Kyiv Independent editor says popular war stories must not crowd out harder news

Kyiv Independent editor Olga Rudenko said in an interview published on 1 October that the Ukraine-based newsroom must cover Russian attacks, Russian military gains and Ukrainian corruption even when its readers show more interest in Ukrainian strikes on Russia. Her account, given to The Guardian, describes how audience preferences can put pressure on a news organisation covering a war in which its own country is fighting.

Rudenko said many of the outlet’s most-read stories concern Ukrainian deep-strike attacks inside Russia. Reports about attacks on Ukraine draw less interest, she said. That difference matters to the picture readers see if editors give the most prominent space to the stories attracting the most attention.

Why Rudenko raised the balance of war coverage

Rudenko recalled a newsroom conversation after someone observed that the website one morning was full of stories about Ukrainian attacks on Russian Wildberries warehouses. She told The Guardian that such a selection misrepresented the wider picture unless it was balanced with enough reporting on attacks against Ukraine. The example was about the mix of stories presented to readers; the interview did not provide a count of articles published on either subject.

The editor said people ‘really want Russia to suffer’ and are drawn to reports of ‘something going boom’. But, she said, the Kyiv Independent has a duty ‘not just to feed them more of what they like’. She also argued that the outlet could not become propagandistic by marginalising Russian military successes or reducing its reporting on Ukrainian corruption because those subjects were less popular.

What audience research says about popular stories

A Reuters Institute study offers context for the tension Rudenko described. Its researchers examined how people choose news in an environment with many competing sources. They found that clicks, shares and likes reveal which stories attract attention, but say little on their own about why people choose them or how news fits into their lives. That limits what editors can infer from a list of popular stories.

The study drew on interviews and a story-sorting exercise with 24 people around Oxford, UK, in 2018. It identified relevance to people’s lives as a central factor in news choices. The researchers also warned that most-read lists can put exceptional hits in the foreground while overlooking smaller stories that still draw substantial audiences. Their findings concern news consumption generally; the participants were not Kyiv Independent readers.

That research cannot measure the difference between the Kyiv Independent’s readership for reports on strikes into Russia and reports on attacks against Ukraine. Rudenko described that difference in her interview, but the cited material includes no audience data or independent audit from the publication. Her account establishes the editorial concern she raised, not its precise scale.

A growing reader-funded newsroom

Rudenko told The Guardian that the Kyiv Independent relies on monthly reader contributions. According to figures she gave in the interview, membership rose from 14,000 at the start of 2025 to 25,500 a year later and 36,000 at the time she spoke. She said most members paid $5 a month. Those figures are attributed to her; the interview does not establish how membership affects individual editorial decisions.

She said the growth had allowed staff numbers to reach 99 and the outlet to move to larger offices. The Guardian reported that Rudenko was due to host a live storytelling event in London on Friday, 2 October, with reporters including frontline correspondent Francis Farrell. The event was presented as a chance for reporters to share their experiences of covering Ukraine; it was still forthcoming when the interview was published.

Reporting on Ukraine’s own political pressures

The interview also addressed subjects Rudenko said the newsroom should not avoid. She told The Guardian that Ukrainian reporters could write without fearing immediate consequences, but that she would struggle to say press freedom had improved. She pointed to a concentration of power around President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and said he had not held a press conference for independent Ukrainian media since February 2025.

Rudenko also discussed the attempted change to two Ukrainian anti-corruption agencies, which The Guardian reported was reversed after public protests. Her comments place domestic scrutiny alongside battlefield reporting in her description of the outlet’s work. Whether its coverage achieves the balance she calls for would require a separate examination of its output; the interview offers her account of the standard she wants the newsroom to uphold.