Ukrainian media professionals primarily associate resilience with personal endurance, mutual support, and being able to secure basic living and working conditions for themselves. Systemic emergency preparedness of newsrooms and teams featured far less often in their responses.

These are the findings of a study by the Institute of Mass Information focusing on Ukrainian journalists’ resilience ahead of winter 2026–2027. The survey covered 265 media professionals based in 23 oblasts of Ukraine and in Kyiv city and was carried out during the period from 21 September to 7 October 2026.

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Personal endurance over systemic preparedness of newsrooms

When posed an open-ended question about what they would advise their colleagues to do to stay resilient in wartime, 44.3% of respondents suggested holding on, not giving up, and having faith in Ukraine’s victory. 31.8% mentioned self-care. Only 19.3% listed mutual support within the team.

By contrast, only 10.2% recommended specific organisational solutions, and physical safety and material preparedness for blackouts were mentioned in 6.8% of responses each.

Practical tips included securing backup power supply and connectivity in advance, automating reporting, planning for rest, and using regional hubs to work in emergencies.

These responses show that resilience is predominantly viewed as an individual’s capacity to endure hardship rather than the result of systemic preparation by an organisation.

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Energy, mental health care, and rest are the biggest needs

Responses to the question about what journalists would spend an extra €3,000–5,000 on to boost their resilience revealed a similar trend.

The most frequently mentioned items were:

  • energy equipment, connectivity and heating — 63.9%;
  • mental health care — 24.3%;
  • rest and recovery — 20.4%;
  • work equipment and digital tools — 18.7%;
  • physical safety, first-aid kits, tourniquets, bomb shelters, and protective gear — 16.5%.

Only 23% of respondents said they would spend at least some of the extra money to help cover the needs of their newsroom or team.

Some responses also pointed to acute financial problems faced by newsrooms. In particular, journalists mentioned the need to pay salaries to keep the media outlet running.

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From personal endurance towards institutional resilience

The IMI study points to an important problem in the Ukrainian media sector: resilience is still largely seen as a matter of a journalist’s personal responsibility: their capacity to work despite fatigue, stress, shelling, and shortage of resources.

Yet long-term media resilience requires not just staff’s personal commitment but also organisational capacity on part of news outlets: stable funding, staff reserves, clear procedures for emergencies, safety protocols, and opportunities for recovery.

The key takeaway of the study: the Ukrainian media sector needs to move from resilience that rests largely on journalists’ personal endurance towards systemic newsroom preparation. International support programmes should therefore invest not only in assistance to individual media professionals or content production, but also in developing media outlets’ institutional capacity.

After all, true resilience is not journalists’ ability to keep working endlessly on the verge of exhaustion, but newsrooms’ ability to keep operating without constantly depending on the personal heroism of their staff.

Note. The study is based on an anonymous targeted survey of 265 media professionals based in 23 regions of Ukraine and in Kyiv city. The survey was carried out in the period from 21 September to 7 October 2026. The maximum margin of error for the full sample is ±5.6 percentage points. The questionnaire did not measure the actual number of hours equipment can run autonomously.