How the U.S. Government Controls Ukrainian Media
The camera was rolling when chaos erupted. It was January 21, 2024, and an independent Ukrainian journalist named Ostap Stakhiv was livestreaming a call with Vasyl Pleskach, a man claiming he was being illegally detained by Ukraine’s infamous military conscription unit, the TCC. The agency has been accused of kidnapping men from the street and forcing them to the front lines. Those who resist have sometimes been tortured—and in several well-documented cases—killed.
In the middle of the interview, Stakhiv called the police to see if they would free Pleskach from the clutches of the TCC. Just then, with the police still on the line, a burly figure entered Vasyl’s frame, walked over to Pleskach, and struck him hard in the face. His phone tumbled to the ground, landing sideways, but still recording. “They’re beating him right now,” Stakhiv told the police, as Vasyl’s picture went haywire. “People are watching it live. They’re beating him as we speak. Go to my YouTube channel and see it for yourself.” Off-screen, Pleskach’s screams were audible for another minute before the line was disconnected.
None of Ukraine’s media outlets covered the beating, but about a month later, a Ukrainian media outlet, Babel, ran an article about Stakhiv. Its headline? “Ostap Stakhiv—a Failed Politician and Antivaxxer—Created a Vast Anti-Conscription Network.” It accused the journalist of obstructing Ukraine’s mobilization efforts, pushing Kremlin narratives, and undermining trust in the military. (Babel did not respond to a request for an interview from The Free Press.)
Other Ukrainian outlets, including Detector Media and Bihus Info, chimed in with similar stories—some even containing identical phrasing. “Whole paragraphs were copied word for word,” Jean Novoseltsev, another independent journalist in Ukraine, told The Free Press. “You can tell they were sent the same memo.” (Detector Media and Bithus Info did not respond to an email requesting an interview.)
By the fall, Ukraine’s security agency (SBU) had arrested Stakhiv, holding him without bail for 60 days. Most of the media framed the charges as exposing a “traitor” who had “disclosed Ukrainian military positions.”
If you’re assuming that Babel, Detector Media, and Bihus Info are news organizations controlled by the Ukrainian government, think again.
The three publications—and many of the others that attacked Stakhiv—get no government funding, at least not from Ukraine. Rather, according to Oksana Romaniuk, director of the Institute of Mass Information, a press freedom group, nine out of 10 media outlets in Ukraine “survive thanks to grants” from the West.
The primary funder of these outlets is an NGO called Internews. In 2024, they provided “comprehensive support” for 536 media outlets in Ukraine, per their annual report, and trained over 5,000 journalists. Some Ukrainian publications rely on Internews for 80 percent of their funding.
And where does Internews get its money? Until last week, when the spigot was turned off, it came primarily from USAID, to the tune of $473 million since 2008.
Internews says that its mission is to “train journalists, advance internet freedom, and help media outlets become financially sustainable—so that everyone has trustworthy information to make informed decisions and hold power to account.” As of 2023, it claims to have “trained” over 9,000 journalists, aided 4,291 media outlets, and reached 778 million people around the world with its broadcasts. Its ties to USAID go beyond grants: Its CEO Jeanne Bourgault spent six years at USAID and is married to a USAID adviser, Ray S. Jennings. (Internews did not respond to a request for an interview.)
In a recent radio interview, Romaniuk lauded the support in part because the advertising market in Ukraine has largely disappeared due to the war, and many of these outlets would fold without it. (Many are now struggling financially since USAID put a halt to its funding.) A second reason, though, was that “the media makes the government accountable to society. And if there is no proper support for the media. . . what happens then? Corruption flourishes. Abuses of power, restrictions on human rights, etc., grow,” she said.
There’s no doubt that USAID’s media program in Ukraine has done some good, fostering a competitive Ukrainian media environment. But critics charge that that money comes with strings. Rather than holding the government accountable, the USAID/Internews–funded Ukrainian media have at times acted as the government’s loudest cheerleaders—to the point of smearing and discrediting independent journalists, like Stakhiv, who dare to challenge the preferred government narrative. Instead of watchdogs, they became guard dogs, ensuring that certain stories the government doesn’t want told remain hidden.
Wartime censorship is a universal, timeless practice. So it’s no surprise that Ukraine, which has been fighting for its existence since Russia invaded in 2022, would exert considerable control over what the country’s media publishes. A 2023 State Department report on human rights practices notes that the Ukrainian government “banned, blocked, or sanctioned media outlets and individual journalists deemed a threat to national security or who expressed positions authorities believed undermined the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” Investigative journalists who criticized the government, the report notes, were occasionally targeted by negative social media campaigns, often amplified by government-aligned channels. In these conditions, self-censorship has also flourished.
True, the restrictions in Ukraine remained far less repressive than in Russia, where the government passed a series of draconian laws in the wake of the invasion that criminalized dissent, and even made it a crime to call it a war, punishable with a prison sentence of up to 15 years. In Ukraine, the war has prompted the government to pass laws banning statements that “threatened the country’s territorial integrity, promoted war, instigated racial or religious conflict, or supported Russia’s aggression against the country.” Broadcast media, which had been largely controlled by a handful of oligarchs, has been consolidated, and now primarily shows government-approved programming. In 2022, six major television stations started producing around-the-clock coverage to convey to the public a unified wartime message.
“They banned all TV channels, which gave way to this one unified TV marathon,” Novoseltsev told The Free Press. “For two years now, they’ve been reporting how Ukraine is winning, we have practically no losses, our president is the fairest of them all, and the entire world is behind us. . . people soon realized it was propaganda.”
The State Department report noted there were instances in which “the government practiced censorship, restricted content, and penalized individuals and media outlets for reportedly criticizing measures taken by authorities or expressing pro-Russia views, through imposing financial sanctions, banning websites, and blocking television channels.”
What’s not mentioned in the report is the fact that the U.S. government itself has been funding these very practices. It is one thing for a country to pass laws that restrict speech in times of war. It is quite another when “independent” media outlets, funded by American taxpayer dollars for the express purpose of holding their government accountable, engage in that same censorship, and orchestrate smear campaigns against journalists who report on abuses.
One of the most blatant abuses, which has been going on since 2023, is the military recruiter practice of snatching men from the streets, breaking into apartments, and even torturing men who have refused to join the military. Dozens of videos documenting these abuses have been widely shared on social media. Ukrainians want news about these abuses.
But in USAID-funded outlets, coverage was scarce to nonexistent.
“Some would report isolated incidents if they went viral,” Novoseltsev said. “But that was it. Others ignored the issue entirely.”
A Free Press review of USAID-funded media bore this out. Bihus Info, which was among the outlets that smeared Stakhiv, has never reported on forced conscription at all. In the comments section under some of their videos, viewers demanded, “When will you investigate the TCC?”
Some USAID-funded publications, now pleading for donations after the Trump administration suspended the Internews/USAID grants they had relied on, insist they operated independently. Yet, the experience of Astra, an independent outlet in Russia, where Internews also hands out media grants, suggests otherwise.
When Astra applied for Internews funding, it was told the grant required an “Internews-appointed editor.” Astra’s editor-in-chief, Anastasia Chumakova, was stunned.
“Why on earth would foundations edit texts, and why do independent media agree to it? Are you sure the word ‘independent’ goes with this?” she wrote on Telegram.
In late 2022, Novoseltsev became one of a handful of Ukrainian journalists who began reporting on forced conscription—mainly because hardly anyone else was doing it. He interviewed dozens of people with firsthand experiences with the TCC, livestreamed conversations on his YouTube channel, and amassed 140,000 subscribers in the process.
Then, in January 2024, his YouTube channel was blocked. He met with his YouTube manager and recorded the conversation. The manager was surprised to hear about the ban; he didn’t know anything about it. But he told Novoseltsev he had to assume it was government censorship. “On our end, we don’t want to argue with that,” said the manager. Novoseltsev’s channel was never reinstated.
Within days, Novoseltsev found himself facing criminal charges, accused of “obstructing Ukrainian Armed Forces.” In late July, he was arrested. The headlines in the USAID-funded media followed a now-familiar pattern: “SBU Detained Propagandist, Opponent of Mobilization Jean Novoseltsev for Calls to Resist Conscription,” said Babel, in a typical headline.
He was described as a “pseudo-journalist,” a “provocateur,” and a “propagandist.” Some articles, he noted wryly, were “remarkably similar” to those written about Stakhiv.
“I dare them to find a single piece of propaganda I pushed,” he said. “Give me one example. All of my statements are video-recorded, so it should be easy enough to find.”
Authorities accused him of disrupting mobilization, inciting armed resistance, and leaking military information—claims that he says never even made it into his case file. What did? A single phrase he had said: “If you force men to the front with a whip, you won’t get motivated troops. You’ll get an army of slaves.”
After three days in prison, his supporters crowdfunded his bail. He currently awaits trial, which authorities keep delaying—likely because they have no case, he said.
When asked whether his reporting plays into Kremlin hands, Novoseltsev was defiant. “It’s those who drag unmotivated men onto the frontlines against their will, they play into Kremlin hands. Not those who report on it.”
Novoseltsev continues to report on forced conscription, among other subjects, with streams on various video-hosting platforms and on his Telegram channel. On January 19, he launched a new YouTube channel. He called it MUGA: Make Ukraine Great Again.