Ukraine: The Latest

The Telegraph

The Telegraph's Ukraine: The Latest podcast has set the standard for coverage of the war, with over 60 million listens across platforms.

The podcast delivers updates and analysis of the war every weekday, combining reporting with deep dives, interviews and reflections and is only possible through the immense effort and skill of the journalists at The Telegraph who contribute, and the generosity of our guests and interviewees.

We have reported from Bucha, Kyiv, Kramatorsk, Chasiv Yar, Kharkiv, Irpin, Lviv. Further afield, we hosted a live show with the British Embassy from Washington DC, where some listeners drove for hours across the United States to be in the audience.

The first of the podcasts submitted to the judges is based around an interview with Ukrainian writer and poet Victoria Amelina. Victoria was travelling across Ukraine when she joined us, on her way between various literary festivals. She spoke movingly about her memories of Maidan, Ukrainian culture and literature. Victoria made such an impression on our journalists that we invited her into the office and interviewed her again in April 2023 when she was visiting London. Her commitment to uncovering the truth and telling the stories of others, elevating her countrymen and women who would remain otherwise voiceless was inspiring and moving. She was killed by a Russian missile strike on Kramatorsk three months later. Listening to her interview again we’re struck by her passion, eloquence and dignity. The episode, featuring the first of her interviews with us, shows Ukraine: The Latest at its best; combining daily reportage with an open platform for a guest to bring their stories to us and our listeners.

The second podcast episode marked the year anniversary of the start of the full-scale invasion. We hosted two guests in the Telegraph offices and filmed the resulting podcast. ‘Putin’s Folly’ gained over 1.6 million views on Youtube and performed extremely well across all our podcast platforms. We upload it here as an example of a more reflective and less immediately reactive episode.

Our third entry comes from a series of podcasts over the final week of July. We joined forces with journalists from the Foreign desk to highlight a series of stories focusing on the kidnapping and illegal transportation of children from Ukraine to Russia and Belarus. It’s a subject that Ukraine: The Latest has spent a lot of time covering, and it was an honour to work with our colleagues who broke new stories about the collusion of Belarus and Alexander Lukashenko and the revelation that, as well as transporting children, Russia was also targeting older people, the ill and infirm.

While much of the world's media diverts their attention to the Middle East, Ukraine: The Latest continues our commitment to championing the voices of those impacted by the war, and exposing and highlighting the abuses of power and cruelty of those behind it.