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Thursday, October 23, 2025
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Team

Alisa Yurchenko photo

Alisa Yurchenko

Investigative Reporter

Alisa has been working as an investigative journalist and editor in Ukraine for over 10 years. She joined the Kyiv Independent in 2024. Before that Alisa worked at the anti-corruption investigative project Bihus.Info as editor, journalist and presenter. She is the winner of a number of Ukrainian investigative journalism prizes. Additionally, Alisa works as a media trainer. She created several courses, helping journalists and civil activists to find information using open-source intelligence.

a.yurchenko@kyivindependent.com

Articles

Investigations

Investigation: Top Russian defense industry boss tries to lift sanctions, spills own secrets instead

by Alisa Yurchenko
Key findings: * Two years ago, lawyers representing an offshore company went to court to unblock a superyacht that had been detained in a Spanish port due to its links to Sergei Chemezov, an associate of Vladimir Putin. Chemezov is believed to secretly own a number of luxury assets outside of Russia. * Court filings studied by the Kyiv Independent revealed that the yacht changed hands several times. * All three owners are believed to have served as proxies for Chemezov, part of a strategy to
War

Investigation: Despite sanctions, American trucks are being used by Russia to launch kamikaze drones

by Alisa Yurchenko
A U.S. company is among several worldwide that have sold U.S.-made pickup trucks to Russia, despite U.S. sanction restrictions prohibiting the sale of such vehicles to the country, the Kyiv Independent can reveal. Further, one type of vehicle in particular — Ram 1500 pickup trucks — has recently appeared in Russian state propaganda videos specially adapted to launch kamikaze drones in attacks on Ukrainian cities. An investigation by the Kyiv Independent reveals several companies located in the
War

Analysis: Ahead of Trump's 'major' Russia announcement, what will happen next to Ukraine?

by Francis Farrell, Chris York, Kateryna Denisova, Kollen Post, Alisa Yurchenko, Alex Cadier, Yuliia Taradiuk, Asami Terajima, Daria Shulzhenko
Amid ever-escalating aerial assaults, accelerating Russian advances in the east, and the weariness that comes with nearly 3.5 years of war, all eyes in Ukraine are once again focused upon one man — U.S. President Donald Trump. "I think I'll have a major statement to make on Russia on Monday," Trump said in an interview with NBC News on July 10, the latest development in a tortuously long and so far wholly ineffective U.S.-led peace process. Short of a massive injection of military aid, or crus
Russia bypassed sanctions to import Chinese machinery and boost missile production
Investigations

Investigation: How Russia prepares its strategic missile plant for ‘eternal war’

by Alisa Yurchenko
Key findings: * Despite international sanctions, Russia's strategic missile plant was able to import complex machinery to dramatically increase missile production. * The Kyiv Independent has identified the equipment supplied to the plant, as well as the supply chains, mostly from China. * We located the plant's new premises, built to house the new machinery. * We obtained a document confirming that the plant received an order to produce intercontinental missiles capable of reaching the U.S.
Meet the people, companies behind the trade in looted Ukrainian minerals.
Investigations

Investigation: The hidden journey of Ukrainian coal stolen by Russia — and who profits from it

by Alisa Yurchenko
On March 29, the sanctioned Russia-flagged vessel Sv. Nikolay quietly docked at the Algerian port of Annaba near the coal terminal, waiting to be unloaded. The metallurgical coke the ship was carrying — a key ingredient in steelmaking produced from coal — had been stolen. The Kyiv Independent traced the vessel’s covert journey to this point — and found strong evidence that the vessel departed from the occupied Ukrainian port of Mariupol. While in Mariupol, it kept its transponder off to disgui
Investigations

Investigation: We tried to buy American chips as a Russian defense manufacturer — and it worked

by Alisa Yurchenko
Despite bans put in place by the U.S. and Europe on the supply of electronic components to Russia, dozens of Russian microelectronics suppliers continue to obtain and resell imported chips to Russian arms manufacturers successfully. Without these Western chips, Russia would not be able to produce key weapons — like missiles, drones, and self-propelled howitzers. To prove that this line of supply continues to operate three years into Russia’s full-scale invasion, the Kyiv Independent tried orde
A collage features the Pantsir, an invoice from Rosoboronexport, and portraits of Vladimir Putin and Mohammed Bin Salman.
Investigations

Investigation: Russia profits from arms exports to Saudi Arabia despite sanctions, leaks reveal

by Alisa Yurchenko
Few agreements are shrouded in more secrecy than inter-government arms deals — especially when one of the parties is a global pariah leading a bloody war. But a recent massive leak of emails and documents has given us an unprecedented glimpse into a particularly secretive transaction. The leak reveals that Saudi Arabia agreed to pay Russia over 2 billion euros under a contract signed in 2021 involving companies that were repeatedly sanctioned, both before and after Russia’s full-scale invasion
Ukraine

Investigation: Who helped Russians increase production of domestic attack drones despite sanctions

by Alisa Yurchenko
An American-made HIMARS artillery system races down a Ukrainian road as a kamikaze drone hunts it down. The drone flies into the vehicle, followed by an explosion. The scene was caught on video by a Russian reconnaissance drone in mid-November. The drone that hit the HIMARS was a Lancet — one of Russia’s most used unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). Russia has used thousands of them against Ukraine. The weapons are produced by Zala Aero Group, a privately-owned group of Russian companies, with the
Investigations

Investigation: Shattering the secrecy of Putin’s top spy chief

by Alisa Yurchenko
Key findings: * International sanctions lists contain mistakes in key identifying data of Sergey Korolev, deputy head of Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). * The European Union and Swiss sanctions list the incorrect date of birth of Korolev. Almost all other sanctions lists don’t include the most likely spelling of his name or surname. * The appearance of Korolev has been a secret. For years, the media and even some official sources have used a photo of a different Russian man to repres

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