The State Duma, the lower chamber of Russia's parliament, passed a bill on June 10 to create a new messaging app, the so-called "national messenger," the Duma's press service reported, as the Kremlin tries to reduce its dependency on WhatsApp and Telegram

The new app "combines the features of a messenger and the functions of government services," a statement read.

The news comes as Russia tries to reduce citizens' access to foreign messengers and other online services in favor of domestic applications.

The new online platform is needed to increase "the availability of governmental services" and "strengthen the protection of information exchanged among users," according to the bill.

The new application will be integrated into Russian state and municipal databases, and private information can be transferred with the user's consent, particularly for "identification, signing contracts, paying for services or goods."

Documents submitted through the "national messenger" will be equated to paper originals. The system will also allow users to certify documents with their electronic signatures.

The Russian messenger will include all "educational services and chats that educational institutions of all levels currently use."

The Russian government will choose a company to develop the application.

In March 2022, the Russian government blocked Facebook and Instagram. Two years later, Russia's communications regulator, Roskomnadzor, announced the blocking of Viber and Signal apps.

The Russian government is also considering blocking WhatsApp, an app owned by Meta, a company labeled as an "extremist organization" in Russia.

In July 2024, Russia's communications regulator, Roskomnadzor, began throttling YouTube speeds, initially blaming technical issues caused by wear and tear on Google's servers. Google dismissed the claim, while Russian lawmaker Alexander Khinshtein later confirmed the slowdowns were intentional.

In African universities, Russia’s war against Ukraine finds new supporters

The halls of academia have long been considered sanctuaries of critical thinking, intellectual discourse, and the pursuit of truth. Universities across the globe pride themselves on fostering environments where diverse perspectives can be examined, debated, and understood through the lens of scholarly rigor. However, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has

The Kyiv IndependentNgotho Gichuru

After Ukraine’s stunning Operation Spiderweb damaged over 40 Russian strategic bombers on 1 June, President Trump took a 75-minute phone call with Vladimir Putin. Putin warned he would “have to respond,” Trump reported. Days later, as Russian missiles rained on Ukrainian apartments and cafes, Trump offered his analysis: the war was like “two young children fighting like crazy” in a park, and “sometimes you’re better off letting them fight for a while.”

The Kremlin loved it. Western media ran with “retaliation” headlines. But to mindlessly adopt the vocabulary of the aggressor is to excuse the crimes. At best, it’s lazy. At worst, it’s complicity by another name.

How Western media adopts Putin’s narrative

This latest episode perfectly captures a dangerous pattern that has defined Western coverage of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Failing to grasp Russia’s criminal war for what it is — whether out of ignorance, indifference, or false hope of normalizing relations — telegraphs to Moscow not only America’s weakness, but its moral ambivalence, if not overt permission.

Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb was a singular event, while Russian suicide drones, guided aerial bombs, and ballistic missiles have hit Ukrainian cities with such regularity that they no longer make headlines — just body counts.

Why Russia cannot be a victim of its own war

A rapist is not the victim of rape. A rapist is the perpetrator.

Russia is not — and cannot, by definition — be the victim of its own unprovoked war of aggression. It is the perpetrator. Apply even a shred of logic, and the distinction becomes obvious: Ukraine can retaliate. Russia cannot. Retaliation is a right reserved for the attacked — not the attacker.

While editorial errors were too many to count, the prize for the most cruel headline goes to The Washington Post, which recently described defensive strikes as “Ukraine’s dirty war.” As if targeting military assets inside an aggressor state were somehow morally equivalent to Russia’s daily slaughter of civilians.

The article itself was well-written and nuanced — alluding to the actual dirty war Russia has been waging against the West, from polonium poisonings in the UK to deployment of mercenaries to destabilize Africa — which makes the choice of headline all the more baffling. A free gift to Kremlin propagandists.

Let us, once and for all, state the obvious: there is no “conflict” in Ukraine. This is a war of conquest — deliberate, sustained, and criminal under the very rules established after World War II.

Moscow’s war is not a tragic misunderstanding or a geopolitical chess match between great powers with Ukraine as a mere pawn.

Russia has been killing Ukrainians for the crime of being Ukrainian since 2014 — predictably, methodically, relentlessly. Ukraine is fighting because the alternative is not peace, but annihilation.

How Russia’s information warfare succeeds in the West

Moscow doesn’t separate kinetic warfare from the so-called “active measures” – disinformation, corruption, infiltration, sabotage, or covert operations — they’re all components of the Gerasimov Doctrine.

But the real scandal is not that Moscow deploys these tools — it’s that the West keeps falling for them.

Worse, we amplify them. Our commentators give airtime to lies. Our most respected outlets parrot enemy framing, wittingly or not. And all the while, a gang of war criminals in the Kremlin smiles, watching as we dignify their deceit with click-bait headlines and poison our own public discourse.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov eagerly seized on Trump’s playground analogy, calling the war “existential” for Russia.

In truth, it is existential only for Ukraine. For Russia, it is optional — a war of choice that could end tomorrow if Moscow stopped waging it. Each day it chooses otherwise, Russian war crimes compound. But when the White House implies both sides are comparably at fault, it reinforces the Kremlin’s central lie.

Ending the war is not in Ukraine’s hands. Peace will come when the revanchist zombie empire stops trying to re-colonize its neighbours.

America’s mixed signals embolden Putin

While Ukraine pleads for help, the United States, reportedly, diverted 20,000 anti-drone missiles — badly needed to defend civilian areas — away from Ukraine to other deployments. What Washington calls “balance,” Moscow reads as tacit acquiescence.

Under international law, Ukraine has the legal right to self-defense against Russia’s illegal war of aggression — a right explicitly affirmed in Article 51 of the UN Charter.

Russian attacks — whether by Iranian-sourced Shahed drones, North Korean artillery shells, or any other means — are not responses. They are the methodical continuation of a war it chose.

To call them retaliation is to legitimize the death and destruction Moscow unleashed.

The stakes: Putin’s victory means global tyranny

Russia’s own former Foreign Minister (1990-1996), Andrei V. Kozyrev, explained in a tweet: if Russia is not defeated in Ukraine, Putin’s dollar-hungry mafia state will solidify into a victorious militarist tyranny driven by hateful anti-Western ideology. Today’s warmongering and hollow nuclear threats against the West will then become real.

Since Moscow first invaded a sovereign neighbor — Georgia, in 2008 — the so-called Free World has excelled at self-deterrence, moved on to self-sabotage, and now flirts with self-extinction.

We can do better. But if we don’t, we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves.

Andrew Chakhoyan

Andrew Chakhoyan is an Academic Director at the University of Amsterdam and a former U.S. government official at the Millennium Challenge Corporation. A Ukrainian-American, he studied at Harvard Kennedy School and Donetsk State Technical University.

Editor’s note. The opinions expressed in our Opinion section belong to their authors. Euromaidan Press’ editorial team may or may not share them.

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Ukrainian media professionals and civil society organizations have issued a joint statement, calling for the inclusion of Ukrainian journalists and the removal of some Russian speakers from the True Story Festival programme, which is scheduled to take place in Bern on 20-22 June 2025.

The True Story Festival in Bern is an international journalism event held annually that brings together reporters from around the world to present and discuss their investigative and feature stories.

The signatories, including the Institute of Mass Information, expressed concern about the festival’s programme structure, particularly in sections related to the Russian-Ukrainian war.

According to the statement, at least five representatives from the Russian Federation – the aggressor country that has been waging war against Ukraine since 2014 – are listed as speakers. Meanwhile, Ukrainian journalists representing the victim nation are entirely absent from the programme.

“This is not only deeply unfair. This is ethically unacceptable,” the statement reads. “We value the contribution of independent Russian journalists to exposing the crimes of the regime. But to speak only about Russia, or about Ukraine without the participation of Ukrainian journalists – this is a distortion of reality. This is the risk of losing the truth in reporting – the very truth that the True Story festival is called to seek.”

The authors criticized specific aspects of the planned programme. They highlighted plans to once again tell the story of “Putin’s children’s lives” (Ilya Rozhdestvensky’s story from September 2024) instead of investigations into the kidnapping of thousands of Ukrainian children and cultural genocide in occupied territories.

Russia deported at least 19,000 to 20,000 children since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022, according to Ukrainian authorities.

The statement also questioned giving a platform to Dmitry Muratov to voice “challenges of the independent Russian press” while Ukrainian journalist Victoria Roshchina was killed in Russian captivity and thousands of Ukrainian colleagues and hundreds of media outlets have suffered from Russian aggression.

“Tell about ‘Wagner fighters’ and ‘prisoners who returned from the Russian-Ukrainian war’, that is, about war criminals – instead of telling about the fate of tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians who are illegally held in Russian prisons. Unfortunately, such plans look inadequate and secondary,” said in the statement.

The signatories presented three specific demands to the festival organizers:

• They called for the immediate inclusion of Ukrainian journalists who cover the consequences of war, crimes against civilians, genocidal practices, child deportations and the disappearance of reporters.
• They demanded a review of session focus to avoid replacing the context of war with stories about the “internal pain” of the aggressor state, and to remove at least some Russian speakers from the festival programme.
• They requested ensuring balance and representation of victims, as required by basic standards of ethical journalism.

“True Story Festival should be a place for truth. We are convinced that only polyphony, honesty and sensitivity to context can preserve trust in journalism as a profession,” they said.

The statement was signed by writer Oles Ilchenko, Doctor of Philological Sciences and journalist Alla Boyko, member of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine Iryna Mykhalkiv-Vinnyk, the Pylyp Orlyk Institute for Democracy, Mediarukh, Detector Media, and the Institute of Mass Information.

Global press freedom is at its lowest since 2002, says Reporters Without Borders. Independent media face pressure worldwide—from authoritarian regimes, economic collapse, and disinformation networks, including Russia’s unchecked propaganda.

At the 2025 Lviv Media Forum, held from 15 to 17 May, Pulitzer-winning journalist Anne Applebaum and disinformation researcher Dorka Takácsy warned that democracy is breaking down not just from censorship, but from the erosion of truth itself. Applebaum described how Trump’s second presidency has filled government with figures hostile to US institutions. Takácsy pointed to Hungary, where Viktor Orbán has silenced independent media through loyalist networks, political purges, and narratives amplified by the Kremlin.

Moderating the panel, Ukrainian media strategist Yevhen Hlibovytskyi added a wartime perspective: Can a country like Ukraine uphold media freedom when public trust falters and international support fades?

Yet a deeper issue cuts across all borders: traditional media is losing the public. While outlets like CNN bleed viewers, independent podcasters and investigators are gaining ground among audiences who see them as more authentic and less compromised. The problem isn’t just propaganda—it’s that people no longer believe the press.

What you’ll learn from this panel:

• How Trump and Orbán are reshaping democracy through revenge, control of institutions, and propaganda
• Why traditional media is losing trust — and what journalists must do to rebuild it
• How rational debate is collapsing under spiritual populism and anti-science politics
• What lessons Ukraine and the EU can draw from Hungary’s media downfall.

Hungary’s media crackdown: How Orbán dismantled independent journalism

Yevhen Hlibovytskyi: When there is an enemy narrative that the government projects onto someone and creates a scapegoat—which, for instance, is currently Ukraine—propaganda messages spread very easily because there is the enormous empire that operates through coordinated messaging.

Dorka Takácsy: We are incredibly impactful. Of course, there are also independent outlets that are doing really great work. They are heroic, under-financed, and struggling, as has happened in other places as well. But obviously, they cannot serve as a counterweight to a large propaganda empire that works with coordinated messages.

Once the foundation of the discourse is established, the public broadcasters will also fall in line. Just imagine if the BBC’s leaders were, one way or another, simply dismissed, and if they happened to be replaced and restructured by the government—it would be quite a scandal, right?

At the moment, if you are a public broadcaster and you go down almost to the regional level, people were replaced. People were dismissed. And it was all very calculated to meet the needs and desires of the government. So there is this entire network of 480 outlets: public broadcasters, radio stations, and all of this. Also, the loyalist media. So altogether, the whole media environment has changed drastically.

Trump’s second term: A government driven by revenge

Yevhen Hlibovytskyi: We’re talking about revenge. The Orbán (Hungarian Prime Minister) who returned was not the same Orbán as before. I think one of the themes of the US elections was that we had Trump as the 45th president of the United States, and it was not that damaging. But now, the Trump administration, as the 47th president, is actually quite different in how it approaches policy and in what it does.

Is revenge something that we should be looking at? Is this an indicator that we should all pay attention to from the perspective of the media or think tanks? Is this a factor?

Anne Applebaum: Leaders who lose power and return often have transformed agendas—look at Orbán, Trump, and Hugo Chávez, who staged a coup, was imprisoned, then came back. Trump’s second presidency was always going to be different after his assault on the Capitol and his election denial, though many Americans underestimated this shift.

Trump’s appeal centers on revenge and resentment—targeting elites, the wealthy, or whoever people blame for their problems. This pattern appears throughout history: 1990s Venezuela, 1930s Germany, the Dreyfus Affair. Politicians who build on anger at chosen elites often succeed.

Inside Trump’s new coalition: Tech elites and Christian nationalists

Anne Applebaum: The key difference is Trump’s coalition. His first term featured relatively mainstream officials from government, military, and business who wanted to improve existing systems. Over four years, he’s attracted fundamentally different people who want to overthrow or radically transform American institutions entirely.

This isn’t traditional conservatism. It includes Silicon Valley tech authoritarians wanting America run like a corporation, Christian nationalists seeking religious rule over secular government, and those wanting to reverse social changes since the 1960s. Trump has elevated long-marginalized figures—vaccine opponents and others outside mainstream professions.

The result is an administration where officials actively dislike the very institutions they now lead—the CIA, healthcare system, and others. You’re witnessing the state being attacked from within. This surprises many, but anyone watching closely over the past four years should have seen it coming.

What journalists must do now: Truth-telling and trust-building

Yevhen Hlibovytskyi: As a former newspaper editor, I’m asking myself: what do I need to make visible for my audience? Should I focus more on theories of change? On resentment? On revenge? On what comes next if basic services like water purification fail?

Anne Applebaum: The main difficulty in journalism now—even at prosperous magazines with many journalists—is that we can’t cover everything. We know about stories we don’t have time or capacity for.

The main challenge is knowing what to prioritize. You could write about vaccines and healthcare, kleptocracy and corruption, foreign policy, or civil rights.

The main job of journalists is, first, to investigate and establish what actually happened, as opposed to what propagandists claim. Second, to build trust with readers. You’re obligated to build a community—through social media, reader clubs, or public events—of people who want to understand what you’re saying.

It’s not enough just to write; you need to actively create trust, because we’re in a moment when the President lies daily on TV. He says gas prices went down when they went up. He claims to have achieved peace between India and Pakistan when the Indian government says he had nothing to do with it.

This constant lying means there needs to be a daily attempt to write truthfully and create bonds of trust with people willing to listen. It’s a very difficult job.

Why journalists failed to spot authoritarian shifts

Yevhen Hlibovytskyi: What this means is that the job description for editors and journalists has become more sophisticated, because you don’t only have to follow the standards and procedures of journalism, but you also have to have expertise in what you’re writing about. You have to see the underwater currents. Is this what the Hungarian media missed?

Dorka Takácsy: If I think back to all the steps that were taken, obviously there were major milestones—the creation of the Media Council and all these things I mentioned were major milestones on this sad trajectory.

But there were also smaller steps that I think we don’t recognize in time. Probably because, just like we see now on the bigger stage worldwide, too many things happen and there aren’t enough journalists. The sector is already underfunded, everyone is overwhelmed, and you can understand that because we are all human.

For such a sector, it’s very difficult to see all the complexity of certain things. But there are definitely external factors too, because in other cases the problems were already visible—not as bad as now, but present. When the problems were big enough, many were reflected in different EU organs and institutions. And the EU was often simply too slow, and when there was political will from the outside, you could flag whatever you wanted, but certain steps were also missed.

Now looking back, it all comes together. Obviously it’s easier now to see the whole trajectory we underwent. But when it was happening, I think we missed it.

From science to suspicion: The fall of rational thinking

Yevhen Hlibovytskyi: Does that mean we’re seeing a kind of religious combat where people don’t understand or apply rational thinking, but just apply what they believe in? This isn’t necessarily about God—it’s about vaccines and whatever. So is this a challenge to rationalism as an approach that was predominant in educational systems, governance, and institutions in the developed world over the 20th and 21st centuries?

Anne Applebaum: Yes. What we’re seeing, not just in the US but in many places, is a challenge to Enlightenment thinking—that there’s a difference between things that are true and not true, that there’s a scientific method that can determine truth, that there are trusted institutions like scientific journals, journalism, and government agencies that can be trusted to at least try to find truth in good faith.

Instead, we find people completely rejecting those things under the banner of “do your own research.” I wrote about this regarding the Romanian election and the candidate Călin Georgescu, who won the first round before the election was banned.

Spiritual politics and anti-science: Leaders who reject facts

Anne Applebaum: Georgescu described himself as a spiritual person anointed by God with special powers. He filmed himself swimming in a lake—it was very cold and snowing outside—saying his belief in God kept him from becoming ill. He also rejected vaccines.

His appeal was anti-rational, not just anti-institutional—anti-science. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is now Secretary of Health and Human Services overseeing the CDC, has a very similar anti-rational appeal.

Interestingly, both RFK and Georgescu have expressed pro-Russian and pro-Putin feelings. Georgescu has been openly pro-Russian regarding Ukraine and supportive of Putin. We know he was supported illegally by a social media campaign. I won’t make the same claim about RFK, although—who knows.

There’s a clear, concerted attempt to win over people who no longer trust scientific thinking. There’s a link between that and authoritarian thinking. These things are somewhat vague—I don’t want to draw clear lines—but they are connected.

No truth, no democracy: Why shared facts matter

Yevhen Hlibovytskyi: If you’re talking about the end of the Enlightenment, if we could say so, that means if you’re talking about the lack of efficiency that such an approach would have, then it’s only natural for autocrats to limit competition and preserve themselves with whatever inefficient policies they’re offering. Because otherwise, they would be swept away at the next elections.

Anne Applebaum: The problem is even deeper than that. Democracy itself, especially American democracy, is a kind of Enlightenment project. The idea of democracy is that we created this system with rules, and the rules allow us to have debates about reality. Through those debates, we decide what government policy should be.

So democracy requires some agreed-upon reality. You can have your right-wing or left-wing opinion, you can believe there should be more highways or fewer highways. But you have to agree on the number of highways. You have to have some way of counting them. Once you don’t agree, once there’s no shared reality, then you can’t really have a democratic debate.

The myth of the strongman: Why authoritarians thrive on emotion

Anne Applebaum: The system doesn’t work, and autocracy appeals instead to this deeply irrational idea: “we need a leader who somehow embodies the will of the people”—not through reasoned debate or voting, but because he has emerged from the people and expresses their will.

Trotsky, Lenin, and Stalin used to talk like this. This idea doesn’t belong to the right—Hitler spoke like this, too. The idea that the autocrat has some magical link and makes good decisions just because he somehow represents us—this is anti-Enlightenment, anti-rational, and anti-democratic.

Democracy needs this basis in the real world, or it doesn’t work. If you want to get to the deepest layer, the deepest problem we have today, I think that’s it.

How EU funds helped Orbán hide Hungary’s democratic collapse

Yevhen Hlibovytskyi: My question is about the experience of a country that is in Central Europe, that has been part of the European cultural discourse all along. Was there a lack of sense of urgency?

Dorka Takácsy: Yes.

Yevhen Hlibovytskyi: That, you know, “we are a member of the European Union, nothing bad is going to happen to us because we will be protected one way or another through the instruments of the European Union or NATO or whatever.” Was there a lack of understanding that the house may be on fire?

Dorka Takácsy: Despite anti-Western propaganda, polls show most Hungarians still view the EU positively. But their reasons are purely practical—they can work abroad, cross borders easily, and sometimes receive EU funds. It’s not about values, freedom, or European identity—just pragmatism.

These positive numbers don’t mean Hungarians maintain a European mentality. It’s simply practical appreciation.

When EU cash stops, propaganda fills the gap

Dorka Takácsy: Hungary clearly shows how autocrats mask bad policies through external support. For years, Hungary prospered largely from EU accession and cohesion funds. Even with poor government policies, results seemed favorable because EU money created an impression of success. People tolerated media manipulation and propaganda because they felt economically secure.

That magic is now broken. The EU has frozen most funds for two years, exposing the true quality of Hungarian policies. Economic and social policies were always poor, but their impact wasn’t felt while EU money flowed. Now the impact is obvious.

When budgets are healthy, autocrats can buy votes with direct payments. That’s no longer viable. So the propaganda machine intensifies—amplifying narratives and pouring extra resources into messaging. When you can’t pay for votes, you must amplify the propaganda. That’s exactly what we’re seeing now.

Why US opposition to Trump remains muffled

Yevhen Hlibovytskyi: What I can’t understand from the outside is this disconnect: I read excellent articles in The Atlantic and New York Times opinion pages, but I don’t see real urgency in the opposition. There’s no visible concern even within the Republican Party itself. It’s just “Okay, this is happening, we don’t like it”—but no sense of emergency.

Is this hidden from view due to media optics, or does the American system simply work differently than we expect?

Anne Applebaum: There are two key points. First, this isn’t a parliamentary system—there’s no single leader of the opposition and won’t be. Asking “who’s the leader?” reflects an authoritarian mindset. There will eventually be another presidential candidate, but until then, no single leader. That’s not how our system works.

Fear and intimidation: Why GOP critics backed down

Many people are involved—Congress members, senators, local officials, media figures, podcasters. Alarming content exists constantly. If you’re on the right Instagram algorithm, you’ll see it; if not, you might miss it. There’s significant activity happening. You’d need to follow specific people to see more. Nationwide protests have occurred, with groups planning regular ones.

Second, people are angry at Democrats for not stopping Trump, but they lack the tools. Without control of Congress, there’s no way to prevent executive actions. They can’t physically stop what’s happening.

Much of what Trump has done is illegal. Cases are moving through courts now, and I expect courts will begin blocking actions. Then we’ll see an interesting moment—will the Trump administration try to overrun the courts? We’ll find out.

Within the Republican Party, there’s a strange dynamic. Some opposition exists, with many uncomfortable Republicans. But something not understood from outside—many Republican politicians are physically scared. They worry that voting against the president means facing physical attacks at home or their children being harassed at school. This is new in American politics over the last four years.

With widespread firearms, people are genuinely frightened. Many Republicans left Congress for this reason. Most who voted for Trump’s impeachment are gone—either forced out like Liz Cheney or they quietly departed.

How polarized media killed neutral journalism

Yevhen Hlibovytskyi: Is CNN being the preferred Democratic voice and Fox News being the preferred Republican voice? Is this the end of independence? Are we going into pluralism as an alternative, or is editorial independence still a value that is still being pursued or should be pursued?

Anne Applebaum: First, CNN isn’t the voice of the Democratic Party at all. CNN has tried to do something different, which isn’t quite working. But CNN, Fox, and MSNBC—ten years ago, all these networks had more editorial independence than now.

They used more neutral tones and presented discussions more neutrally, but that was also because we lived in a less polarized moment when people were less angry.

The business of bias: Why neutral news can’t survive

Anne Applebaum: The business model now for much of media is appealing to your base. You make money by building a base and appealing to one partisan segment of the population. The neutrality business model, designed to appeal broadly, has mostly failed.

When I started in journalism, The Washington Post was essentially the only newspaper in Washington. The Post had an interest in appealing to a wide readership—it wanted Republicans and Democrats to read it, and local businesses to advertise. It was like a monopoly—someone described it to me as a public utility, like the gas company.

That’s not true anymore. There’s no business model where you win over a broad swath of people with neutral commentary. You’ve had this siloing of newspapers and TV. No, it’s not good. Some things were gained—the neutrality sometimes concealed laziness or refusal to be clear. There were things lost in that earlier period we don’t miss.

But the partisan role has been dictated by the business environment.

Can public broadcasting save democracy?

Yevhen Hlibovytskyi: One unconventional thing we have in Ukraine is a strong public broadcaster (Suspilne). Is a public broadcaster a potential source of stabilization for the entire media market? Is it important to have an independent public broadcaster for private media to thrive and be less dependent on niche, ideological platforms?

Anne Applebaum: If you can have it—and as Hungary proves, it’s very easy to undermine an independent public broadcaster if you don’t have good laws—but if you can have it and it’s able to build wide trust, something like the BBC (though even the BBC has lost trust in recent years), then it is one of the things that can keep politics centered.

Even the fact that the BBC—it’s a little bit fake, but during election campaigns they insist every political program has a member of each party on a panel—is really useful. You don’t have that on Fox News. Having somebody legally obliged to at least try to be neutral can be extremely important.

Of course, we don’t have this in the United States at all. We have a sort of public broadcaster, but it’s very niche and not even fully government funded.

Dorka Takácsy: Yes, it’s absolutely vital, because otherwise look at what happens if you don’t have a real public broadcaster. It’s not the only source of problems in Hungary, but it’s clearly an indicator that something is wrong.

Unfortunately, we live in an era where polarization is extremely important. This creates a vicious circle because media outlets need to survive, and it’s easier to appeal to emotions. The center is slowly becoming more radical on both sides, and this kind of news further increases polarization.

If you can have a public broadcaster that can afford not to go for emotions—to be dry and professional, though probably less interesting than outlets that live purely from the market—then you have to preserve it, because there’s chaos all around.

Ukraine’s future: Build democracy for yourself, not the EU

Yevhen Hlibovytskyi: We’ve been discovering how bad the situation is in our neighboring areas, and there might or might not be a light at the end of the tunnel. But considering that Ukraine is still trying to Euro-integrate, and seeing the dissolution of institutions in the US and many European countries… Are we screwed?

Anne Applebaum: No, no. I think the answer is that you should democratize Ukraine and build institutions there not to get into the EU or to someday be accepted into NATO. You should do it because it’s good for Ukraine.

Following the lead of other countries or seeking to appeal to them—you’re not going to appeal to them. That’s a fool’s game. There’s no point to it.

Will Europe stand by Ukraine? Why support still matters

Yevhen Hlibovytskyi: Without an international network of support—considering that we are at war, the challenges we have, the pain inside Ukrainian society—we’re actually at risk of not having sustainable democracy. Not because we cannot sustain it as a society, but because we cannot sustain it as a society in these circumstances. How reliably should we expect external support for the cause of democracy and freedom in Ukraine?

Anne Applebaum: I can’t tell you what will happen in the distant future. Current European leaders strongly support Ukraine. There’s a fantastic photograph of your president, President Macron, the German chancellor, and the Polish prime minister all standing in a row, talking and looking happy and friendly. I think that was real.

Among that group, there’s a commitment to Ukraine—to Ukraine’s sovereignty and democracy. Germany has exceeded spending limits to buy weapons—unprecedented for them. You have genuine friends in Europe, plus supporters in the US Congress, public, and business community. Don’t count the US out yet.

Dorka Takácsy: I’m not pessimistic. Ukraine has shown tremendous strength, and we can see clear examples of what to avoid. The support is there, especially with current EU leadership.

They see the bad examples too. Take Hungary—I can say with confidence that the EU is slowly but surely finding its way. Yes, many problems should have been solved earlier, and they don’t always see future consequences in time. But now we clearly see that at many levels, the EU has started recognizing the problems and is growing stronger.

This is encouraging for Ukraine. We can really benefit from this strengthening.

Yevhen Hlibovytskyi: Well, part of adult life is knowing that not all questions will be answered.

The Kyiv Independent's investigative documentary, "He Came Back," which exposes sexual violence committed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine, has won the 2025 Ukrainian journalism award, "Honor of the Profession."

The winners were announced during an award ceremony in Kyiv on May 29.

The documentary, which identifies perpetrators of sexual violence in occupied Ukrainian territories, was recognized in the Best Investigative Report category.

The film was authored by journalist Olesia Bida, a member of the Kyiv Independent's War Crimes Investigations Unit. The team also included editing director Maksym Yakobchuk, researchers Kostiantyn Nechyporenko and Myroslava Chaiun, and editor Yevheniia Motorevska.

"Sexual violence in war is a war crime and a systemic strategy used by Russian forces. "They face no consequences and continue committing these crimes in occupied territories," Bida said, following the award ceremony.

"It meant so much to me that after this investigation was published, one of the soldiers we identified was formally charged by Ukrainian authorities. His case has already been sent to court. I hope one day he will face a real sentence."

Bida called the piece "the most important work of my entire journalism career," and expressed deep gratitude to the Kyiv Independent team for supporting her through 10 months of research and reporting.

"We are endlessly inspired by your work," the Ukrainian competition committee said in a statement, thanking every journalist who submitted work this year. "You are the witnesses and chroniclers of the country's life and its people during the most difficult period of our modern history."

The film previously won the Best Film award at the 2024 Press Play Prague film festival.

Since its foundation in 2023, the Kyiv Independent's War Crimes Investigations Unit has released nine documentary films, exposing Russia's kidnapping of Ukrainian children, torture of prisoners of war, repressions in occupied territories, and crackdown on religious communities.

The "Honor of the Profession" contest, organized annually in Ukraine, celebrates excellence in categories including best interview, war reporting, analytical writing, and publicist essays. This year's winners reflect the difficult reality and courage of reporting in a country at war.

A special nomination from the Supervisory Board of the contest "For dedication to the profession under the most difficult conditions" was posthumously given to late Victoriia Roshchyna, who died in Russian captivity after disappearing in August 2023 while reporting from occupied territories.

Her body, returned in February, showed signs of torture, including electric shocks and possible strangulation. A forensic examination revealed missing organs, suggesting an attempt to hide the cause of death.

Approximately 800 remaining full-time Voice of America (VOA) employees are expected to receive a notice of termination this week amid the Trump administration's funding cuts, Politico reported on May 28, citing four VOA employees.

On March 15, Trump administration officials gutted funding for the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which oversees VOA.

In an email obtained by the Kyiv Independent in March, employees at VOA were instructed "not to enter USAGM premises" nor "access USAGM systems." Over 1,300 journalists, producers and support staff working at VOA were also placed on administrative leave.

A senior VOA employee told Politico that USAGM-led layoffs would likely affect all staff, effectively shuttering operations. Earlier this month on May 15, about 600 contractors working for VOA received termination notices.

VOA was founded in 1942, broadcasting in almost 50 languages around the world.

Amid attempts by journalists to overturn the decision to gut funding, a U.S. federal judge on April 22 ordered the Trump administration to restore all employees and contractors at VOA, saying the administration's efforts to dismantle the outlet likely violated U.S. law.

Last week, a federal appeals court overturned the decision, deciding that it would not intervene in the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the long-standing network.

Trump has long criticized U.S.-funded media organization, criticizing them over their coverage of the U.S. president, and often referring to them as "fake news."

Trump's crackdown against VOA has been celebrated by Russian propagandists, who welcomed the cuts to the network.

Ukraine war latest: Moscow proposes next round of Russia-Ukraine talks on June 2 in Istanbul

* Moscow proposes next round of Russia-Ukraine talks on June 2 in Istanbul * Ukrainian drones hit Russian cruise missile factory, SBU source says, in one of largest reported strikes of full-scale war * 11 more Ukrainian Children rescued from Russian-occupied territories, Yermak’s advisor says * ‘We’ll know in two weeks’ if Putin serious

The Kyiv IndependentThe Kyiv Independent news desk

Since the “social media is bad for teens” myth will not die, I keep having intense conversations with colleagues, journalists, and friends over what the research says and what it doesn’t. (Alice Marwick et. al put together a great little primer in light of the legislative moves.) Along the way, I’ve also started to recognize how slipperiness between two terms creates confusion — and political openings — and so I wanted to call them out in case this is helpful for others thinking about these issues.

In short, “Does social media harm teenagers?” is not the same question as “Can social media be risky for teenagers?”

The language of “harm” in this question is causal in nature. It is also legalistic. Lawyers look for “harms” to place blame on or otherwise regulate actants. By and large, in legal contexts, we talk about PersonA harming PersonB. As such, PersonA is to be held accountable. But when we get into product safety discussions, we also talk about how faulty design creates the conditions for people to be harmed due to intentional, malfeasant actions by the product designer. Making a product liability claim is much harder because it requires proving the link of harm and the intentionality to harm.

Risk is a different matter. Getting out of bed introduces risks into your life. Risk is something to identify and manage. Some environments introduce more potential risks and some actions reduce the risks. Risk management is a skill to develop. And while regulation can be used to reduce certain risks, it cannot eliminate them. And it can also backfire and create more risks. (This is the problem that María Angel and I have with techno-legal solutionism.)

Let’s unpack this a bit by shifting contexts and thinking about how we approach risks more generally.

Skiing is Risky.

Skiing is understood to be a risky sport. As we approach skiing season out here in the Rockies, I’m bracing myself for the uptick in crutches, knee wheelies, and people under 40 using the wheelchair services at the Denver airport. There is also a great deal of effort being put into trying to reduce the risk that someone will leave the slopes in this state. I’m fascinated by the care ski instructors take in trying to ensure that people who come to the mountains learn how to take care. There’s a whole program here for youngins designed to teach them a safety-first approach to skiing.

And there’s a whole host of messaging that will go out each day letting potential skiers know about the conditions. We will also get fear-mongering messages out here, with local news reporting on skiers doing stupid things and warnings of avalanches that too many folks will ignore. And there will be posters at the resorts telling people to not speed on the mountains because they might kill a kid. (I think these posters are more effective as scaring kids than convincing skiers to slow down.)

No matter what messaging goes out, people will still get hurt this season like they do every season. And so there are patrollers whose job it is to look for people in high-risk situations and medics who will be on hand to help people who have been injured. And there’s a whole apparatus structured to get them of the mountain and into long-term care.

Unless you’re off your rocker, you don’t just watch a few YouTube videos and throw yourself down a mountain on skis. People take care to learn how to manage the risks of skiing. Or they’re like me and take one look at that insanity and dream of a warm place by a fire or sitting in a hot tub instead of spending stupid amounts of money to introduce that kind of risk into their lives.

Crossing the Street is Risky.

The stark reality is that every social environment has risks. And one of the key parts of being socialized through childhood into adulthood is learning to assess and respond to risks.

Consider walking down the street in a busy city. As any NYC parent knows, there are countless near-heart attacks that occur when trying to teach a 2-year-old to stop at the corner of the sidewalk. But eventually they learn to stop. And eventually they learn to not bowl people over while riding their scooter down that sidewalk. And then the next stage begins — helping young people learn to look both ways before crossing the street, regardless of what is happening with the light, and convincing them to maintain constant awareness about their environment. And eventually that becomes so normal that you start to teach your child how to J-walk without getting a ticket. And eventually, the child turns into a teenager who wanders the city alone, J-walking with ease while blocking out all audio signals with their headphones. But then take that child — or an American adult — to a city like Hanoi and they’ll have to relearn how to cross a street because nothing one learns in NYC about crossing streets applies to Hanoi.

Is crossing the street risky? Of course. But there’s a lot we can do to make it less risky. Good urban design and functioning streetlights can really help, but they don’t make the risk disappear. And people can actually cross a street in Hanoi, even though I doubt anyone would praise the urban design of streets and there are no streetlights. While design can help, what really matters for navigating risk is rooted in socialization, education, and agency. Mixed into this is, of course, experience. The more that we experience crossing the street, the easier it gets, regardless of what you know about the rules. And still, the risk does not entirely disappear. People are still hit by cars while crossing the street every year.

The Risk of Social Media Can Be Reduced.

Can social media be risky for youth? Of course. So can school. So can friendship. So can the kitchen. So can navigating parents. Can social media be designed better? Absolutely. So can school. So can the kitchen. (So can parents?) Do we always know the best design interventions? No. Might those design interventions backfire? Yes.

Does that mean that we should give up trying to improve social media or other digital environments? Absolutely not. But we must also recognize that trying to cement design into law might backfire. And that, more generally, technologies’ risks cannot be managed by design alone.

Fixating on better urban design is pointless if we’re not doing the work to socialize and educate people into crossing digital streets responsibly. And when we age-gate and think that people can magically wake up on their 13th or 18th birthday and be suddenly able to navigate digital streets just because of how many cycles they took around the sun, we’re fools. Socialization and education are still essential, regardless of how old you are. (Psst to the old people: the September that never ended…)

In the United States, we have a bad habit of thinking that risks can be designed out of every system. I will never forget when I lived in Amsterdam in the 90s, and I remarked to a local about how odd I found it that there were no guardrails to prevent cars from falling into the canals when they were parking. His response was “you’re so American” which of course prompted me to say, “what does THAT mean?” He explained that, in the Netherlands, locals just learned not to drive their cars into the canals, but Americans expected there to be guardrails for everything so that they didn’t have to learn not to be stupid. He then noted out that every time he hears about a car ending up in the canal, it is always an American who put it there. Stupid Americans. (I took umbrage at this until, a few weeks later, I read a news story about a drunk American driving a rental into the canal.)

Better design is warranted, but it is not enough if the goal is risk reduction. Risk reduction requires socialization, education, and enough agency to build experience. Moreover, if we think that people will still get hurt, we should be creating digital patrols who are there to pick people up when they are hurt. (This is why I’ve always argued that “digital street outreach” would be very valuable.)

But What About Harms?

People certainly face risks when encountering any social environment, including social media. This then triggers the next question: Do some people experience harms through social media? Absolutely. But it’s important to acknowledge that most of these harms involve people using social media to harm others. It’s reasonable that they should be held accountable. It’s not reasonable to presume that you can design a system that allows people to interact in a manner where harms will never happen. As every school principal knows, you can’t solve bullying through the design of the physical building.

Returning to our earlier note on product liability, it is reasonable to ask if specific design choices of social media create the conditions for certain kinds of harms to be more likely — and for certain risks to be increased. Researchers have consistently found that bullying is more frequent and more egregious at school than on social media, even if it is more visible on the latter. This makes me wary of a product liability claim regarding social media and bullying. Moreover, it’s important to notice what schools have done in response to this problem. They’ve invested in social-emotional learning programs to strengthen resilience, improve bystander approaches, and build empathy. These interventions are making a huge difference, far more than building design. (If someone wants to tax social media companies to scale these interventions, have a field day.)

Of course, there are harms that I do think are product liability issues vis-a-vis social media. For example, I think that many privacy harms can be mitigated with a design approach that is privacy-by-default. I also think that regulations that mandate universal privacy protections would go a long way in helping people out. But the funny thing is that I don’t think that these harms are unique to children. These are harms that are experienced broadly. And I would argue that older folks tend to experience harms associated with privacy much more acutely.

But even if you think that children are especially vulnerable, I’d like to point out that while children might need a booster seat for the seatbelt to work, everyone would be better off if we put privacy seatbelts in place rather than just saying that kids can’t be in cars.

I have more complex feelings about the situations where we blame technology for societal harms. As I’ve argued for over a decade, the internet mirrors and magnifies the good, bad, and ugly. This includes bullying and harassment, but it also includes racism, xenophobia, sexism, homophobia, and anti-trans attitudes. I wish that these societal harms could be “fixed” by technology; that would be nice. But that is naive.

I get why parents don’t want to expose children to the uglier parts of the world. But if we want to raise children to be functioning adults, we also have to ensure that they are resilient. Besides, protecting children from the ills of society is a luxury that only a small segment of the population is able to enjoy. For example, in the US, Black parents rarely have the option of preventing their children from being exposed to racism. This is why white kids need to be educated to see and resist racism. Letting white kids live in “colorblind” la-la-land doesn’t enable racial justice. It lets racism fester and increases inequality.

As adults, we need to face the ugliness of society head on, with eyes wide open. And we need to intentionally help our children see that ugliness so that they can be agents of change. Social media does make this ugly side more visible, but avoiding social media doesn’t make it go away. Actively engaging young people as they are exposed to the world through dialogue allows them to be prepared to act. Turning on the spicket at a specific age does not.

I will admit that one thing that intrigues me is that many of those who propagate hate are especially interested in blocking children from technology for fear that allowing their children to be exposed to difference might make them more tolerant. (No, gender is not contagious, but developing a recognition that gender is socially and politically constructed — and fighting for a more just world — sure is.) There’s a long history of religious communities trying to isolate youth from kids of other faiths to maintain control.

There’s no doubt that media — including social media — exposes children to a much broader and more diverse world. Anyone who sees themselves as empowering their children to create a more just and equitable world should want to conscientiously help their children see and understand the complexity of the world we live in.

In the early days of social media, I was naive in thinking that just exposing people to people around the world to each other would fundamentally increase our collective tolerance. I had too much faith in people’s openness. I know now that this deterministic thinking was foolish. But I have also come to appreciate the importance of combining exposure with education and empathy.

Isolating people from difference doesn’t increase tolerance or appreciation. And it won’t help us solve the hardest problems in our world — starting with both inequity and ensuring our planet is livable for future generations. Instead, we need to help our children build the skills to live and work together.

Put another way, to raise children who can function in our complex world, we need to teach them how to cross the digital street safely. Skiing is optional.