BBC Senior Journalist Yana Lyushnevskaya Analyzes the State of the Media in War-torn Ukraine

By Nayan Seth, MGA 2024 Candidate, The Fletcher School

Since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war in February 2022, the media landscape in the country has undergone a dramatic shift. On March 28, 2024, the Fletcher Eurasia Club hosted Yana Lyushnevskaya, the deputy editor-in-chief of the Kyiv bureau of BBC Monitoring, to discuss the current media environment and the future of independent media amid the ongoing Russian aggression over lunch. The conversation covered the challenges of maintaining media independence during wartime and the role of social media in shaping public perception. 

After the event, Lyushnevskaya sat down for an interview with the Fletcher Russia and Eurasia Program to share her views and analysis on the state of the Ukrainian media. The excerpts of the interview below have been edited for clarity.

NS: When the full-scale Russian invasion began in 2022, there was a lot of online misinformation. The discourse on the English language social media websites was divided into pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian camps. How did you evaluate the nature of the information operations when the war began?

YL: Since 2014, the Ukrainian government has worked really hard to find efficient ways to tackle disinformation. So, for example, we have had a lot of initiatives, fact-checking organizations, and websites specifically focused on debunking fake news, mostly but not only from the Russian media. 

By 2022, there was already an understanding of how you could deal with the issue. The audiences were also a lot more prepared for this onslaught of disinformation because we were there in 2014 when we had crazy stories from the Russian state media about a boy being crucified in the Donetsk region by Ukrainian Nazis. So, it was not exactly a surprise. There was quite a bit of resilience already developed in the Ukrainian media sector in general, and that made things easier when dealing with that initial flow of disinformation and various kinds of hostile narratives.

NS: Within Ukraine, what pressures and challenges are independent media journalists facing while covering the ongoing war?

YL: Online, there are a large number of Ukrainian media journalists who are working hard to carry out independent reporting. We have had some popular publications exposing corruption; there are investigative journalists trained to deal with that particular kind of story. They are often funded by the West in an effort to bring Ukraine closer to European standards for a potential European Union accession. And [journalists] still do a lot of this hugely important work. For example, there was a story from early 2023 about corruption in the procurement of food for the Ukrainian military. There is always tension for journalists when they unearth those stories, but there is also an understanding that this coverage is more necessary than ever because Ukraine will struggle to win the war if money is being stolen from the military. 

But of course, not everyone is happy that those stories get covered. And in the past few months, we saw quite a bit of pressure against those independent journalists. For example, in January, the author of the story about corruption in food procurement was harassed at his apartment. That is concerning, but at the same time, I think it is important to understand that independent reporting is more critical than ever for a country at war.

NS: As a Ukrainian journalist, what are your views about the Western media coverage of the war? Many Western journalists are deployed in the country for a few months, and then they leave, whereas the Ukrainian journalists continue to live there and report on the war.  

YL: I definitely share that perception. So much of Western coverage of Ukraine was done by people who did not speak Ukrainian or even Russian. For many years, Ukraine was covered by correspondents based in Moscow. There was this idea that if you can speak Russian and can cover Russia, then automatically that makes you an expert in not just Ukraine, but the rest of the former Soviet Union. 

It is changing now a little bit. For example, most of the bureaus in Moscow have been closed, because it is impossible to do independent journalism there. Many Western publications have either opened bureaus in Kyiv or expanded them. So hopefully there will be some improvements. 

The biggest concern among Ukrainian journalists, and I guess Ukrainians in general, is how to keep the attention on the war in Ukraine. Especially with the Gaza conflict escalating in the past few months, it’s becoming much harder to keep the West interested, focused, and involved.