Dealers of Hate

How European politicians turn Ukrainian refugees into targets

Watch now
KI logo
Back
Team
Francis Farrell photo

Francis Farrell

Senior Reporter

Francis Farrell is a senior reporter at the Kyiv Independent. He is the co-author of War Notes, the Kyiv Independent's weekly newsletter about the war. For the second year in a row, the Kyiv Independent received a grant from the Charles Douglas-Home Memorial Trust to support his front-line reporting for the year 2025-2026. Francis won the Prix Bayeux Calvados-Normandy for war correspondents in the young reporter category in 2023, and was nominated for the European Press Prize in 2024. Francis speaks Ukrainian and Hungarian and is an alumnus of Leiden University in The Hague and University College London. He has previously worked as a managing editor at the online media project Lossi 36, as a freelance journalist and documentary photographer, and at the OSCE and Council of Europe field missions in Albania and Ukraine.

f.farrell@kyivindependent.com
For media & speaking inquiries:
press@kyivindependent.com

Articles

Ukraine

'It's a miracle' — Oleshky residents reach Ukrainian-controlled territory after escaping Russian occupation

by Yuliia Taradiuk, Kateryna Denisova, Viacheslav Ratynskyi, Francis Farrell
CHERNIHIV OBLAST — Evacuees from the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky have reached Ukrainian-controlled territory on Oct. 31 after an arduous 19-hour journey. The city's residents, who had been trapped in a worsening humanitarian crisis for months on end, arrived to an emotional reception at the border crossing with Belarus by relatives, health workers with ambulances, aid organizations, police, and media. President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed the mission was successful, thanking all parties
War

Reporter's notebook: Visiting a POW camp is the strongest antidote to sympathy for Russian soldiers

by Francis Farrell
Once our eyes adjusted to the aggressive glare of the freshly painted white walls around the yard, we began to make out figures, dozens of them dressed in navy blue, clinging to the inner walls of this surreal space. It was a scorching June day in western Ukraine, and we had just been released, like kids in a petting zoo, into a courtyard full of prisoners of war from the Russian military. Who we decided to walk up to and talk to, and what we wanted to talk about, was up to us. Whether these
War

Analysis: No, Elon Musk, Russian soldiers in Ukraine are not 'kids' who have 'no choice but to fight and die'

by Tania Myronyshena, Francis Farrell
"We should (have) some sympathy for the poor Russian conscripts too. Those kids have no choice but to fight and die in drone strikes." For anyone watching and understanding Ukraine's years-long struggle for survival, the words of SpaceX founder and world's richest man Elon Musk ring with deep moral bankruptcy. But more importantly, Musk's post on Oct. 25 — made in the middle of a hurricane scandal around the near-trillionaire's throttling of Starlink internet terminals used by the Ukrainian mi

Editors' Picks