Reporting for VOA in newly independent Ukraine: when voices from Ukraine become essential to Holos Ameryky radio broadcasts

Abstract

Marking the 30th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence this year, we publish the memoirs of Adrian Karmazyn, a member of the Ukrainian Association of American Studies, a historian and journalist who worked for the Voice of America for more than 25 years and served as the Chief of the VOA Ukrainian Service (2005 – 2015). He was one of the first American journalists engaged in and covered socio-political life in Ukraine in the early 1990s. At the same time, he managed to launch the VOA offices in Ukraine and form a team of Ukrainian Voice of America correspondents. His memoirs and observations are the precious source of the very beginning of reestablished contemporary Ukrainian state. A. Karmazyn’s numerous interviews with Ukrainian politicians as VOA journalist at the Verkhovna Rada as well as his meetings with statesmen, public men, cultural figures in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Poltava, Dnipro etc. provide us with understanding of basic context of early Ukrainian statecraft. His well-documented and detailed interviews, articles, videos reflect perception of Ukrainian developments from the Ukrainian diaspora perspectives and are first-rate standards of American journalism.