Illia Ponomarenko

Illia Ponomarenko is a Ukrainian war correspondent from Volnovakha in Donetsk Oblast. As a student in Mariupol in 2014 he helped bring Euromaidan to the city and lived through its capture and liberation. He moved to Kyiv in 2016 with $100, became the Kyiv Post’s defense reporter and, when the paper was shut in November 2021, stayed with the team that founded the Kyiv Independent. He covered the Battle of Kyiv in 2022, when Russian troops were about three kilometers from his apartment. His book The Land of Tears and Hope: The Ukrainian Story tells a thousand years of Ukraine for readers who still see it as Russia’s backyard.

Photo: Ukraine Military History Podcast.