From Expat Paper to Global Influencer: The Kyiv Post's Remarkable Journey

Roughly 100 years ago, Daily Mail founder Lord Northcliffe said the following, which still resonates:

"News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising.”

If Lord Northcliffe were alive today, he would probably agree that Stash Luczkiw and his fellow writers and editors of the Kyiv Post are creating a lot of news.

By debunking Russian disinformation, Luczkiw regularly communicates information the Russians would dearly like to suppress. However, the Kyiv Post also regularly ticks off right-wing American influencers like Steve Bannon, David Sacks and Tucker Carlson.

We’ll get to the some of the stories that bother either the Russians or the Americans, but first, what is the Kyiv Post? And how does this small, regional newspaper happen to be influential enough for its editorial approach to matter globally?

The Kyiv Post began in 1995 as an English language newspaper largely for expats. Things changed drastically in 2021, a little less than four months before the February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. At this time the staff and the publication’s owner, Adnan Kivan, argued over editorial independence with the result that Kivan fired the entire staff and shut down the newspaper

With a war threatening it and no staff to speak of, the Kyiv Post’s odds of survival seemed minuscule. However, in what proved to be a remarkably fortunate choice, Kivan hired the British-Ukrainian journalist Bohdan Nahaylo as Editor-in-Chief. Nahaylo is not only a journalist—he’s also a historian. Among his intellectual creds, he predicted the end of the former Soviet Union long before other “Russia experts” were able to see what was going on.

As a historian, Nahaylo’s intellectual contacts enabled him to publish authoritative opinion articles that soon were being read by the denizens of think tanks and the global movers and shakers who care about geopolitics.

By the war’s sixth month, Nahaylo had hired such outstanding writers that today the Kyiv Post has a reputation for not only reporting news, but for its deep dives into Ukrainian cultural and military affairs. As Luczkiw points out, “The war has allowed a little provincial newspaper for expats to cover a historical event that will change the world for the next 50 years.”

Sipa US / Alamy Stock Photo

Luczkiw regularly creates news with Northcliffe’s sense in mind: that there are people who would like to suppress the news outright. “I write analyses of American think tank writing when they are getting it wrong,” he says. As an example, he points to the strategy of men like CIA Director William Burns or National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who’ve made sure Ukraine survives while not allowing Russia to lose outright. In his view, they and others like them have a Russia-centric point of view with too little understanding of Ukraine. He believes their lack of understanding guarantees chaos rather than prevents it.

And then there’s the case of Samuel Charap, a contributor to the Valdai Discussion Club, an organization that disseminates Putin’s talking points. Luczkiw takes Charap to task. “Charap is known to be a frequent visitor of the White House, advising the National Security Council on the Russo-Ukrainian War,” he says. “But he has been consistently wrong. Just look at his Foreign Policy article one month before the full-scale invasion, titled: ‘The West’s Weapons Won’t Make Any Difference to Ukraine.’”

Luczkiw has a bedrock philosophy when it comes to writing. “Newspaper writing should be a quest for truth. However, if you’re in the building with Anne Frank and you know she’s there, and a Nazi comes up to you and says, ‘Excuse me, where is Ann Frank?’, journalist truth – a correspondence of words and facts – is, ‘Anne Frank is in the attic.,’” he told me. “However, Truth with a capital T is more like, 'I think they left, or even closer to the Truth is 'F__ you, you Nazi scum!’”

Against all odds, the Kyiv Post has evolved from a modest expat newspaper into a global powerhouse. Facing a full-scale invasion and the sudden dismissal of its staff, its survival seemed impossible. The newspaper defied expectations, and by creating real news, the kind some people somewhere want to suppress, it today influences public opinion and policy worldwide.