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- Vera Chernysh is the publisher of three of Ukraine’s largest tech and business news websites.
- “MC.today,” “ITC.ua,” and “Highload.today,” reached 4 million people every month.
- But the war has ruined her business, so she’s launched a crowdfunding campaign to save it.
Vera Chernysh and her staff hadn’t written about war until last month.
Her publications, “MC.today,” “ITC.ua,” and “Highload.today,” usually feature articles about tech, business, and careers. They reached 4 million people every month.
Now, they need to know things like the best places to hide during a bombing raid, what to do if there’s a chemical explosion nearby, and how to set up an air-raid shelter at home.
“Right now, no one is interested in how to finance their own IT business,” said Vera Chernysh, the CEO of Creators Media Group, which owns the three publications. “At most, they’re interested in how to save their business, and, more importantly, themselves.”
On the homepage of “MC.today”, there’s a separate tab called “Combat and Victory.”
When readers click on it, they’re shown tips for surviving war.
She said the articles are designed to help her readers with important information, but writing them also helps her journalists do something meaningful during the war.
“Everyone is working like crazy right now, we’re publishing incredible amounts of content,” Chernysh said.
“Everyone wants to be useful, to do something.”
The conditions under which Chernysh’s team is working right now are hard to imagine.
One of her editors, gaming expert Artem, gets up at 6 a.m. to defend his hometown in the Territorial Defense Forces. After lunch, he goes back home and writes his articles on his laptop.
One editor worked one day from the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa, the next from western Ukraine, and the next from Poland.
Another employee fled Kyiv at the beginning of the war to a neighboring village to hide with her family, dog, and two cats. Then Russian troops moved in, and she made it back to Kyiv at the last minute. From there, she said, she and her family of five fled to western Ukraine.
“That’s where they live now, in a tiny apartment that costs a fortune because there are so many refugees in the region now,” Chernysh said.
She told Insider that her designer wrote her a message on the second day of the war: “Vera, if I can’t write to you tomorrow, I want you to know: the job with you was the best one I ever had.”
The man, a media designer, was in Kharkiv, which has endured heavy shelling, at the time. Chernysh’s voice broke as she told Insider this story over the phone. Fortunately, she said, her colleague managed to escape from the city.
Another employee was unable to leave Kyiv because her sick mother would not have survived the trip. Six to seven times a day, Chernysh’s communication with her breaks down because of sirens. “Then she has to run to a bunker with her mother.”
Chernysh told Insider she had not heard from two of her journalists around the age of 25, in weeks. “They’re in Mariupol,” she said, “and that’s the greatest suffering my team and I have to endure right now.”
Mariupol is the port city in southeastern Ukraine that has been surrounded by Russian troops and cut off from the rest of the country. It’s been the scene of some of the most brutal events of the war, and many are now without food and water.
The last message Chernysh and her team received from one of their colleagues stuck in Mariupol was almost three weeks ago. “In it, she just wrote that she was in the bunker and had no water or food,” Chernysh said.
Every day, her team now checks the list of names of people who could be evacuated from Mariupol — hoping her colleagues might have made it out.
Chernysh is in Portugal, where she’s lived with her husband for several years. From there, she’s helping to organize evacuations for her team members, placing them in safe locations in western Ukraine or other countries, and trying to save her company.
Chernysh launched a crowdfunding campaign to help both pay her staff and support their journalism.
“Our publications have always been financed by advertisers,” she said.
“But right now, of course, no one in Ukraine wants to run ads anymore.”
Her three sites, which had grown hugely since being created in 2012, are on the verge of ruin, she said.
“I don’t have enough money right now to pay my staff for March.”
In February, she had to use up company reserves to pay everyone. “My employees have to eat, drink, pay rent,” she said, “and I’m their employer.”
This is a translation of an article that originally appeared on Business Insider Deutschland on March 18, 2022. It has been edited for length.
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