Only twice in its 104-year history has Bakhmut’s Vpered newspaper been forced to stop publishing – first when Nazi Germany occupied Soviet Ukraine in 1941 and again when Russia launched all-out war on its pro-western neighbour in February 2022.
Vpered recovered both times, and today continues to serve a Bakhmut community that has been scattered by Russia’s destruction and occupation of the city, just as dozens of other local newspapers still inform and connect people living in frontline areas of Ukraine that are bombarded by Moscow’s missiles and propaganda.
Wartime conditions have even highlighted the strengths of traditional media that seemed doomed to extinction in the digital age – printed newspapers remain when the power goes off and internet access vanishes, and local journalists are trusted voices in a cacophony of often dubious or intentionally misleading information.
“In Bakhmut there was no electricity, light or gas and no phone connection or television or radio. People were living in basements,” Svitlana Ovcharenko, Vpered’s chief editor, says of conditions in the besieged city in October 2022, when she and colleagues who had fled to other Ukrainian cities restarted the newspaper after an eight-month hiatus.
“When volunteers went into Bakhmut with food and water and other supplies, people would ask them what was going on in the rest of Ukraine. Who was in power? They were completely cut off,” she adds.
“So we got some funding to make the newspaper again and found volunteers who would deliver it with the aid. Of course, everyone had been saying that print versions of newspapers were dying – but in our situation, only a newspaper could get information to people, because phones and the internet weren’t working.”
Vpered told its readers where and when they could find aid and evacuation buses, how to access benefits and programmes for displaced people, and chronicled how other Bakhmut natives were now faring elsewhere in Ukraine and abroad.
“People believe their local newspaper. Vpered is 104 years old, so generations of people in Bakhmut grew up with this newspaper,” says Ovcharenko, who fled with her elderly mother to the southern port of Odesa, where her two adult children live.
“Our priority was to help save people. And I think we helped to save hundreds, because Vpered told them who to contact and where to go to evacuate. I am proud that we did that.”
Like other displaced Bakhmut residents and the rest of the world, Ovcharenko watched as Russian forces, led by the Wagner mercenary group, shelled the city to the ground for more than a year, before finally seizing its ruins in May 2023.
She saw from drone footage how her own apartment block was damaged, then partially destroyed and then reduced to rubble. She lost almost everything, having left in March 2022 with just a few belongings in the hope of returning home in a month.
Vpered had 11 staff before the full-scale war, but now each of its four remaining employees lives in a different city and must contend with long and frequent power cuts when putting together the fortnightly newspaper.
“A couple of nights ago, we had to do the layout for the latest edition from midnight until 5am, because that was the only time when I had electricity in Odesa, and Sasha, the typesetter, also had electricity in Shostka,” Ovcharenko says. Shostka is a small frontline city near the Russian border, 750km north of Odesa.
“Sometimes I set the alarm clock for 2am because that’s when we’ll both have electricity, and I get out of bed and go into the kitchen to work.”
The eight-page newspaper is printed in Kyiv and 6,000 copies are sent by post to 12 cities across Ukraine that have established centres to help former residents of Bakhmut, which was home to 70,000 people before 2022.
“Our city has gone, it has been destroyed and become a virtual city,” Ovcharenko says. “But there is still a community that survives. Now there is Bakhmut in Kyiv and in Odesa and other places – wherever its people are, there is Bakhmut.”
Ukrainian troops are fighting along a 1,000km front line to prevent other places going the way of Bakhmut, and several million civilians still live within 50km of the front line or the Russian frontier, often amid massive damage from relentless shelling.
Ukraine’s postal service will no longer deliver to the village of Velyka Pysarivka and nearby settlements in the border region of Sumy, so distributing the Vorskla newspaper – named after a local river – falls to its chief editor, Oleksiy Pasyuha.
“The centre of Velyka Pysarivka has been destroyed by aerial bombs, and when we hear the air-raid siren we go to the shelter. But drones are almost silent and they’re basically hunting people. They can get you anytime,” he says.
Despite the risk, Pasyuha spends about half of each week in the Velyka Pysarivka area – less than 10km from the Russian border – gathering material for his articles and delivering the now weekly Vorskla, which was established in 1930.
After pausing for about a month in early 2022, Pasyuha and colleagues restarted Vorskla by printing off simple A4 copies in the newspaper office and village council until their ink cartridges ran dry, and volunteers delivered them with humanitarian aid.
“We publish local stories that no one else does,” he says. “Stories about our volunteers and our soldiers, and about local people doing something for the area. And we provide information about laws and how evacuees can access services and so on.”
The Vorskla office was damaged by two bomb strikes this year, and Pasyuha now runs the newspaper – with help from a handful of paid and voluntary workers and his wife – from about 100km away in the safer and more stable town of Okhtyrka.
The office of the Zorya (Dawn) newspaper in Lyman was looted and destroyed in 2022 when Russia occupied the small city in the eastern Donetsk region for more than four months, and chief editor Oleksandr Pasichnyk and his family were among the thousands who fled.
Now based in Kyiv, he sends Zorya twice a month to the council in Lyman for distribution around the frontline area, and to other cities where displaced residents have settled, while his daughter Khrystyna Lebedieva runs its website and social media.
“People are reading more now than before the full-scale war… and we’re the only patriotic source of information in Lyman and the district,” Pasichnyk says of an area where Russian media has long fanned pro-Kremlin feeling.
“We were hacked by Russians, there was a cyberattack and our website crashed,” Lebedieva says. “We don’t have an IT person, so it’s just down to me and my husband. We managed on our own, basically, and got the website working again.”
With help from foreign donors, the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU) helped to relaunch and continues to support 32 newspapers in frontline areas.
“Often, these newspapers become the only accessible source of information for residents,” says NUJU president Sergiy Tomilenko.
“But their significance goes far beyond mere information. People perceive these publications not only as media but also as a symbol of Ukraine. A local newspaper is a symbol of struggle and resilience. It reminds people that they are not forgotten, that Ukraine is with them even in the most difficult times.”
Swiss-based organisation Fondation Hirondelle supports about 25 local media outlets in Ukraine. Sabra Ayres, a media mentor and trainer for the group, says the full-scale war “amplified the importance of accessible, hyperlocal information for communities across the country”.
“Everyone turned to Telegram channels in the early stages of the war for rapid information… but we all know there’s a lot of disinformation on Telegram and the other socials,” she adds.
“In many frontline towns and cities, the lack of electricity and mobile cell service gave renewed importance to their local printed press, which they could trust because they were known in their communities better than the big national Ukrainian media, who rarely make it into these areas.”
Pasyuha says local newspapers “must provide accurate information to our people and challenge the Russians, who hate what we’re doing”.
“They hate that there is still a newspaper so close to the border that counteracts Russian propaganda and stops it getting into people’s heads,” he says of Vorskla.
“We are a newspaper that unites the people of our region. Even those who are now far away can read about their town and district. And hopefully they’ll come back sometime.”
- Sign up for push alerts and have the best news, analysis and comment delivered directly to your phone
- Find The Irish Times on WhatsApp and stay up to date
- Our In The News podcast is now published daily - Find the latest episode here
