Kyiv Post

The first print edition of Kyiv Post came out on October 18, 1995, under the name Kiev Post, with founder and owner Jed Sunden listed as managing editor; Sunden soon took the title of publisher and appointed Andrea Faiad as the first chief editor. Preparations began that September, with a team of about six people working in a two-room apartment in Kyiv’s Tatarka neighborhood. Sunden recalled in 2005 that the start-up money was six or seven thousand dollars of his personal savings; later Kyiv Post retrospectives put it at $8,000, three computers and seven staff.⁠[1][1][2][2][3]

Sunden recalled that in the early years much advertising was bartered rather than paid in cash — an airline, for example, would give free tickets in exchange for space; by the late 1990s most space was sold for cash at market prices. The earliest advertisers included Winner Automotive, Jones East 8, Ukraine International Airlines and Arizona BBQ.⁠[4][1]

On March 20, 1997, second chief editor Igor Greenwald changed the name to Kyiv Post. On August 7 that year, Sunden expanded the paper to 32 pages, launched the website www.thepost.kiev.ua and started the Odesa Post, which lasted only two years.⁠[1][1]

In 1998, Kyiv Post began publishing twice a week with a circulation of 20,000. Chief editors changed frequently in 1998–1999, with Askold Krushelnycky, Tom Warner, Brian Bonner and Greg Bloom serving in turn. Sunden said that once the effects of the 1998 Russian ruble collapse wore off, Kyiv Post had become solidly profitable by 1999.⁠[1][1][1][1][1][4]

On April 11, 2000, publisher Sunden was refused entry when he arrived at Kyiv’s Boryspil airport from abroad; authorities took his passport and told him he had been declared “persona non grata,” without giving a reason. After nearly 20 hours stranded at the airport he flew to Vienna on April 12; hours later, a highly placed official who declined to be named told Kyiv Post that Sunden was free to return, and U.S. Embassy officials also told him the ban had been lifted. Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said it had no connection to the decision, while the U.S. Embassy asked for immediate clarification of the reasons.⁠[5][5][5][5][5][5][5]

Sunden believed that in the 2000 murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze, Kyiv Post’s coverage was ahead of Ukrainian newspapers, and it called for President Leonid Kuchma’s resignation. He also said that if the so-called Melnychenko tapes were real, officials could be heard discussing ways to pressure Kyiv Post; on one tape a voice resembling Oleksandr Zinchenko mentions economic means such as “doubling the rent,” and Zinchenko denied ever making such remarks.⁠[2][4][4][4]

That same year, Kyiv Post launched the Best of Kyiv awards for local businesses; the contest ran for ten years, with the last edition held in early 2011.⁠[1][1]

In 2002, Sunden launched the Russian-language weekly Korrespondent with key Kyiv Post staff, with Vitaly Sych as chief editor. From 2000 until the economic downturn in the fall of 2008, the Kyiv Post weekly enjoyed great financial success, with circulation in recent years of about 25,000 copies.⁠[1][4]

During Sunden’s ownership, the news and opinion pages kept their editorial independence, while editorials reflected his libertarian views; the paper was also criticized for running “massage” classified ads.⁠[4][4][3]

On June 9, 2008, Brian Bonner returned as chief editor. That fall the financial crisis devastated the advertising market, and by October 2008 the paper had shrunk to 16 pages on poor newsprint. In January 2009, Sunden put the newspaper up for sale.⁠[1][6][6]

On July 29, 2009, Sunden announced at a staff meeting the sale of Kyiv Post to Mohammad Zahoor, a British citizen and owner of the ISTIL Group. Neither side disclosed the price; Dragon Capital, based on KP MediaKP MediaKP Media is a media and internet company that American Jed Sunden built in Ukraine starting from the Kyiv Post (named KP Publications until March 2006); its holdings once included the Russian-language weekly Korrespondent, the news site korrespondent.net and the portal bigmir.net. In 2006 the company raised $11 million by selling a 20% stake with the help of Dragon Capital; it sold the Kyiv Post in 2009, took in Ukrainian Media Holding (UMH) and Petro Poroshenko as investors in 2011, and in 2013 UMH bought Poroshenko’s 50% to become its sole owner.Open the full entry’s financial projections and publishing-company valuation multiples, estimated the deal at about $1.1 million, while a 2014 Columbia Journalism Review report put it at just over a million dollars. The deal covered both the newspaper and the website, and the paper had 22 employees at the time.⁠[7][7][7][6][7][7]

Sunden said the sale would inject cash into KP Media for investment in the company’s priority internet news sites and print publications, and that he believed the new owner would honor pledges to invest more and respect editorial independence. In announcing the acquisition, Zahoor pledged to uphold Kyiv Post’s standards of independent journalism and allow the editors the freedom they had previously enjoyed.⁠[4][4][7]

After the acquisition, the paper moved to 120 Sakshanskoho Street and Jim Phillipoff became CEO. Zahoor invested in print quality and page count, and stopped the “escort” advertisements.⁠[1][1][6]

In the early 2010 presidential election, editorials under Bonner endorsed Yulia Tymoshenko and repeatedly warned of the dangers of electing Viktor Yanukovych; after Yanukovych won, the paper ran the headline “From Prison to President.” On July 6 that year, Kyiv Post launched a Ukrainian- and Russian-language website, which was discontinued in 2013.⁠[6][6][6][1][1]

On July 2, 2010, Kyiv Post ran a front-page story on lawsuits and corruption allegations in the gas trade, “Gas trade leaves trail of lawsuits,” after which Ukrainian businessman Dmytro Firtash sued it for libel in the United Kingdom. Zahoor paid $63,000 in pre-trial fees and hired British media lawyer Mark Stephens to defend the case. On February 24, 2011, High Court Master John Leslie in London dismissed the claim, finding its connection to England “tenuous in the extreme.”⁠[1][3][8][8]

On April 15, 2011, chief editor Bonner was fired by Zahoor for publishing an interview with Yanukovych’s agriculture minister Mykola Prysyazhnyuk concerning blocked grain exports. Bonner said the paper had been under pressure all week not to publish; Zahoor said he fired him not for the story itself but for not obeying what they had agreed. The newsroom went on strike, and five days later Zahoor reinstated Bonner as part of a four-member team of editors. On July 18 that year, CEO Phillipoff resigned and was succeeded by Michael Willard.⁠[1][6][6][6][3][1]

On November 22, 2012, Kyiv Post held its first Tiger Conference. That year it also became a partner of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).⁠[1][1]

On March 1, 2013, Kyiv Post put up a paywall on its website, describing itself as the first news organization in Ukraine to do so. By 2014 the fee was $50 a year, and about 2,000 people had paid by the end of July that year.⁠[1][6]

On April 30, 2013, Bonner was fired by Zahoor for a second time over a financial dispute with CEO Willard; four months later Zahoor changed his mind, reinstating Bonner and letting Willard go, and former chief editor Jakub Parusinski became CEO. That year, Kyiv Post also set up the non-profit Media Development Foundation to support investigative journalism, journalism exchanges and training.⁠[1][3][1]

In September 2013, Sergei Kurchenko, a businessman close to the Yanukovych government who was then acquiring several media outlets, offered $3.5 million for Kyiv Post, far more than it was worth. Zahoor said he would sell only to a buyer who would preserve the paper’s “soul,” and that selling to an oligarch with ties to the government would be a betrayal of the readers.⁠[6][6][6][6]

From November 2013, when Yanukovych’s rejection of a trade deal with the European Union sparked protests, Kyiv Post reporters covered the Maidan Revolution and the events that followed, including Russia’s seizure of Crimea. In the summer of 2014, its newsroom budget was under $25,000 a month with just 19 editorial staff; to save money, Bonner canceled the subscriptions to AP and Reuters and allowed reporters to freelance for other outlets to supplement their pay. In 2014, its website pageviews peaked at more than 65 million.⁠[6][6][6][9]

On June 23, 2014, the University of Missouri School of Journalism announced that the Kyiv Post staff had won that year’s Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism, “for superior journalism throughout the publication’s history”; the medal was presented on October 28 in Columbia, Missouri, to chief editor Bonner and deputy chief editor Katya Gorchinskaya. On July 31 that year, Nataliya Bugayova became CEO.⁠[10][10][1][1]

On August 2, 2016, Luc ChénierLuc ChénierLuc Chénier is a Canadian advertising and communications professional and entrepreneur long based in Kyiv, and the CEO of the Ukrainian English-language outlet Kyiv Post; he first ran the newspaper’s business from 2016 to 2018, returned as CEO after the November 2021 Kyiv Post shutdown controversy, and led its shift toward overseas readers as “Ukraine’s global voice.”Open the full entry became CEO of Kyiv Post; he resigned on February 8, 2018.⁠[1][1]

On March 21, 2018, Zahoor announced the sale of Kyiv Post to Adnan Kivan, a Syrian-born Odesa builder and owner of the KADORR Group, for “much higher than” $3.5 million, without disclosing the exact amount. Zahoor said he had invested at least $5 million in the paper over nine years; Kivan assured him that he valued its editorial independence but reserved the right to pick his own team. After the acquisition, Bonner became executive director in addition to chief editor.⁠[11][1][11][11][1]

That year, Kyiv Post changed its motto from “Independence. Community. Trust.” to “Ukraine’s Global Voice” and set up a second non-profit, the Free Press Foundation. Under Kivan, the paper stepped up coverage of the conflict in Syria and of news from Odesa, and in 2018 held a conference titled “Bringing Peace to Syria & Ukraine.”⁠[9][1][3][3][3]

On April 20, 2019, Kyiv Post launched its first BrandStudio custom advertising project, in partnership with DTEK and produced by writers separate from the newsroom. In March 2020, because of the COVID-19 lockdown, the print edition was suspended for eight weeks starting with the March 27 issue and resumed on May 22; on August 31, the paper moved to 68 Zhylianska Street in Kyiv’s Holosiivsky district, its eighth office in 25 years. On October 18, 2020, Kyiv Post celebrated its 25th anniversary.⁠[1][1][1][1]

On November 8, 2021, Kivan announced on the website that Kyiv Post was temporarily closing, without giving a reason, and said he hoped “to reopen the newspaper bigger and better” one day; all 30 of the paper’s editors and reporters were fired. Three weeks earlier, Kivan had announced a Ukrainian-language edition under the same name and handpicked an editor to run it, raising newsroom concerns about its editorial independence. In a joint statement, the journalists called the shutdown and dismissals an “act of vengeance” by Kivan.⁠[12][12][13][12][12]

The spokesman for President Volodymyr Zelensky denied that the government had pressured Kivan over the coverage. Dismissed chief editor and CEO Bonner said he believed the paper had been under pressure, which the President’s Office, the prosecutor’s office and Kivan all denied. In 2025, Kyiv Post attributed the crisis to internal opposition to Kivan’s expansion plans. On November 22, the former editorial team announced the launch of the Kyiv Independent, funded by readers and donors.⁠[12][13][14][15]

On November 11, 2021, Luc Chénier, who had held the post in 2016–2018, again became CEO. About three weeks after the shutdown, Kyiv Post relaunched online with a smaller team; Chénier said he wanted less focus on domestic politics and more coverage of foreign investment, sports and tourism, describing Kyiv Post as “Ukraine’s global voice – not Ukraine’s corruption voice,” with the aim of turning a profit. On December 24, journalist, author and former UN official Bohdan NahayloBohdan NahayloBohdan Nahaylo is a British-born journalist of Ukrainian descent, an author and a former United Nations official who has long studied the Soviet nationalities question and Ukrainian politics; he headed Radio Liberty’s Ukrainian Service from 1989 to 1991 and has been chief editor of the Ukrainian English-language outlet Kyiv Post since December 2021.Open the full entry became acting chief editor.⁠[16][13][13][13][13][17]

After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Kyiv Post continued to publish. Around May 2022 it launched a Ukrainian-language edition, along with an Arabic-language edition that was later closed because of the difficulty of keeping pace with developments in the Middle East.⁠[14][18][14]

On May 23, 2023, chief editor Nahaylo announced that NewsGuard had rated Kyiv Post 87.5 out of 100, the highest score among English-language media in Ukraine at the time; monthly readership in April that year was 240% higher than in December 2022, with the largest share of readers (58%) in the United States. On October 3, Kyiv Post announced it had received a perfect 100% rating from NewsGuard and described itself as the first Ukrainian news organization to do so.⁠[18][18][18][19]

In 2025, Kyiv Post said that by 2023–2024, 97% of its readers were outside Ukraine (60% in North America and 30% in Europe), with combined website and social media views exceeding 6 million a month.⁠[14]

In October 2024, publisher Adnan Kivan died, and ownership of the paper passed to his son Ruslan Kivan. On December 30, 2024, Kyiv Post published CEO Chénier’s interview with Ruslan Kivan about his plans as the new CEO of Kadorr Group and owner of Kyiv Post.⁠[14][9][20][21][22]

On October 18, 2025, Kyiv Post marked its 30th anniversary. In an editorial that day, it noted that the paper had had only four owners — Jed Sunden, Mohammad Zahoor, Adnan Kivan and Ruslan Kivan — and argued that none of them was an oligarch seeking to exploit it for private gain.⁠[14][14]

On October 19, 2026, Kyiv Post announced that it had become the first Ukrainian partner of NewsGuard AI, NewsGuard’s new artificial intelligence chatbot, offering its readers one month of free access followed by a 25% subscription discount.⁠[23][23]

As of October 2026, the Kyiv Post website lists Ruslan Kivan as publisher, Luc Chénier as CEO and Bohdan Nahaylo as chief editor; the website’s copyright holder is BISNESGROUPP LLC, and the paper’s address is 68 Zhylianska Street, Kyiv. Kyiv Post describes itself as a for-profit outlet not owned by an oligarch, with most revenue coming from advertising and events, while its journalists also seek grants for editorial projects.⁠[24][24][24][9][9]

Kyiv Post: Official website: https://www.kyivpost.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[24]

X: Public account: https://x.com/KyivPost (opens in a new window)⁠[9]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kyiv-post (opens in a new window)⁠[9]

YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/KyivPostNewspaper (opens in a new window)⁠[9]