Presses roll in name of freedom at front-line paper that refused to be silenced by invaders
When Svitlana Karpenko heard Russia had invaded Ukraine, she did the only thing a newspaper editor could do. She stopped the presses.
“We had already finished the paper and sent the proofs to print. I told them to wait, and we just tried to rewrite the whole thing as quickly as we could,” she said. “And we managed it.”
By the skin of their teeth, and in the kind of adrenaline-fuelled frenzy for which newspaper people all over the world live, Mrs Karpenko and her staff produced what would have been a historic issue.
But with a full-scale invasion under way, they were unable to get copies to readers in outlying villages. A few days later, the postal service, which the paper used for distribution, said it could no longer guarantee delivery.
“I guess they were scared,” said Mrs Karpenko. “It is understandable. But at that point we stopped. There was no point if no one was able to read it.”
Trudova Slava, or Glory of Labour, had been in print for 90 years when the Russian army came crashing into the small town of Orikhiv last year.
The Ukrainian language, Sovietfounded paper – originally called Lenin’s Way – ran twice a week and carried the stories of council meetings, local heroes and occasional scandals that are the usual fare of district newspapers all over the world.
Today the newsroom is a wreck, the staff have fled and most of the paper’s readership have been displaced.
But thanks to donations, the paper is undergoing a resurrection. Orikhiv has been on or near the front line since Russia’s rapid advance across southern Ukraine was halted here in March last year. Ever since, the Russians have been sitting a few miles south of the town, throwing in shells at regular intervals. Mrs Karpenko and most of the rest of the town, including the staff of Trudova Slava, had fled by the end of April last year.
More than a year on, it is a ghost town, with about 2,000 of the 19,000 pre-war inhabitants clinging on.
Almost every building has been destroyed or at least scarred by shrapnel. There is no running water, gas, or electricity, proper medical facility, or food shop.
On May 6, three aerial bombs blew large craters in the roads, one of them next to a school building.
A minibus service still links the town with Zaporizhzhia, 40 miles northwest, but it is a risky ride. The vehicle has a shrapnel hole from a close encounter with a shell, and there is no knowing when the next barrage will come. Anatoly Sviridenko, 42, who drives the route three times daily, said: “Scary? Of course it is scary. But you get used to it. A month ago they started dropping aerial bombs, and that’s a real nightmare.
“But it’s really important for the people still here. Most of them are elderly. They don’t have another link to the outside world.”
There is also almost no phone signal or internet service in the area, which makes having a printed newspaper more important than ever.
Mrs Karpenko, who now lives in Zaporizhzhia, said: “When I heard that colleagues in the Kharkiv region were publishing again I decided we had to as well. These are conditions where people really need local information. By December I firmly had the idea to do it. But it was only last month we managed to get an edition out.”
With no newsroom, no advertisers, and no printing press, it was never going to be easy. She and some colleagues pooled cash they were given by the government to support displaced persons to pay for a print run. Special issue No 1 of Trudova Slava was printed in Zaporizhzhia on April 5, and handed out in Orikhiv’s “point of invincibility”, a room where residents come for aid and electricity.
It was four pages – a sheet of newsprint folded in half – and the fact it was put together on a shoestring is difficult to hide.
The lead headline: “The main task of the Orikhiv city council is to guarantee living conditions for those who remain under shelling” – was hardly catchy, but seeing it on paper was a triumph.
It contained an interview with a self-defence unit along with reports about aid distribution. The really important stuff was on the back page: the timetable for the bus, where to get bread, and key phone numbers for those still living in the town. Special issue number two was meant to be printed yesterday. This issue will have eight pages, said Ms Karpenko, and it might make it into other villages.
There is still no advertising and zero revenue, so the costs of printing are being covered by donations.
Orikhiv lies on the section of the front line where many expect Ukraine to launch its counter-offensive. Residents hope it will finally push the Russians out of artillery range. But the destruction here is profound.
The newspaper’s office is still standing, but its windows have been blown in by incoming shells. The photo-processing suite, the newsroom and Mrs Karpenko’s office are ruined.
A goldfinch, probably killed by a shell, lies next to the printing press. The one surviving asset is a Lada 4x4 used by reporters since the 1980s.
“It hurts to see it like this,” said Volodymyr Chernenko, a retired staff photographer who refused to leave the town. “I renovated it with my own hands a few years ago. Now look at it.”
Like the rest of the town, it will have to be rebuilt from scratch. But the destruction here is so deep, some here doubt it will ever happen. “I wait for the counter-offensive every day, so the front moves back and I can finally repair something without it getting destroyed again,” Mr Chernenko said.