Vpered newspaper from Bakhmut – a publication for displaced Bakhmut residents all over Ukraine

“When we were woken up by explosions on February 24, 2022, we were not even afraid because we live on the contact line and have been used to it since 2014. We realized that something terrible was happening only when friends and relatives from Dnipro, Kyiv, Odesa, Kharkiv, and Sumy region started calling and saying that the same thing was happening to them,” recalls Svitlana Ovcharenko, editor-in-chief of the Vpered newspaper from the frontline town of Bakhmut in Donetsk region. Despite the horrific fighting in and around the city and the almost complete destruction of buildings, the newspaper enjoys some economic stability thanks to the support of the Swiss nonprofit Fondation Hirondelle and other financial donors.

…The last pre-war issue of the newspaper was published on February 23. The next one was never published because the road leading from Kramatorsk (where the printing house was located) to Bakhmut was shelled. It soon became unsafe in Bakhmut, and the newspaper staff left the city.

The editorial staff continued to maintain their website but did not give up hope and dreams of restoring the publication as a printed newspaper, at least remotely.

“One day, the NUJU President, Sergiy Tomilenko, offered us the help of international donors to publish the first issue of the newspaper since the beginning of the war,” says Svitlana Ovcharenko, “We jumped at the idea. After all, in Bakhmut, in the absence of communication, people felt an information vacuum. The first issue, dated November 4, after a break of many months, was produced by the whole of Ukraine because we have employees in Kyiv, Odesa, Sumy, and Dnipro. The issue was distributed in Bakhmut with the support of the town authorities and local volunteers – in shops, along with humanitarian aid and generally wherever possible.”

People’s reaction to the newspaper’s reopening was unexpectedly lively. People called the editor and said, “You can’t imagine what this means to us, we read and cried, passed the newspaper from hand to hand. It is such a ray of hope in our hell!” Moreover, one man from Bakhmut spoke so enthusiastically about his feelings that the editor herself burst into tears. The man said that perhaps 102 years ago when his great-grandparents picked up the first issue of the newspaper, they must have had the same feelings. There is nowhere in Bakhmut to get true information except from the newspaper – what then, what now…

Over time, the situation in the town, unfortunately, deteriorated, and the newspaper began to be distributed in the only remaining Point of Invincibility.

The newspaper issues contain articles about the work of Bakhmut utilities during the war, about the search for missing people, about how the dead and injured are buried in the city… In addition, information about the evacuation is now carried out only by people in uniform, including police officers from the White Angels unit.

“One female military officer who was involved in the evacuation told us that when she was taking the children out, they were incredibly happy to see the sun setting: these kids hadn’t seen sunlight for several months, hiding in the basement,” the journalist says, “And the youngest child evacuated from Bakhmut was only a month and a half old. She was born there, in the basement… It is very difficult to understand the people who are still there among the ruins. After all, any conditions in a peaceful town are better than being under fire in a basement.”

According to Svitlana Ovcharenko, about 2,000 people out of 80,000 remained in the town as of the end of March 2023. The rest have left for safer places in Ukraine and abroad. Therefore, part of the circulation of the Vpered newspaper goes to Bakhmut hubs (centers) throughout Ukraine.

“We work for people, for Bakhmut residents, not for the territory,” explains the editor, “Bakhmut branches unite fellow citizens who were forced to leave their hometown and move to Dnipro, Kyiv, Kostiantynivka, Zhovti Vody, Kryvyi Rih, Odesa…”

Svitlana Ovcharenko says that she receives many requests from places where there are no Bakhmut hubs, and the newspaper does not reach her.

There were letters from Poltava, from towns and villages in different parts of Ukraine, asking for copies of the newspaper. “One woman wrote that the newspaper is something dear to her, and even the smell of printing ink evokes associations with Vpered, and thus with her home…” says Svitlana Ovcharenko, “This woman accidentally got a copy of our newspaper and, in her words, ‘her heart almost stopped’. She asked if she could somehow subscribe to Vpered. I replied that we did not send the newspaper to her village. Then she asked me… to send her the newspaper by Nova Poshta (a private postal company operating throughout the country – Editor)! Even paying 55 hryvnias for the delivery of each copy doesn’t scare her… You can imagine how touching this is for me!

Today, the newspaper Vpered, which over the centuries has become the newspaper of many generations of Bakhmut residents, remains the only connection for the IDPs with their hometown, which no longer exists. No one will be able to return home in the near future – there is simply nowhere to go; everything has been wiped out. Svitlana Ovcharenko says that in one video, she saw the remains of her home – a huge black spot where her apartment and several neighboring ones used to be; they were burnt out. Her mother’s house is also in ruins. There is not a single surviving house left in the city. Bakhmut residents have only memories of Bakhmut.

“Therefore, no matter how hard it is, we still make a newspaper. We release it, deliver it, send it out,” says the editor. There is a lot of work. We need to prepare the newspaper and fill the website and Facebook page with content. There are days when I get up at four in the morning and go to bed at one in the morning. Nevertheless, I’m not complaining. I wake up in the morning and get back to work.”

Thanks to the assistance of the NUJU and benefactors, the newspaper Vpered is published regularly – twice a month, one issue is 4 pages long, and the other is 8. It is printed in Kyiv.

“We are very grateful to our Japanese benefactors (GREEN COOP and Japan Offspring Fund), the Academy of Ukrainian Press, the Swiss non-profit organization Fondation Hirondelle, the Institute for Regional Media and Information (IRMI, Ukraine), and the Ternopil Press Club. Our newspaper has the opportunity to reach the reader only thanks to financial donors,” emphasizes Svitlana Ovcharenko.

This story about the media was created by the NUJU in the frame of the project «Improving Ukrainian Media Resilience in Ukraine», financed by Swiss Solidarity and implemented with the support of the Swiss non-profit organization Fondation Hirondelle and the Institute for Regional Media and Information (IRMI, Ukraine). Fondation Hirondelle and IRMI implement a project of institutional support for Ukrainian media editorial offices in the east, north, and south of our country, with an emphasis on the local press. They also launched a 10-month support program for 18 media.