The fight for full press freedom in Ukraine: ‘We can write what we want, but bad actors try to intimidate us’
Kyiv Independent’s Olga Rudenko is set on telling the truth in wartime, despite clumsy instances of state harassment
For Olga Rudenko, the editor of the Kyiv Independent, journalism is not just a profession but a moral imperative. “Our soldiers in the frontline are fighting for Ukraine to define its own future,” she says. “They are fighting for Ukraine not to be Russia; Russia is associated with no freedom of speech, no freedom of media, no freedom whatever.
“If they are dying, we should be using those rights.”
This is more than a simple call for Ukrainian reporters to write as they see fit. Rudenko is speaking out against a clumsy campaign of intimidation of journalists that began last autumn, in which staff at the English-language title have been subject, she says, to “undue interest” from the country’s SBU intelligence service.
The Kyiv Independent is the country’s best known English-language title in a free, vigorous and largely online news market. But, Rudenko adds, “since October-November, a lot of newsrooms started feeling pressure at a time when some people began to think there might be elections”. (Elections in Ukraine are suspended under martial law and, despite that autumn speculation, there are no plans to hold them.)
