“Toothless Ukraine Won’t Protect Its People Abroad”: A Major Interview with Yulia Bin

03.09.2026, 16:06 uatv.ua

Ukrainian society is changing — and Ukrainian international broadcasting is evolving along with it. Where does it stand today in the system of the state’s strategic communications? Why does an avatar of the channel’s general director read the news? And what is it like to apply for content funding competitions that you yourself once organized? About all of this — in a major interview with Detector Media, the general director of SE “IBMPU” Yulia Bin spoke. The “Дім” presents the full text of the conversation.

— Yulia, at one of the recent non-public meetings we organized regarding coverage of events in temporarily occupied territories, one participant said there’s a window of about 6-8 months for information to somehow still reach from here to there…

— At this year’s Kyiv StratCom Forum, there were also thoughts expressed that Russia’s information field is completely concreted over. But with the FREEДOM channel we do reach there, even though our website is blocked and the channel is banned, just like the “Дім”, by the way. So we try various platforms — YouTube, Telegram, Instagram, TikTok, we conduct information campaigns about how and where to watch us. We see that when there is interest and appropriate content, people can find us there. But for that they need to make an effort and be aware of the danger that law enforcement can track it.

For example, FREEДOM’s broadcast via satellite covers temporarily occupied territories and part of Russia up to the Urals, but they have their own package of channels, the same “Russian World” for occupied territories, their own satellites. They have completely different polarization. That is, to watch FREEДOM, a person has to turn their dish in a different direction, and this is visible to everyone and can be dangerous. We even had materials in occupation media where people were called on to monitor their neighbors — whether they were directing their dishes to watch non-Russian channels.

The same goes for the internet. To watch what is banned in Russia, it’s better to have a separate smartphone, and there too you need to clear everything. This year we launched the FREEДOM mobile app. And we see how it’s being installed in Russia, watched, then deleted, then the same users install it again, then delete it… So they understand that it’s dangerous, but they find ways.

So I’ll allow myself to disagree with colleagues who tell me that it’s impossible to penetrate Russia’s information field, that this audience barely knows anything about X, Instagram, Facebook anymore and soon won’t know about YouTube either. Because I see the indicators of our viewership and localization: for FREEДOM, even accounting for VPN error, the geography now shows Russia at around 35-40%.

I also have to watch a lot of various Russians at work — the “good” ones, war correspondents, the most insane propagandists — and their ratings. And when Solovyov has a rating below 50th place in Mediascope (a company in Russia that conducts media measurements), and with younger audiences he may not even make the top hundred, this cannot even be compared with the viewership of video on the supposedly “closed” YouTube. Moreover, in my opinion, watching content like FREEДOM is a conscious choice.

So I don’t have information that this “window” will disappear anytime soon.

And ultimately, FREEДOM itself is a window for conversation not just with Russians. This is a much broader story — it’s about any foreign audiences that understand Russian. The problem is that wherever these audiences are — there’s immediately Russian interest, Russian propaganda tries to creep out of every crack.

And let’s be clear, the concept of “Russian propaganda” often equals “anti-Ukrainian.” There are countries that somehow fight this, some are neutral, and some are the opposite, but Ukraine is currently the only one for whom this threat is existential. So we need to speak with the world, including in Russian, but about Ukraine or about what can strengthen us and weaken our enemies.

— How exactly does this manifest in broadcasting?

— Obviously, our basic mandatory level is information broadcasting, news from Ukraine, and not only about the war that Russia is waging against us. Although there are many wars, and we always emphasize in broadcasting that we work from Kyiv and are witnesses to what we’re talking about. Mandatory — international significant events and support for Ukraine. Interestingly, these news items get a lot of views precisely from “behind the Dnieper” and from Belarus. Probably these are things that are censored or overlooked there. Just as well received are any troubles in Russia: a gas crisis, our strikes on their territory, some terrorist attacks there, floods, fires, future mobilization — in short, cataclysms that have no place in “patriotic” Russian media.

Also, we are always attentive to significant events in the post-Soviet space. This is a large audience, these are our neighbors and partners, these are countries where Russian is well known, where Russian media often still exists, and these are countries where Russia has special geopolitical interest. FREEДOM is available here not only in digital form, but as linear television via satellite and in local telecommunications networks.

There were elections in Moldova and in Armenia, we covered them very thoroughly. We prepared many materials from the pre-election campaign, made special projects about Russian hybrid operations, about candidates affiliated with Russia, exposed fakes. Our special correspondents worked there, we did live feeds on election day. Such content on FREEДOM’s digital platforms had very high viewership precisely from these countries, as well as from the Baltic countries, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Belarus.

There were materials where 25-30% of views were from Moldova, or where Yerevan or Chisinau were at the top. You understand: the population capacity in Russia and in these countries is simply incomparable, but they competed. Another point is telling — people in these countries actively watch materials about their internal agenda on the Ukrainian channel. So they are looking for different sources, alternative opinions. We also covered elections in Hungary. Of course, Hungarians didn’t watch us in Russian (we have a new YouTube channel in Hungarian), but these materials were well watched in Russia itself, Germany, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Latvia, Kazakhstan.

I want to say that we address our audiences not only through the lens of countering Russia — we try to highlight two-sided or regional stories outside the context of war, although that’s difficult now. This year we launched a separate “Turkic Focus” and immediately a larger share of the audience is from Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan.

In the summer we worked at a media forum in Azerbaijan (4th Shusha Global Media Forum, in Azerbaijan) — we got viewership from the cities of Baku, Sumgait, Ganja, Yerevan. The forum takes place in Shusha and provides a special program to show how they are rebuilding the de-occupied Karabakh and what happened there. I was on this trip. I’ll say this: Shusha leaves a very strong impression, and for me it was an inspiring example. So now we’re planning to go there again to film a documentary about Karabakh.

By the way, our FREEДOM hosts and journalists are recognized on the street not in Kyiv, but in Tbilisi, Astana, Riga, Chisinau. Our correspondents in PACE, in the European Parliament are approached by politicians from different countries, who give comments and clearly understand who we are and what we’re for. So it’s an indirect indicator of our importance and recognition.

Returning to content: even within Russia itself, the audience is segmented. Those who believe Solovyov are hardly our clients (laughs). But there is an audience of indigenous peoples, especially the Caucasus. With them in mind, we make separate program lines on FREEДOM’s air and separate digital platforms FREEДOM.КАВКАЗ. Then there are Russians — I wouldn’t say those who think, rather dissatisfied with everyday troubles, there are cataclysms that Russia hides, and people are looking for information. All of this we try to highlight so that slowly but surely, this concreted Russia becomes fragile and vulnerable.

— At the Kyiv Stratcom Forum you mentioned, you showed a slide with a list of cities from where you’re being watched. And you noted that now instead of some Russian city — Amsterdam, and probably these are the same Russians with VPN. Do you think your audience has stabilized? Is it mostly people who once found out about FREEДOM and continue to seek it out and go through the trouble of bypassing restrictions? Or do you have the ability to attract new audiences as well?

— I can talk about what the digital platform tools show, and about my feelings. In my opinion, on different YouTube channels we have different audiences, and with accounts on other social networks they don’t overlap much.

First, the audience profile is different. Yes, on all platforms there are more men, but it’s 65% on some, 75% on others, and 85% on some. There’s a difference in age and geography.

On the base YouTube channel FREEДOM, where all our content is published and where the live broadcast is aired — the largest share is Russia, then Kazakhstan, and by age almost 50% are users aged 25-54. And on another one of our million-subscriber channels — FREEДOM. LIVE — Russia is 10% less, while there’s 10% Uzbekistan and a more senior audience.

On TikTok, Instagram, Facebook the audience is noticeably younger; people older than 55 are less than 25%; there are people even younger than 25. Geography also differs. For example, on Facebook we see that Russia has really cut it down, there’s little audience from there — 5-7%, but there are many views from Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Lithuania. On TikTok the top three, excluding Ukraine — is Kazakhstan, Belarus, Russia. In exactly that order.

And we’re constantly lookin