$15,900 Raised: How You're Protecting Kyiv Independent's Wartime Footage
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Dear Supporters,
We did it thanks to you! Together we raised $15,900, about 1.5 times our goal, to buy network-attached storage (NAS) for the Kyiv Independent's video archive.
That archive is 55 TB of footage and growing daily: cities, communities, and everyday life across Ukraine, filmed over the years of Russia's full-scale invasion. Some of those places are now under occupation, or no longer exist. Some people are unfortunately dead. Our footage is the record of how everything once was.
We're now arranging the purchase — a Synology DS1823XS+ enclosure and the Seagate hard drives that will hold our primary archive, independent of any single cloud provider. The timing is right: we had just begun hitting the limits of our existing cloud storage and needed a proper archival system to grow into.
Day to day, the NAS will be a workhorse for the team, providing quick access to the files they use. It will also let our video department set the archive up properly — gathering scattered footage, naming and cataloging it, so that as we grow, our work is stored in a way that lasts.
Because we raised more than we budgeted for, we can add four more drives, filling every slot in the NAS base and adding 112 TB. That extra space doubles as protection: copies of files are spread across drives, so if one fails, nothing is lost, with a full backup alongside. A separate cloud backup stays in place in case the NAS is ever physically damaged.
Procurement should take about a month, depending on availability and shipping, and we'll keep you posted.
Thank you again for standing with us and helping preserve the footage of Ukrainian history as it's made. Your support ensures our history is not erased.
