Eastern Ukraine Unfiltered · Global Voices

The flags of Ukraine, the Donetsk People's Republic, and the Russian Federation.
Traditional journalism in eastern Ukraine, where Russia now claims sovereignty over Crimea and a rebel militia controls Lugansk and Donetsk, has become incredibly difficult. In the first six months of 2014, Ukraine was the most dangerous place in the world for journalists. There have been more fatalities recorded among reporters in Ukraine than in Syria or Iraq. Coupled with a concerted media war between Kyiv, the West, and Moscow, it has become progressively difficult to separate fact from fiction when reading about events in Ukraine.
Against this background, local bloggers and citizen journalists have become an important resource for discovering and verifying information in eastern Ukraine. Throughout this area, where Internet users are overwhelmingly Russian speaking, netizens have actively reported on things they have witnessed and issues that concern them.
Global Voices is proud to present “Eastern Ukraine Unfiltered,” a series of interviews conducted by Daniel Kennedy with eastern Ukraine’s most noteworthy bloggers, citizen journalists, and active social media users. The subjects of this project include Internet users of various political stripes. Kennedy speaks to individuals throughout eastern Ukraine, in an attempt to find out what motivates them, how they perceive their roles online, and how they view mainstream media coverage coming out of Moscow, Kyiv, and the West.
“Eastern Ukraine Unfiltered” offers a glimpse into an increasingly important and little examined section of Russian-language Internet. This page will be updated as RuNet Echo publishes new interviews in the series.
What we do: Global Voices reporters cover how citizens use the Internet and social media to make their voices heard, often translating from and to different languages.