News and analysis
United News of Ukraine
Ukraine’s main media groups have come together to create a 24-hour government-supported rolling network, United News. They broadcast in Ukrainian and Russian, both with simultaneous English translation. Its immediacy is heart-rending and compelling. Many of the translators speak astoundingly fast, fluent idiomatic English.
radioplayer.ua
Ukrainecast
The BBC’s newly launched reactive show, hosted by international editor Gabriel Gatehouse and experienced anchor Victoria Derbyshire, delivers a regular update on events. The programme strikes an appealing balance between hard news and human interest. Alongside reports from veteran correspondents and expert insight are first-hand citizen accounts of life under fire and flights to safety. Interviewees whose harrowing stories have struck a particular chord with listeners are revisited for updates.
BBC Sounds, Apple, Spotify et al. bbc.co.uk/sounds
File on 4 — Ukraine, War Stories
In their own gripping, often terrified words, shocked Ukrainians talk to Paul Kenyon about three weeks that have upended their lives. You will hear from a film-maker, a make-up artist and a formerly pacifist author who have all become soldiers; Liam from Southampton, who’s on a mission to rescue his wife; expectant mother Yulia, cowering in the basement of a Kharkiv maternity hospital; and those in flight. Compelling, searing testimony.
Radio 4, Tue 8pm, Sun 5pm; BBC Sounds. bbc.co.uk/sounds
Stories of our Times
This podcast from The Times and The Sunday Times has offered some excellently informative insight into Ukraine and Russia over the past fortnight. In particular I would pick out Monday’s Reporting from Ukraine’s front line with The Times war correspondent Anthony Lloyd and chief news photographer Jack Hill talking to Manveen Rana about what is distinctively “perpetually stressful” about reporting on this invasion. Worth going back to is Volodymyr Zelensky: Comedian to commander, a profile by The Sunday Times’s Europe editor Peter Conradi.
Times Radio, Apple, Spotify et al. thetimes.co.uk/podcasts
Explaining Ukraine
On-the-ground analysis from Ukraine World, an English-language multimedia network founded during the 2013-14 Euromaidan protests.
Apple, Spotify et al. ukraineworld.org/podcasts
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Tortoise
Two recent worthwhile Slow Newscasts by Tortoise are Russian warship, Go f*** yourself, Alexi Mostrous’s exploration of how Ukraine is winning the social media war, and Lebedev: Lord of Siberia, an oligarch’s Londongrad tale. Also recommended are the often harrowing Invaded: Voicemails from Ukraine.
Tortoise Media, Apple, Spotify et al. tortoisemedia.com/listen
The Rest Is History
Historians Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook’s popular podcast has been steeped in the flavours of borscht and bliny this past month. Last week they explored modern Russia over four episodes: Young Putin, the KGB and the Soviet Union; The Fall of the Soviet Union; Yeltsin, Economic Chaos and President Putin and Putin’s Russia. As Russian troops manoeuvred, they explored Ukraine and Russia and reissued archive recordings about the Vikings and the birth of Kyiv and Ukraine and the United Kingdom.
Apple, Spotify et al. play.acast.com
Putin
The first instalment of this eight-part profile focuses on Putin’s tough beginnings in post-war St Petersburg (then Leningrad). Young, scrappy and hungry, he set his sights on joining the KGB. The series presenter is the engaging Jonny Dymond and guests include Nina Khrushcheva, a professor of international affairs and the great-granddaughter of the former Soviet premier, and Dr Mark Galeotti, author of We Need to Talk about Putin.
Radio 4, BBC Sounds. bbc.co.uk/sounds
The Rest is Politics
Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart’s new podcast has got off to an invigorating start. The first episode, subtitled Putin in person, Russian money in British politics, and Bono vs Blair is far-ranging but not broad brushstroke. There is obsessively informed, astute, original analysis here about how Russian aggression is reshaping European politics, the cult of strongmen leaders, military and political funding.
Apple, Spotify et al. shows.acast.com
Doomsday Watch
In less than five months, former diplomat Arthur Snell has forged a strong following for his now apparently prophetically named podcast series focusing on geopolitical tensions. He predicted a probable invasion in an episode on February 2. Since Russia marched into Ukraine, he has been producing special War Bulletin episodes, talking to experts. He’s committedly gung-ho — a recent one with slightly Alan-Partridge-goes-to-war overtones came from a car park in Swindon.
Apple, Spotify, et al. doomsdaywatch.co.uk
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War on Truth
The team behind the recent thoughtful hit Death By Conspiracy? turn their rigorous attention to Russia and Ukraine’s other battle: over-information. Marianna Spring, the BBC reporter covering disinformation and social media, also a Russian speaker, presents. In the first short episode, a Ukrainian, Kristina, recounts a falling-out with her Russian cousin.
BBC Sounds. bbc.co.uk/sounds
Culture and society
A Short History of Ukrainians in Britain
Is Priti Patel fully aware that Britain is happily home to previous generations of Ukrainians — many descended from prisoners of war and refugees who sought sanctuary from the Soviets here after the Second World War? Others have come more recently. In 2015, Oliver Bullough (author of Butler to the World and Moneyland) visited Ukrainian-British communities in Lockerbie, Edinburgh, Manchester and London. A lovely listen.
BBC Sounds. bbc.co.uk/sounds
Food
Olive Podcast, episode 212
Ukrainian-born food writer Olia Hercules is the galvanising co-founder of the #CookForUkraine fundraiser and the author of the beautiful, transporting cookery books Mamushka and Summer Kitchens. In this interview from happier times she talks evocatively about the food culture that has shaped her, from pickles and pressed virgin sunflower oil to borscht with dried smoked pears and seafood in Odesa. In a recent episode of The Food Programme, Ukraine: War in the breadbasket of the world (BBC Sounds), Dan Saladino explored how often Ukraine’s position — both strategically and as a mass producer of food — has made it vulnerable to bigger neighbours’ greed.
Apple, Spotify et al. olivemagazine.com
Ukrainian sounds
The Radio Garden app or website, radio.garden, is one of the wonders of our age. A revolving globe with radio stations picked out in green — click on one and hear live sounds streamed: try Broken Beats, an independent electronic dance music station from Odesa, once singled out for praise by Brian Eno. Currently its webpage is full of devoted worldwide fans offering support to its DJ, Shaman. Radiooo.com is a music time-machine website and app. Click on Ukraine and you can hear a selection of music from every decade since the 1900s.
Ukrainian literature
This would be a good time for BBC Radio 4 Extra to repeat its adaptations of Mikhail Bulgakov’s The White Guard and Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate. What is currently available on Sounds is Gillian Slovo’s profile of Grossman, and a dramatisation of his account of the Battle of Stalingrad, starring Kenneth Branagh and Greta Scacchi.
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The master of absurdism, Nikolai Gogol, was Ukrainian. And again, it would be fantastic if Radio 4 Extra made Michael Palin reading Dead Souls available. Something that is on BBC Sounds is the absolutely delightful Tim Key and Gogol’s The Overcoat, a freewheeling adaptation co-starring Alexei Sayle and John Motson. For a profile of the writer try the enjoyable, informative Gogol’s Ukrainian Nights, episode 386 on the singular American The History of Literature podcast (Apple, Spotify et al). It’s a gem.
