23 years old, since October 1995, a newspaper in English was published every week in Kiev. Not some kind of a transfer sheet, not an English-language supplement to a local magazine, but a full-fledged separate media..

Which works according to the best standards of Western journalism, trying (almost always successfully) to combine them with local Ukrainian realities..

Which makes a large multicultural team of Ukrainians and foreigners (with the Ukrainians - much more).

Which has been drowning for Ukraine for 23 years - for its development, success, independence, identity.

Which from the first days of the war of Russia against Ukraine tells about it to the whole world in its main language - English - and tells truly, without "rebels" and "civil war" and other nonsense, which constantly crawls into the Western media with the filing of Russian propaganda.

And now the existence of the Kyiv Post is under threat.

The new law on language policy, which the Rada adopted in the first reading, prohibits issuing media in Ukraine in a foreign (non-state) language. The only way to do this is to simultaneously publish an absolutely identical version in Ukrainian at the same time as in a foreign language..

In the case of the Kyiv Post this is impossible. We do not have the resources to produce a second newspaper - to pay for the print of the circulation (this is not cheap), to hire a staff of people who will (very quickly) rewrite articles in Ukrainian. Finally, it is simply impossible in terms of logistics.. Yesterday we handed in a new number by midnight, because a couple of important texts were ready rather late. It’s simply impossible to cram into this whole process of publishing a second parallel newspaper in Ukrainian.

The same rules work for the site.. Under the new law, we will be obliged to start the Ukrainian version of the site (identical in content) and this version of the site will have to be loaded first, by default.

If the new law passes the second reading in the current form, we simply will not be able to release Kyiv Post..

It is clear that the law is aimed at strengthening the position of the Ukrainian language in relation to Russian. But there is no clarification or division in the law - there is only the state (Ukrainian) language and all the rest.. That is, English is equalized with Russian.

And you know what the irony is? Russian-language media will suffer from this much less than the Kyiv Post. They can set up an automatic translation of the site into Ukrainian - it works tolerantly between Russian and Ukrainian - and keep such a “Ukrainian” version of the site purely for the view.

And those who really pose a threat - the media, who are pushing pro-Kremlin messages - believe me, they will find money for additional circulation, and for translators.

Not to mention the fact that there is simply no point in forcing the Kyiv Post to switch to Ukrainian. There are wonderful Ukrainian editions in Ukraine, and there will be more. We just do another part of the work - we tell what is happening in Ukraine, in English. We certainly do not represent a threat to the Ukrainian language - on the contrary.

Now we will fight to make amendments to the law to remove this problem before the second reading - they will add an exception for English or EU languages ??(I suspect that the wording “EU languages” may be a problem because of Hungary).

At the same time, I understand "what the author wanted to say" of this bill.. But to equalize English with Russian is a big and strange mistake.. It turns out that we are forcing every student to learn English, we are doing all sorts of cool programs like GoGlobal, but we don’t want English content about Ukraine.

If we do not tell our story to the world - in the language that it understands - others will tell it for us.

If anyone has questions about why this post is in Russian. I speak fluently Ukrainian, Russian and English. Ale oskіlki zazvchay I write on Facebook Russia, from my side it’s uncomfortable and it goes to ukrainian self in this post –––––––––––––––––––––. Spodіvayus, tse zozumіlo. In Ukrainian comments, I mean, in great detail, in Ukrainian and Ukrainian.. Pіs, lav, vzagmopovaga.