Volyn media explain how US funding suspension impacted them

Illustration by the IMI

The decision to freezt the funding for US programs in Ukraine has significantly affected the Volyn media, whose projects have been suspended. Now media professionals are adapting to working in a new situation and are looking for other funding, such as grants from Europe, reports Maya Holub, the Institute of Mass Information representative in Volyn oblast.

Assistance from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was received by the civil society organizations Center for Investigative Journalism "Syla Pravdy", SID Media Group, and Volyn Press Club in particular.

Syla Pravdy

Syla Pravdy director Yuriy Horbach says that their investigative journalism project to ensure transparency and accountability of local authorities in Volyn, which was supported by the Internews Network organization with USAID money, was supposed to last until June 2025.

“On January 25, we received a letter saying that the project had been fully suspended. So we will lose about 50% of the editorial budget for the first half of 2025 if the work is not resumed after the 90 days of suspension. We have put the project on hold but continue to work as usual using the donations from partners and readers that we have accumulated in previous years. We are looking for other sources of funding,” he told the IMI representative.

Syla Pravdy has another project underway, which is funded from other sources, so the team continues to work on investigations and research.

“We still have an active project, which is supported by another American organization, the National Endowment for Democracy, covers approximately 50% of the team's needs, and is funded from other sources. It is underway, so we continue to work on our investigations and research,” said Yuriy Horbach.

Syla Pravdy has asked for support from their readers and viewers in Volyn oblast.

Yuriy Horbach says that they had a payment system connected to the website which everyone can use to support their media outlet.

“We set the first goal for ourselves: to find 100 people who will sign up for a monthly subscription of 200 hryvnias and join the Lyudy Pravdy community, which will grant them access to objective and balanced information about the resonant news of Lutsk and Volyn oblast, our investigations and research,” he said.

“As of February 6, we have received 62 donations for 44,765 hryvnias and 29 new subscribers since the start of the donation campaign. We believe that with the help from our readers and viewers we will gradually be able to at least partially close the hole in our budget and continue to do our favorite work for the benefit of society,” he added.

You can support the Syla Pravdy team by making a donation here.

The national hyperlocal media network Rayon.in.ua

The national hyperlocal media network Rayon.in.ua is a registered news outlet and operates as part of the SID Media Group. The LLC News Agency Rayon In Ua is owned by Roman Korsak, the CEO of VolWest Group. SID Media Group is part of the VolWest investment group, which has been operating in the private equity market since 1992.

Natalia Pakhaychuk, the head of the NGO SID Media Group, says that at the time of the US aid freeze the team had two projects newly in the works.

“Those were about the war's impact on the environment and how we should work to restore it, in particular through European integration reforms, and about the cross-border content: visit exchanges with Romania and Poland. Those are currently on pause. Earlier, until late autumn, we had a large American grant from Internews Network, which was the backbone of our work, and we were counting on a new cooperation round starting in spring,” she says.

Natalia Pakhaychuk adds that during this inter-grant period they managed to find funding from a European donor. But this project does not fund content creation and is aimed at building financial sustainability:

“Since November, we have optimized the content production spending and focused on developing the advertising and grant teams, and we have also developed a strategy for building a new channel – funding from readers. Of course, neither advertising nor reader contributions can replace American grants right now.”

Natalia Pakhaychuk noted that they are currently reviewing their spending:

“Journalists’ already modest salaries will be cut. Everyone will be working fewer hours. Working on weekends, which is very important during a war, is out of the question now. We are writing fewer large articles on important topics. However, we are definitely not stopping our work.”

You can support the Rayon.in.ua team here.

Volyn Press Club

Bohdana Stelmakh, coordinator of the NGO Volyn Press Club, says that the funding suspension had a significant impact on them:

“We have been working in Ukraine for a long time and have no office space, so we are in no danger of losing our room. Unfortunately, we have lost the opportunity to financially support the regional media outlets we had planned to work with starting this year. Our cooperation in previous years has given many such outlets a chance to survive. We cannot complete the third round of our educational program for women experts now: the second module was supposed to take place in February. It was a wonderful program: participants from previous years are still telling us how it impacted them and the change they are already making.”

Bohdana Stelmakh says that they planned many more valuable events which are now on hold. For example, there was a multi-year project on gender-sensitive journalism, which was yielding very tangible results. The organization always reports on these and other projects on Facebook.

Still, the organization has the support of a European donor as well, which enables them to support several more regional media outlets. The Volyn Press Club also does a lot of work beyond the outlined scope of the project.

“It is wrong to think that civil society organizations 'feed off grants' and take no steps without them. This devalues the work of the third sector, which is the reason we still have democracy and not a dictatorship, like in Russia or Belarus. But the support of donor organizations creates much greater opportunities for us (for example, in attracting professionals, experts to our staff) and for the media in all oblasts of Ukraine, which cannot attract enough funds from advertising, even less so from newspaper subscriptions, in wartime. I do not see an interest in the media or civil society sectors from the state. Rather, the opposite. And if there is no donor support for democratic development, the support will go to the 'Russian world'. And that one is already being more active,” concludes Bohdana Stelmakh.

Earlier, the media of Mykolaiv, Chernihiv, Poltava, and Luhansk oblasts explained what danger the suspension of US grants poses to them.

Previously

US President Donald Trump has suspended funding for all projects by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for 90 days to review them and determine whether they align with his political goals.

In Ukraine, USAID was supporting hundreds of various media projects.

On January 28, the Media Movement urged citizens and businesses to support independent journalism.

On February 3, 2025, Elon Musk said that President Donald Trump had “agreed” to shut USAID down. The Trump administration plans to downsize USAID staff from 10,000 employees worldwide to under 300.