The Trap

Yanush grew up in a conservative Romani community in a small Ukrainian town. He is about to get married, just what his parents want. However, Yanush is gay and he is in love with another young man, Pasha. Together they decide to sneak away from the wedding and leave town, but can Yanush really do it?

How to accept your daughter if she isn't like everyone else? Maybe I brought her up in a wrong way? But which way is the right one? Perhaps this questions Antonina, mother of a young transgender person, asked herself.

Journalists from The Kyiv Independent conducted an investigation and spoke with relatives and guardians whose children were on the verge of being sent to Russia. Bypassing the front line, their loved ones traveled through several European countries to Donetsk to pick up their children and prevent them from being transferred to Russian families. The journalists also identified a group of children who were deported to Russia last spring under the guise of a health retreat at the Polyany resort. They were promised to be returned in a month, but instead were placed in the care of Russian families. Ukrainian collaborators who remained working on the Russian side in 2014 were involved in the deportation of this group of children.

Provincial wedding. Seems like happiness is just around the corner. But when the sun sets the happiness is floating by.

Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukrainian law enforcement agencies have recorded 292 cases of sexual violence by the Russian military. This figure likely represents just the tip of the iceberg. “He Came Back” is an investigative documentary about sexual crimes that were committed during the Russian occupation of Kyiv and Kherson oblasts in early 2022. Two women agreed to tell journalists from the Kyiv Independent’s War Crimes Investigations Unit about what they went through and how they are seeking justice.

Russia’s current aggression against Ukrainians contains a number of signs of genocide, so the Kyiv Independent’s War Crimes Investigations Unit decided to investigate the matter. In this documentary, its author, investigative reporter Danylo Mokryk explores whether there is genocidal intent in the actions of the Russian military and officials, as well as in Russian state propaganda. He interviews several scholars whose views oppose one another. William A. Schabas, one of the most renowned scholars in the field, is a skeptic. Eugene Finkel has written an opinion piece stating that the Russian invasion was genocide back in 2022. Dmytro Koval emphasizes that one cannot fully understand Russia’s war in Ukraine if one doesn’t call it genocide.

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Russia has used the Olenivka prison, located in Russian-occupied Donetsk Oblast, as a camp for prisoners of war and civilian hostages from Mariupol. Thousands of Ukrainians, including servicemen from the Azov Brigade, have been held captive in its cells. Those who returned from captivity spoke about the inhumane conditions of detention, hunger, and torture in this prison. For six months, the Kyiv Independent team has been working on recreating a picture of the events that took place in Olenivka. Journalists recorded dozens of interviews with the servicemen and civilians who witnessed gross violations of international law.

The Russian military has already killed more than 500 Ukrainian children during its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Dozens of them were shot at close range with small arms. Among them were 10-year-old Kateryna Vinarska in Kharkiv region, 12-year-old Vladyslav Mahdyk in Kyiv region, and 15-year-old Mykhailo Ustianivsky in Kherson region. The Kyiv Independent's findings point to the systemic and deliberate nature of child murders by the Russian military in Ukraine. Our in-depth investigation allowed us not only to establish clear circumstances of the murders but also, in one instance, to identify those responsible for the killing of a child.