Radio Ukraine
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 21 March 2022
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kraina FM is a radio station that broadcasts in Kyiv and more than twenty other cities, playing Ukrainian-language rock and pop. When Russia invaded Ukraine, it took on the mantle of “the station of national resistance,” airing news bulletins and logistical information like requests for supplies. The radio hosts began adding jokes about the invading Russians, and advice from a psychologist about talking to children about the war; a writer told fairy tales on air to occupy those kids during the stressful nights of wartime. The station staff has dispersed, with Bogdan Bolkhovetsky, the general manager, and Roman Davydov, the program director, holed up in a town in the Carpathians, keeping production moving over unreliable Internet and communicating with listeners by text. They don’t know how many of their broadcasting stations are still functioning, and their tower in Kyiv could be destroyed at any time. But “we are not doing anything heroic,” Bolkhovetsky told Nicolas Niarchos, who visited their makeshift studio. “We are still in a lot of luck, having what we have right now. Thousands of people were not so lucky as we are. . . . We’re just doing what we can under these unusual circumstances.”
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| 1:25.6 | Kriina FM is a radio station broadcasting in Kiev, playing |
| 1:30.2 | Ukrainian language rock and pop music. But when Russia invaded Ukraine, Kina FM began broadcasting |
| 1:37.6 | news about the war. It gave out logistical information to aid the war effort and collect supplies. |
| 1:44.4 | They've even been doing things like telling stories for kids during the stressful nights of wartime. |
| 1:50.8 | As Kiev came under the heavier and heavier assault from Russian forces, |
| 1:54.9 | Kriena FM relocated its production facilities outside the city, |
| 1:59.7 | but they're still broadcasting in Kiev and around the country. |
| 2:04.5 | On the second day when we came here, we went to the local military station. We went to the local |
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