BBC Ukraine Coverage – BBC Live
All the major British TV channels are covering the Ukraine invasion but for many the first choice is always the BBC. Although the other channels like ITV and Sky also have excellent news coverage of these events none have the scope and experience of the BBC.
The BBC for example is the only UK TV station with a Ukrainian service which was set up in 1992. It has an office in Kyiv where it employs 10 staff plus a few dozen reporters spread across the country and abroad who contribute. Most of the reporting takes place through the internet specifically through the BBC News site. The BBC did actually produce regular radio broadcasts up until April 2011.
The BBC has many journalists on the ground and in all the adjacent countries covering all aspects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
At the moment though, the most famous face of the BBC in Ukraine is Clive Myrie who is still bravely based in Kyiv. He’s most certainly not alone, though as many other courageous journalists remain there and throughout Ukraine.
Many viewers, journalists, and senior politicians have praised BBC journalist Clive Myrie for his powerful explanation of the media’s role in Ukraine following the Russian invasion.
Journalists have been reporting on the ongoing revolution in Ukraine as Vladimir Putin’s troops continue to march towards the capital, Kiev.
BBC Shortwave Broadcasts in Ukraine
The BBC Radio World Service is adding new shortwave frequencies to broadcast news and information for the people of Ukraine. It’s a service that they have traditionally supplied for certain parts of the world like Africa when traditional modern communications have failed. For most of the country, Ukrainian tv, radio, phone and even the internet has been knocked out. Obviously, there are lots of power outage’s as well, both for broadcasters and people trying to listen. The frequencies they are using are as follows – Freq: 5875 kHz from 8-10 UTC and on 15735 kHz from 2-4 UTC.
You can find the home of the BBC Ukraine service on their website – BBC Ukraine.
BBC News for English Speakers
Indeed, for many expats in the area, the BBC has always been a valuable source of information especially those with no Russian or Ukrainian language skills. The BBC’s international site – BBC.com is a great source of information on current affairs and the political situation.
The primary site for the BBC though is www.BBC.co.uk which can be difficult to access outside the United Kingdom. The main difficulty is that it uses geo-targeting to restrict access to all their broadcasts including BBC One and the 24/7 news channel BBC News.
If you try and access the site directly, your IP address is checked, and any non-UK traffic is routed towards the ‘International site’. If you go directly to the BBC’s live and archive on BBC iPlayer, you’ll normally be restricted if you try and actually watch anything. This is again due to geo-targeting, if you want to watch any of the BBC’s TV channels, you’ll need to use a VPN like NordVPN to hide your location. There’s more information on this post about how to access BBC News abroad.
Only a few VPNs work now with the BBC and unfortunately none of the free ones have worked for years. You can watch BBC iPlayer abroad free without VPN access for a short time by using this free 14-day trial for Smart DNS – https://www.uktv-online.com/smart – it works well and doesn’t require card details to test out.
BBC News on the Dark Web
Not all censorship attempts are directed from copyright perspectives of course. There’s plenty of governments and regimes who are keen to ensure that only their version of the news is heard. The BBC News service in all forms is routinely blocked by repressive regimes all over the world.
At the moment the Russian government are blocking out virtually all news and social media sites during their invasion of the Ukraine. The narrative there of course is completely different from what’s really happening, and Russia wants its citizens to have only one source of news – from the Russian State controlled media.
In 2019, the BBC set up a mirror of their News feeds on the dark web, which is much, much more difficult to block than the traditional web sites. You can access these sites from Russia and Belarus without any issues.
You’ll need a different browser to access these sites – the most common method is the TOR browser which you can download here –
Tor Project | Anonymity Online
Here are the mirror feeds of the BBC News coverage of the Ukrainian invasion –
- BBC News in Ukrainian: https://www.bbcweb3hytmzhn5d532owbu6oqadra5z3ar726vq5kgwwn6aucdccrad.onion/ukrainian
- BBC News in Russian: https://www.bbcweb3hytmzhn5d532owbu6oqadra5z3ar726vq5kgwwn6aucdccrad.onion/russian
- BBC News internationally: https://www.bbcweb3hytmzhn5d532owbu6oqadra5z3ar726vq5kgwwn6aucdccrad.onion
Remember you cannot access these URLs from a traditional browser like Chrome or IE, they simply won’t work. Unfortunately, you can only access the standard international version of the BBC on these sites, you’ll still need a VPN for BBC iPlayer and other UK TV sites.