In November 2021, Illia Ponomarenko, a Ukrainian defense reporter, was fired from his job at the Kyiv Post—the country’s then-largest and oldest independent English-language newspaper. The owner, Adnan Kivan, had shut down the paper with little warning and no explanation, surprising even President Volodymyr Zelensky, according to a Radio Free Europe report. Several Kyiv Postreporters issued a statement that Kivan had sought to compromise their editorial independence and that their dismissal was an attempt to purge “inconvenient, fair, and honest journalists.” Those reporters, including Ponomarenko, decided to start their own newspaper, which they named the Kyiv Independent.