66 TIME May 23/May 30, 2022

LeadersGeneration Next

THE STAFF OF THE KYIV INDEPENDENT KNEW WAR WAS

coming. They had spent long days in February reporting on an

invasion that high-level sources had told them was imminent.

Editor in chief Olga Rudenko and the other senior editors had

consulted with the outlet’s two dozen or so staff members to

make sure each had an evacuation plan and had withdrawn

cash so they could keep operating if the banks closed. They

had handed over passwords and instructions to contacts in

North America on how to keep their website online in case

their internet was knocked out. And yet as Russian President

Vladimir Putin declared a “special military operation” in the

early hours of Feb. 24, none of them could quite believe what

was happening. “We thought they would try to take more ter-

ritory in eastern Ukraine,” says Rudenko. “Not that it would

be a full-fledged war.”

In the days and weeks to come, the Kyiv Independent

would become the world’s primary source for reliable

English- language journalism on that war. Just three days in,

its Twitter following had grown from 30,000 to 1 million;

it now has more than 2 million. In both its newfound influ-

ence and the widespread support it received—a crowdfund-

ing campaign has raised nearly $2 million to keep the plat-

form going—the transformation has been extraordinary. The

Kyiv Independent had launched a mere 14 weeks before the

invasion—after a scandal over journalistic independence at

UKRAINE

Olga Rudenko

Giving the world

a window into war

BY LISA ABEND

PHOTOGRAPH BY ALEXANDER CHEKMENEV FOR TIME