On 14 March, the Trump administration slashed funding to the US Global Media Agency — America’s global voice reaching 427 million people — reducing it to the “statutory minimum.” This move risks silencing Radio Liberty, the world’s largest pro-democracy media network, which once helped topple the USSR and is now relied on weekly by a quarter of Ukraine’s population.
Trump appointee Kari Lake celebrated the cut for what she branded “the most corrupt agency in Washington DC” and a “threat to American security,” wasting “hundreds of millions” on “fake news companies.”
However, what Trump bureaucrats may view as a mere budget line item, Ukrainians see as the catalyst that built their democracy — and continues to shape it across 22 other countries in the regions where dictatorships fight to uphold the US-led rules-based order.
For decades, Radio Liberty has championed America’s interests where they seemed impossible — right under the Kremlin’s nose. In Ukraine, the media became a powerhouse that nurtured civil society amid totalitarian rule, securing a democratic foothold in Eastern Europe that Russia’s expansion stumbled upon.
Euromaidan Press delved into how Radio Liberty fueled Ukraine’s democratic rise, exploring what the US — and the world — stand to lose if the cornerstone of its value-driven soft power falls silent.
The enemy number one of Soviet propaganda
Radio Liberty was founded in 1951 by the American Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia to help the US gain an upper hand in the Cold War by stirring dissent within the USSR. The station aimed to broadcast in multiple languages to key Soviet ethnic groups, using voices from diaspora communities in the West to challenge Kremlin’s domestic propaganda.
However, the network faced immediate challenges with its approach, especially with the Ukrainian service. As the second-largest ethnic group in the Soviet Union, Ukrainians were crucial to the station’s mission, but their émigré community was deeply divided.
Many had fled Soviet territory after failed independence movements and were particularly frustrated by Radio Liberty’s “non-predetermination” policy, which barred broadcasts from advocating for Soviet dissolution or taking stances on whether republics should pursue independence or stay with Moscow.
Faced with these challenges, the Ukrainian Service was delayed for months, finally launching on 16 August 1954 as Liberation Radio. The small team of just four Ukrainian émigrés started the broadcast from Munich with the words:
“Brothers and sisters! Ukrainians! We live abroad, but our hearts and thoughts are always with you. No ‘Iron Curtain’ will separate us or stand in our way.”
The USSR began jamming the broadcast just 10 minutes in, a disruption that lasted until 1988. During the Cold War, the Kremlin poured $150 million into blocking foreign radio signals, with 70% of that aimed at Radio Liberty, dubbed “the enemy voice.”
This spending was five times greater than the US budget for both Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe, which targeted communist regimes in Central Europe. The jamming primarily affected major cities and populated areas, leaving Radio Liberty accessible in Ukraine’s countryside and less populated west and south.
Ukrainian journalist Vitaly Portnikov, who has been contributing to Radio Liberty since 1990, recalled the efforts to overcome the Soviet jamming:
“The Ukrainian service was the enemy number one for Soviet propaganda […] Yet we still listened because we had no choice. Remaining in the captivity of Soviet lies meant agreeing […] that the scoundrels in the Kremlin should decide what information you consume, which books you read, and what you think about.”
The radio that fostered the nation
This partial access made Radio Liberty a key source of information hidden by Soviet censorship. Its Ukrainian service was among the first to report on Soviet crimes against Ukrainians, silenced by Moscow. It became the first media to consistently cover the Holodomor — the 1932-33 man-made famine that claimed nearly 4 million lives — and to place the blame directly on the Kremlin.
In 1986, Radio Liberty broke the news about the Chornobyl disaster the Soviets tried to cover up. The Ukrainian service broadcast urgent safety warnings the day after, while Soviet authorities pushed people in contaminated areas to attend Labor Day rallies to downplay the crisis.
“It was the ‘hostile voices’ after Chernobyl that taught us, Kyiv residents, basic radiation safety measures,” wrote Oksana Zabuzhko, Ukraine’s best-selling author and essayist. “You could tell, walking down the street, who was ‘anti-Soviet’ and who was a Soviet person: those who listened had their windows tightly shut.”
Additionally, Radio Liberty also became a powerful tool for preserving the Ukrainian language and identity amid aggressive Soviet Russification. It covered topics of Ukrainian history and culture — subjects erased by Soviet censorship — and broadcast banned Ukrainian books.
Each broadcast, repeated throughout the day, began and ended with the anthem of the short-lived Ukrainian People’s Republic (1917–1921), a state erased by Soviet forces and banned by its propaganda. After Ukraine’s independence in 1991, it was revived as the national anthem.
Most notably, the media that championed uncovering censored topics during the Cold War had no correspondents inside the USSR, relying on human rights defenders and third-party sources. Ukrainians could contribute directly only after the Kremlin lifted the ban in 1988. The next year, the first Ukrainian correspondents set up a makeshift bureau in a private Kyiv apartment, sending reports via phone.
The voice of Ukrainian independence
Additionally, Radio Liberty was one of the few outlets to spotlight persecuted dissidents fighting Soviet human rights abuses, shaping the minds of those who would later drive Ukraine’s independence. Co-founder of Ukraine’s Helsinki Group, Myroslav Marynovych, an avid Radio Liberty listener since childhood and a decade-long Soviet prison inmate for human rights activism, recalled buying a radio during his exile in remote Soviet regions just to tune in.
Paradoxically, while Soviet intelligence often used dissident mentions in enemy media as evidence for criminal charges, this sometimes led to slightly better prison conditions, as authorities feared that mistreatment could be exposed and broadcast on Radio Liberty. Over time, the station took it a step further, collecting self-published books from dissidents, now housing the world’s largest collection.
In 1991, Ukrainian Radio Liberty made history as the first media to report Ukraine’s independence live, beating major outlets like AP and Reuters. Its official Kyiv office opened the next year, with its coverage shaping Ukraine’s civil society over the next decades.
Media that grew civil society
In post-independence Ukraine, with two-thirds of the media controlled by oligarchs, Radio Liberty stood out as one of the few independent voices, exposing corruption and censorship.
After journalist Heorhii Gongadze disappeared in 2000, it was the first to air a whistleblower linking the president to the case. It also led coverage of growing anti-government protests despite losing broadcast partners due to government pressure.
In the early 2000s, RL/RFL journalist became the first to publicly expose a secret government directive controlling media coverage, revealed live during a broadcast with a presidential representative. To silence the media, authorities went as far as replacing the management of its partner radio network.
However, even despite being forced off the air by 2004, the media’s reporting fueled public demand for democracy, setting the stage for the Orange Revolution that same year in response to election fraud.
Government pressure on Radio Liberty continued until the 2013 Revolution of Dignity, when it became the first to livestream the protests, with its footage widely picked up by international media.
At the peak of the protests, which drew nearly half a million people, its journalist Andriy Dubchak filmed from the top of a Christmas tree installation. His viral footage, shared by CNN, debunked Russia’s claims that only 10,000 had attended, earning European Lovie Media Award.
Making people in occupation visible
During Russia’s subsequent occupation of Crimea and east of Ukraine, Radio Liberty extensively covered events on the ground, often at great personal risk.
In 2017, its freelance journalist Stanislav Aseyev was kidnapped for reporting on the Russian occupation of Donetsk. He was held and tortured for 28 months in the Isolatsia detention prison, overseen by Russia’s special services. After his release in 2019, Aseyev documented his experience in Torture Camp on Paradise Street, a book translated into six languages.
Radio Liberty set the journalistic standards for covering occupied territories, which were later adopted by others. In 2014, RL/RFL launched Crimea.Realities and Donbas.Realities — the first newsrooms dedicated to occupied regions, broadcasting in Ukrainian, Crimean Tatar, and Russian.
Despite Moscow’s continuous attempts to block their broadcasts, the newsrooms became the most-watched independent media in the area, crucial to link them with Ukraine and counter Kremlin propaganda in regions where 2.8 million people remain living under Russian occupation.
“If Ukraine loses it, we will significantly weaken in terms of information [on occupied territories]” Oksana Romaniuk, the director of the Institute of Mass Information, told Hromadske Radio. “There is no other resource of such quality and development that has been operating for decades and has the same trust of the local population.”
While Crimea.Realities and Donbas.Realities focused on occupied territories, their success sparked a rise in regional media across Ukraine, spreading Radio Liberty’s standards of unbiased and accurate reporting on social issues throughout the country. Over the years, the media has continued to collaborate with regional media, providing access to resources and expertise, enhancing their work quality, and helping them reach wider audiences.
After the Revolution of Dignity, RL/RFL’s expertise helped nurture several newly founded independent outlets, which later turned into major media players in Ukraine. This collaboration remains crucial for high-risk regional newsrooms on the frontlines, helping them survive during the full-scale invasion.
Investigations that reshaped Ukrainian power
In 2014, the Ukrainian RL/RFL service launched the Schemes project to investigate corruption among top Ukrainian officials. This initiative became one of the most successful in the outlet’s history, sparking some of the most high-profile investigations in Ukraine, including those involving former president Petro Poroshenko and current head Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Over time, Schemes evolved into one of Ukraine’s most impactful journalistic projects, prompting a series of high-profile resignations, targeting Ukraine’s consul in Spain, traffic police head, and deputy ministers. Just one investigation into the then-president in 2016 — with several to follow later — uncovered a land scheme involving both Poroshenko and the deputy head of his parliamentary faction, resulting in MPsappeal to the General Prosecutor’s Office.
Besides high-profile corruption investigations, the project exposes Russia’s influence in Ukraine and beyond. During the full-scale invasion, it broadened the focus to wartime issues, uncovering the Kremlin’s sanction evasion and tracking its war crimes.
Several investigations by the Schemes have sparked international attention:
- In 2015, project author Natalie Sedletska took part in the Channel 4 documentary From Russia With Cash, which uncovered the use of Russian laundered money in the British property market. The investigation sparked public outrage in the UK, with then-PM David Cameron pushing for legislative changes.
- In 2025, in collaboration with Norway’s NRK broadcaster, Schemes revealed that Norway Kongsberg Automotive‘s supplies to Russian firms tied to the defense sector via Turkish companies, violating EU sanctions. In response, the Helsinki Group of Norway appealed to the country’s police, marking the first such appeal in Norway.
- In 2023, the project tracked that Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) controls the “Redut” PMC, shattering Moscow’s claim of a volunteer force. The investigation uncovered 100 members tied to the invasion, exposing their recruitment and funding, which led to EU sanctions on the group.
Oksana Romaniuk stresses that the funding freeze for RL/RFE, which serves as a cornerstone of democratic transition for many states besides Ukraine, threatens not only global stability but also the loss of US influence in regions where its influence relied on democratic mission was crucial.
“There’s simply no substitute for these resources, no alternative to the vast network that sustains democracy worldwide — and you can’t just rebuild it from scratch,” she says.
