Town authorities in Mykolayiv Region financially support a front-line newspaper

The local council has decided to allocate UAH 99,000 to cover activities of the Bereznehuvate Village Community, Mykolayiv Region, in the local newspaper Narodna Trybuna. This will make preserving the publication in difficult front-line conditions possible and provide the local population with professionally prepared information.

All council members, without exception, voted for the decision. At the same time, they also took into account the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine’s (NUJU) request to provide support, including financial one, to the publication.

“Reviving print media in the front-line territories, where access to the Internet, television, and radio is often problematic, is one of the priorities for our Union,” Sergiy Tomilenko, the President of the NUJU, emphasized in a letter to the Bereznehuvate Village Community. “Experience shows that people urgently need to be informed about the events happening in their and neighboring communities, in Ukraine as a whole. The work of the Ukrainian local mass media is extremely complex and responsible; it is enthusiastically noted in Ukrainian and international organizations, at the level of UNESCO and the UN.”

Previously, the NUJU, in partnership with foreign partners, contributed to the resumption of publishing Narodna Trybuna. Currently, the newspaper is published every month; three issues have already been distributed.

“The Bereznehuvate Community, like many others in Ukraine, suffered a disaster due to the full-scale invasion of Russia. The school campus was destroyed by enemy shelling, so it is necessary to rebuild the high school. And these are millions of expenses,” notes Narodna Trybuna‘s editor-in-chief, Svitlana Lukashenko.

The occupiers completely destroyed the children’s health center with rockets – a forest pearl of the Bereznehuvate area, which was known outside the region and the country. It is necessary to start raking the ruins… The community decided to support the Armed Forces and handed over a school bus to the 79^th Brigade. But the local council members found an opportunity to take measures to save the newspaper.

“We have certain debts for the rent of the premises, serious problems with the equipment… But despite everything, we continue printing and even think about announcing a subscription,” says the editor.

The NUJU, considering the issue of restoring the local press in the front-line regions to be extremely important, welcomes the decision of the Bereznehuvate Council. The Union considers one of its priorities to unite efforts to provide objective, professional, and timely information to all of Ukraine’s residents,

NUJU Information Service

Photo: Svitlana Lukashenko