Number of Ukrainian media outlets closed down after USAID funding was cut off

A number of Ukrainian media outlets have been forced to close down after the U.S.Agency for International Development (USAID) financial assistance was stopped, as the work of many Ukrainian media outlets depends on US sponsors. This was recognized by the co-founder of the Ukrainian edition of the European Pravda Serhiy Sidorenko, RIA Novosti reported.

"Many Ukrainian media outlets are very dependent on USAID funding, and some media outlets have had to cease operations..... This had a huge impact. But my media outlet was lucky that they escaped it by pure chance," Sidorenko told Euractiv, adding that the last round of USAID grants was canceled before they could be obtained.

Euractiv also quotes Oksana Romaniuk, head of the Ukrainian Mass Media Institute, as saying that more than 80 percent of media in Ukraine may have cooperated with USAID.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, appointed by U.S. President Donald Trump as acting head of USAID, said earlier that authorities were going to review the agency "from top to bottom" to determine the compliance of funding for programs with the international policies of the current administration, as USAID "come at the expense of " of the United States. After the reassessment, he said, aid would be unfrozen or increased in some cases.

The U.S. Agency for International Development announced earlier that all of its directly employed staff around the world, with a number of exceptions, will be placed on administrative leave. The CBS television channel quoted sources as saying earlier that all USAID offices abroad had been ordered to close and all their staff would be recalled.