Westi

Vesti (News) is one of Ukraine’s leading daily newspapers. Launched in 2013 and distributed for free, the newspaper quickly became very popular. After that it was sold on the streets and at subway stations for the symbolic price of 1, 2 or 5 hryvnia for several years. Since March 2020 it has only appeared online. After the regime change in 2014, it was critical of the new govermnent, and this allegedly led to problems with the law enforcement agencies. The editorial offices were shut down by the authorities after numerous raids in February 2018, but the newspaper remained in circulation. Former editor-in-chief Igor Huzhva later founded the government-critical website Strana after being forced to leave Vesti in 2015. Opponents describe the website and the paper as pro-Russian. The official owner is Denis Mosgovoy, but it is rumoured that the real owner is Alexander Klimenko, a former minister in the Yanukovych government. Klimenko currently lives abroad. He is wanted for corruption in Ukraine.