November 9, 2021.
OTTAWA, ON. The Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) is concerned by the recent wholesale dismissal of Kyiv Post staff, signaling the effective closure of the independent Ukrainian newspaper.
The announcement was made in a November 8 statement published by recently dismissed Kyiv Post staff.
The statement reads, in part:
We consider the cessation of publication and the dismissal of the paper’s staff to be an act of vengeance by Adnan Kivan. He has officially announced plans to ‘reorganize’ the Kyiv Post and to restart operations in a month with a new team. We see this as the owner getting rid of inconvenient, fair and honest journalists. […] We have exemplified high professional and ethical standards. That is why every president and government in Ukraine’s history attempted to influence the Kyiv Post. However, even under all this pressure, none of our owners went so far as to shut down the paper. Adnan Kivan himself promised to protect our editorial independence when he bought the Kyiv Post in 2018. Today, we asked him to sell the paper or to hand over the Kyiv Post trademark to the newsroom. He did not agree.
There is a dearth of reliable and objective English-language news coverage of events in Ukraine. This problem has become all the more evident since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014, as many Western news outlets continued to report on events in Ukraine from their offices in Moscow.
The Kyiv Post was one of the few English-language news sources in Ukraine that could be depended upon for accuracy, timeliness, and impartiality. The Kyiv Post’s closure will also make it more difficult for English-speaking friends of Ukraine and English-language decisionmakers to receive accurate news on Ukraine. In the longer term, this will serve to undermine Ukraine’s continued integration with Western political and security structures.
The UCC remains hopeful that a solution can be found to ensure that the independence of the newsroom and editorial policy of the Kyiv Post is protected, and that the newspaper continues to publish in accordance with the high standard to which it has adhered in the past. The UCC is ready to support efforts to find such a solution.