The 10th anniversary Donbas Media Forum will be held in Kyiv on October 9–11, 2025. Organizers have announced the opening of registration and revealed that this year’s theme will be “Freedom of Speech vs. Freedom of Lies.” The event will focus on how Ukrainian media respond to global challenges, defend democratic values, and continue their work during wartime and global turbulence.
According to Lyubov Rakovytsia, head of the forum’s organizing committee, this year the event will, for the first time, become a national platform. It will bring together several Ukrainian media partners who, due to the crisis, are unable to host their own conferences. Organizers emphasize that this format demonstrates solidarity within the media community and will allow for open discussions of complex topics at the national level.
The Donbas Media Forum has been held annually since 2015 and was created by journalists for journalists. The first event took place after the start of Russia’s war, when editorial teams from Donetsk and Luhansk regions faced the challenges of relocation and adapting to new conditions in their work. Over the years, the forum has been hosted in Kyiv, Mariupol, Sviatohirsk, Kharkiv, as well as online during the pandemic.
Last year, the conference gathered a record 857 participants and featured 189 speakers. The program included 47 events and nine screenings of documentary films. In 2024, the forum focused on the transformations experienced by Ukraine’s media community amid the ongoing war.
The 2025 anniversary forum aims to become a large-scale discussion platform for Ukrainian journalists, researchers, and media experts working in the era of information challenges and post-truth.
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