independentjournalism on the ukrainian battlefield? olga rudenko in kyiv, welcome to hardtalk. well, stephen, thank you for having me. it s a great pleasure to have you on the show. just a short time ago, you reflected with time magazine on the impact of what is now a six month long war that you have lived through, you ve experienced. you said, none of us are the same people. we may look the same on the outside, but on the inside, we have changed.
water volumes along the yangtze river are currently at their lowest ever levels. now on bbc news, it s hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk, i m stephen sackur. for six months now, ukraine has been a nation at war, the government and people united in a conviction that they are fighting for freedom. but in the face of the existential threat posed by putin s invasion, has ukraine stayed true to the democratic values it loudly proclaims? well, my guest is olga rudenko, the editor of the kyiv independent, a news organisation committed to reporting from ukraine without fear or favour. but is there room for
so, you re right to say that the kyiv independent was a baby. we were only three months old when it started. but at the same time, we were coming from a very special background that empowered us to do what we re doing today. and that background was a different newspaper in ukraine that was called kyiv post, where most of us worked at before november 2021 for a long time. i was there for ten years personally. and it was also. just to interrupt you for a second, olga, some people watching this and listening will not know that you and all the other editorial staff were fired from the kyiv post in the autumn of 2021, that that newspaper, the proprietor, chose to go in a very different direction. it seemed he wanted a less confrontational newspaper. he said that he wanted more positive news from ukraine, less investigation, so you guys between you, the fired staff set up the kyiv independent
a message to the general chat, basically saying goodbye to us, because russians were apparently entering the village where her family was based. i think we are far from understanding still what consequences it s going to have on our lives and we re trying to cope with it the best way we can. one consequence, olga, may be that you have had to jettison the foundation values that you had when you created the kyiv independent because, as i ve already said, you and your fellow journalists were committed to reporting on ukraine without fear or favour. you had a reputation for digging into corruption scandals and challenging and holding the government to account. but now, of course, you re in wartime. and i wonder whether you would acknowledge to me that your values are fundamentally changed. in the weeks after the war, you said this we are only reporting on the war now. no other stories, no
independent, a news organisation committed to reporting from ukraine without fear or favour. but is there room for independentjournalism on the ukrainian battlefield? olga rudenko in kyiv, welcome to hardtalk. well, stephen, thank you for having me. it s a great pleasure to have you on the show. just a short time ago, you reflected with time magazine on the impact of what is now a six month long war that you have lived through, you ve experienced.