Investigations

Investigation: A secret program, 'suicidal' missions, and death, torture in occupied Ukraine
Investigations

Investigation: A secret program, 'suicidal' missions, and death, torture in occupied Ukraine

by Jimmy Rushton

A Western-funded classified program supported a "non-violent resistance" initiative inside Russian-occupied Ukraine for more than three years that encouraged civilians to engage in "suicidal" activities despite credible reports of the deaths, torture, and imprisonment of activists, the Kyiv Independent can reveal. Russian-occupied Ukraine is one of the most heavily surveilled and most repressive territories in the world, and some of the activities Yellow Ribbon and its sister initiative Zla Mav

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For Ukraine's mil-tech startups, access to credit remains a battlefield

When a bank asked Ukrainian defense tech company TAF Industries to pledge its assets as collateral for a simple bank loan, the company faced a dilemma: it couldn't reveal the location of its manufacturing facilities. To prove the factory existed, TAF came up with a bold workaround — blindfolding bank officials and driving them to the site. "It worked — they gave us a loan," Volodymyr Zinovskyi, CEO at TAF Industries, told the Kyiv Independent in a cafe in downtown Kyiv. Well into the fifth ye

Ukraine has a billion-dollar winter survival plan. It just can't pay for it yet.

As Russian drones and missiles continue to pound Ukraine's war-damaged energy infrastructure, Kyiv is struggling to find funding for a 5.4 billion euro ($6.2 billion) "energy resilience plan" first announced in spring. The next few months are a race against time to prepare for what energy experts warn will be another difficult winter under constant Russian bombardment. Ukraine not only needs to repair equipment after Russia wiped out nine gigawatts of power generation last winter, but also deve

Electricians from DTEK inspect damaged equipment on an electricity pylon in Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine, on Jan. 14, 2026. (
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