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When twenty-seven media organisations gathered in a Kyiv basement conference hall earlier this year, air-raid alerts were active across the capital. Our foundation spent three months preparing this regional summit on press freedom, welcoming a small delegation from Sydney and Melbourne.
We chose to host in a frontline city on purpose. International attention has drifted from the war, and Ukrainian newsrooms are making difficult calls daily about safety, staffing, and funding. Our partners wanted a place to debate these choices openly rather than attend panels held six time zones away.
Over four days, editors, reporters, and media advocates moved between offices fitted with blackout curtains. Conversations ran in English, Ukrainian, and Bahasa, spilling into corridors. It resembled any media gathering, except for the distant thump of detonations.
What follows are the most striking takeaways, shaped by how we plan future programs and how supporters in Brisbane, Perth, and Canberra can engage with press freedom in a country at war.
Holding a summit in a country at war is rarely glamorous. Insurance costs surged, hotels near the venue were scarce, and three speakers could not travel because of overnight shelling. We felt any meaningful discussion about regional press freedom had to happen where censorship, propaganda, and self-censorship are felt most acutely.
Ukrainian editors told us that visits from foreign correspondents raise the visibility of local journalism with international audiences. We have written elsewhere about why such reporting matters, including our work on Black Sea coverage.
Election monitoring produced some of the most engaged discussion. Ukrainian national polls remain suspended, but local elections continue, and the framework for a future national vote is being negotiated. Delegates from countries that have weathered contested elections, including voices from Adelaide and Perth, compared notes with Ukrainian colleagues about rebuilding trust after disputed tallies.
Transparent methodology persuades readers more than sensational coverage. Sceptical audiences can spot when results reporting leans on vibes instead of verified tallies. Our reflections on election coverage drew directly on themes raised at the summit.
Digital safety workshops filled most afternoons. Trainers from Eastern Europe walked reporters through secure cloud storage, two-factor authentication, and the realities of working where Russian signals intelligence is active. Participants were not beginners, yet they asked sharp questions about phishing attempts in besieged cities.
Mental health emerged as the unspoken crisis. Editors described young reporters who had covered enough funerals to last a career and were quietly stepping away from frontline work. One Mykolaiv organisation runs a peer-support program we hope to replicate with an Australian partner whose rural network spans the Great Dividing Range and Western Australia, supported by donors in Sydney's wealthier suburbs.
Several working groups focused on regional projects linking journalists across borders. The Kashi Vishwanath Corridor's recent nationalist significance prompted a useful exchange about how reporters cover sacred sites and politically charged public works without compromising independence.
Similar questions emerged around heritage sites in eastern Ukraine that have been damaged or politically contested since the invasion began. Editors from Lviv and Dnipro argued that careful reporting on cultural landmarks can rebut hostile narratives without weaponising journalism.
Delegates also proposed joint investigations between Ukrainian reporters and colleagues in neighbouring countries, focused on sanctions evasion and the movement of dual-use goods. Two of these collaborations received seed funding on the final day.
The most moving session came when delegates visited a Kyiv newsroom that has kept publishing through the heaviest strikes of the year. Our profile of the Kyiv newsroom captures the moment, when staff had turned a storeroom into sleeping quarters and mounted satellite internet on the roof.
Australian journalists in attendance said they felt both humbled and challenged. Resilience, one editor argued, is not heroism on demand but a quiet commitment to verification and publishing under conditions that would close most newsrooms.
The most common question from potential donors is whether supporting journalism in a country at war really makes a difference. The summit answered it more emphatically than any report could. Independent Ukrainian reporting is shaping diplomacy, war crimes investigations, and the eventual terms of peace.
We are asking supporters in Australia and elsewhere to consider long-term pledges rather than one-off campaigns. Newsroom recovery takes years, and rebuilding trust with audiences scarred by propaganda takes even longer. Multi-year commitments let our partners plan staff retention, equipment replacement, and training cycles as threats evolve.
For media professionals, the invitation is simple. Visit, collaborate, publish, and amplify. Ukrainian stories told well and shared widely are some of the most important journalism being produced anywhere today.
