Independent media in Russia, Ukraine lose their funding with USAID freeze

KYIV – The suspension of USAID has had a dramatic effect on both Ukrainian and Russian independent news outlets that relied on the grants to operate and produced work often critical of their governments.

The program that provides billions in U.S. assistance internationally is better known for its humanitarian and medical work, but the funding has also been used for democracy promotion as well as supporting journalism.

Ukraine’s independent media, a collection of small regional outlets, muckraking investigative websites and internet news platforms, have been reeling since the announcement, with some organizations saying that they are just weeks away from slashing staff or closing down entirely.

“We risk losing the achievements of three decades of work and increasing threats to Ukraine’s statehood, democratic values, and pro-Western orientation,” Detector Media, a journalism watchdog, said in a statement on its website last week.

Many of these organizations have struggled to make ends meet in the aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion three years ago, which caused a drastic drop in advertising revenue and forced them to turn to foreign assistance programs to stay afloat.

Moreover, the country’s main broadcasters have been consolidated into a single television channel that promotes stories largely favorable to the government.

Many exiled Russian organizations and media also rely on grants as their main source of funding, much of which has come from Washington as part of an effort to try to ensure that alternative reporting on the war against Ukraine and on political developments in Russia reaches a Russian audience.

“It seems that this story has affected the lion’s share of Russian media and public projects,” wrote Russian opposition activist, Andrei Pivovarov, in a post on Telegram. He said everyone was talking about the impact of the funding freeze, but almost no one was speaking openly about it.

“Some are curtailing programs, offline events are being canceled,” he said. “In the near future, this will not only lead to the cancellation of events, but also the closure of a number of projects.”

For Ukraine, the freeze comes at a moment when the need for independent sources of information is critical. Russian forces continue to advance along the front line, while Kyiv is scrambling to find the personnel to continue an increasingly unpopular war.

Detector Media’s head Nataliia Lygachova told the Washington Post that she thought “more than 50 percent” of the media organizations that receive foreign grants were dependent on American assistance.

“I can say that this is really very important not only for Ukraine but also for the United States,” Lygachova said. “Because it is independent media that ensure, first of all, the existence of democracy and pluralism in Ukraine.”

Without independent media, “all this will be in doubt,” Lygachova said. “We hope that (President Donald) Trump will resume international support programs, because he is fighting against the bloated state apparatus and not oppressing free media,” she said.

The move has been justified as an effort to make aid align with national interests. Speaking during a trip to El Salvador, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said early this week that USAID was a “completely unresponsive agency – it’s supposed to respond to policy directives at the State Department and it refuses to do so.”

“If you’re going to spend taxpayer money, then you need to spend it in furtherance of the national interests of the United States,” he said.

But many of these journalists, especially the Russian ones, argue that their work is in U.S. interests. Independent reporting on the war, particularly information on Russian war crimes or military failures, is banned under Russia’s strict wartime censorship.

Russian organizations that do get American funding are reluctant to disclose this publicly because of the risk of legal repercussions in Russia, including being declared “foreign agents” by authorities there.

Leda Garina, a Russian activist who founded a St. Petersburg-based feminist activist group, Eve’s Ribs, and who fled into exile, wrote in a post on Facebook that the organization she was helping had lost funding, which came from two sources.

“If anyone is unaware, a large number of NGOs engaged in human rights work were supported by the United States. And if they were supported by European funds, these funds were often subcontractors between the United States and the recipients,” Garina wrote.

Denys Bihus, a Ukrainian investigative journalist who runs a free website exposing official corruption, said USAID grants made up “around two-thirds” of his organization’s projects and appealed to his readers to voluntarily donate to his organization.

“We will not make a paywall, advertise online games or work for someone,” Bihus wrote in a Facebook post last week. “Therefore, if you consider independent journalism important – support it. If not – it turns out, no one needs it.”

In a phone interview this week, Bihus said he had prepared a financial “cushion” to lessen potential difficulties, but he had nevertheless “already cut all expenses for the next two months, including production expenses.”

Beyond that, if the funding is not renewed, “we will cut people.”

Farther outside Kyiv, the situation is even more serious. Svitlana Zalizetska, chief editor of the internet site RIA South/RIA Melitopol, said that some of their budget comes from USAID.

Zalizetska’s team originally worked in the southern Ukrainian city of Melitopol but were forced to flee when Russian forces occupied it. The outlet reports on the occupied territories – using their contacts among those who still live there – from Ukraine-controlled Zaporizhzhia.

“If such media outlets as ours cease to exist, the entire international community and Ukrainians will not be able to receive information about what is happening in the occupation,” Zalizetska said. “The international community will receive information about the occupied territories of Ukraine from Russian propagandists, not from Ukrainian journalists.”