Banquet on the Ashes: Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars for DMF vs. Kushelieva’s Mail-Order Kickbacks

In October 2026, the 11th Donbas Media Forum (DMF) concluded in Kyiv. The organizing committee proudly reported record-breaking figures: the country's largest media event, 1,397 participants, nearly 400 speakers, 82 agenda events, 75 partner organizations, and 19 commercial sponsors. The capital’s exhibition halls, cynically named "Mariupol" and "Kakhovka," exuded the ambiance of an upscale European industry festival, complete with art exhibitions, documentary screenings, and morning jogging sessions branded as "DMF Run."

Yet this polished facade conceals a profound catastrophe within Eastern Ukraine’s information space — a landscape torn between two extremes: a donor-funded vanity fair in Kyiv and petty, systematic embezzlement by officials of the Luhansk Regional Military Administration (RMA).

1. Kushelieva’s Tears: How the Regional Administration Bought the "Local Media Elite"

While attendees at DMF — financed by the EU, PFRU (UK/US/Canada/Netherlands/Switzerland), and the Council of Europe — engaged in high-level academic debates about media standards in 2030, law enforcement agencies were executing arrests inside the Luhansk RMA.

Albina Kushelieva, Director of the Department of Mass Communications of the Luhansk RMA, along with her deputy Andriy Zaitsev, became key suspects in a criminal probe under Part 4, Art. 191 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (large-scale misappropriation of property through abuse of office). The scheme was striking in its raw provincial greed: on a 3.2 million UAH public procurement contract intended for "regional information campaigns," officials established a kickback system, physically shipping illicit cash between cities via commercial parcel delivery services ("Nova Poshta").

During searches, law enforcement seized handwritten accounting ledgers and over 5 million UAH in cash. The central documented transaction was a 192,000 UAH kickback. Notably, Kushelieva’s legal defense argued that this specific amount was intended... "for disbursements to journalists."

This exposes the real mechanics of the internal media market engineered by regional military administrations. RMA officials treated captive media outlets as their subsidized "regional elite," throwing them scraps from corruption schemes in exchange for loyal silence and the distribution of curated press releases — all while the Luhansk region remains almost entirely occupied.

2. The Chasm Between Mail-Order Kickbacks and Frontline Deprivation

These 192,000 UAH kickbacks are drops in the bucket compared to the hundreds of thousands of international donor dollars poured into three days of carpeting, catering, and paneling in Kyiv. Yet this contrast illustrates the systemic dysfunction:

• Petty Greed vs. Editorial Survival: During the forum, independent sociological surveys revealed that 60% of Ukrainian newsrooms face persistent salary delays, and the loss of a single staff member paralyzes 76% of frontline newsrooms. Independent relocated media count every penny, struggling to secure micro-grants for fuel and power generators.
• The Code of Silence on Regional Corruption: In a plenary session supported by the EU Anti-Corruption Initiative (EUACI) and NABU, three-quarters of the audience voted that "transparency outweighs security." Yet not a single panelist or moderator dared to speak Kushelieva’s name. Discussing corruption remains acceptable only when using abstract cases from distant municipalities; exposing the active schemes of an eastern military administration proved too inconvenient for networks that have historically balanced on dual funding streams — administrative subsidies on one hand, international grants on the other.

3. Donor Complicity Through Inaction

International institutions — IMS, USAID, European delegations, and foreign ministries — continue to finance the comfortable showcase of DMF, operating under the assumption that they are sustaining Donbas media. However, by turning a blind eye to the fact that state regional administrations deliberately corrupt the media market through rigged tenders and cash envelopes, donors inadvertently legitimize a facade.

Broadcasting near the line of contact is dismantled, Ukrainian radio frequencies are jammed by Russian occupation towers, and independent journalists in the East are forced into a degrading choice: survive on unstable three-month project grants or bend the knee to regional bureaucrats for cash in a parcel.