine’s most destroyed villages, Posad-Pokrovske, located on the border of the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions. In 2022, Posad-Pokrovske was at the epicenter of heavy fighting. Once one of the wealthiest villages in the region with nearly 2,500 residents, not a single building remains intact. Yet, people are returning home. Our director Anna Tsyhyma followed efforts to rebuild life there. Watch the film Home is Home on YouTube. English subtitles are available.

On the 11th anniversary of the Revolution of Dignity, we gave public lectures on justice during wartime at Oxford University and in Berlin as part of the event At the End of Time organized by Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung. PIJL co-founder Angelina Kariakina spoke about the Maidan shootings case as an example of the resilience of Ukraine’s judiciary and civil society, and its connection to current events during Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Amid North Korea's military support of Russia in the war against Ukraine – including sending 12,000 troops alongside weapons – Nataliya Gumenyuk worked in South Korea. At the invitation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, she presented our experience documenting war crimes. She also gave lectures at Yonsei University, Hankuk University, and Korea University, where we screened films on Russian war crimes, and held a briefing for Korean human rights advocates. After this visit, South Korean activists working on North Korean human rights issues asked us to share an open letter addressed to North Korean soldiers joining Russian forces. The letter is based on powerful questions: “Why are you pointing weapons at Ukrainians defending their land? What wrong have Ukrainians done to Koreans? Why are you fighting battles even Russian soldiers avoid?” Here's the original letter with an English translation. Before that, an interview was published in the influential Korean weekly Chosun.

We also visited South Africa for the International Assembly of the World Movement for Democracy from November 20-22, where we showcased our films about Yahidne, the Snigurivka hospital, the Kremenchuk missile strike, an investigation into the aftermath of the explosion at the Kakhovka Dam, and the deportation of children from Mariupol at the independent cinema Bioscope. In Johannesburg, we met with key editors and researchers at the Holocaust and Genocide Centre. In Pretoria, with support from Ukraine’s Embassy in South Africa, we held a screening and discussion for African ambassadors.

South Africa remains a key country on the continent. Learn more in our podcast episode with prominent South African editor Mondli Makhanya. Last year, Mondli visited Ukraine as part of our Connecting Continents project. The podcast intro is recorded in Ukrainian, but the conversation in English begins at the 11th minute on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube

We continue producing content for Ukrainian audiences in Ukrainian. This includes an episode of When Everything Matters featuring our close colleague, human rights defender Maksym Butkevych, who was recently released after spending two years in Russian captivity.

As part of the Life and War project, we published an article on how the war affects Ukrainian teenagers. Our journalist, Hanna Mamonova, shared in her interview with Babel how she transforms stories of torture and abduction into narratives that inspire strength to move forward.

In English, you can read Nataliya Gumenyuk’s article in Foreign Affairs about the impact of U.S. elections on the war in Ukraine.

You can follow more news on justice, war crimes, freedom of speech, and engaging with audiences on our social media platforms (Facebook | Instagram | X | YouTube).

Wishing you a peaceful week,
Your Public Interest Journalism Lab.

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