How Much the State Spends on the United News Marathon During the War

At the most recent meeting of the Servant of the People faction (as of the publication date), multiple proposals were voiced to remove funding for the TV marathon from the 2026 state budget and redirect it to other areas (one option being education, particularly increasing teachers’ salaries). Whether the marathon will continue next year (despite earlier statements that it would run until the end of the war) is now an open question due to internal seismic activity in parliament. On one side are MPs who no longer want to unanimously vote for a budget pushed down from above. On the other side are the interested authorities, owners, and information teams of the five participating channels — at least two of which may not survive without these funds.

While lawmakers are only discussing a potential amendment to the not-yet-adopted budget, Detector Media decided to summarize how much the state has already spent on the marathon during the war and how this happened.

The United News TV marathon, now widely criticized both by independent media and by international partners, started in 2022 as a unique phenomenon — a collaboration between private, state, and public broadcasters working together to counter the enemy in the information space. Until autumn 2022, broadcasters produced the marathon at their own expense, even though they had been requesting state support since the first month of the full-scale invasion.

“We, independent Ukrainian media, also need additional financial support. The usual commercial sources of funding — advertising and content distribution — stopped functioning for us at the start of the war,” stated a joint appeal in March 2022 from 1+1 media, Media Group Ukraine, Starlight Media, and Inter Media Group, who were producing the marathon at that time. Lobbying for compensation took a long and persistent effort. During this period, Rinat Akhmetov even shut down his media group.

In November 2022, the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy allocated the first funds for the marathon — 83 million UAH. According to one market participant, this funding roughly covered one month of the channels’ operating costs.

The funds were distributed through the State Center for the Protection of Ukraine’s Information Space and were received not only by commercial broadcasters but also by the state-funded channel Rada. Public Broadcaster Suspilne received no additional funding. The money also did not go to the channel We Are Ukraine, which launched and received its license in early October 2022 and joined the marathon’s production pool in early November.

The largest contracts from the state enterprise went to Kinokit LLC, which has been producing content for the state Rada channel since late 2021. The total amounted to 24.4 million UAH (19.5 million UAH for program cycles about the war with Russia and another 5 million UAH for videos dedicated to Defender’s Day). According to Bihus.Info journalists, Kinokit is linked to former Deputy Head of the Presidential Office Kyrylo Tymoshenko.

Inter TV Channel (PJSC “Inter”) received contracts worth 16 million UAH. Starlight Media News LLC received 16.8 million UAH, and Studio 1+1 Broadcasting Company LLC received 16.3 million UAH. Another 9.6 million UAH went to Media Scope Global LLC, owned by Andriy Kroienko and Kateryna Klymenko, for producing clips to be aired on channels outside the marathon production pool — 2+2, Novyi, TET, PlusPlus, M1, Bigudi, OCE, and M2.

However, 2022 did not end there — the marathon’s producers also received contracts in December.

The Dozorro project of Transparency International Ukraine calculated that the state spent almost 400 million UAH on TV content production in 2022. Most of these funds were part of the Rada channel’s budget, but in December, the We Are Ukraine channel also received 7 million UAH for producing informational content. Commercial media groups also received funds in 2022 to produce content for FreeDom.

Regarding FreeDom, in addition to the editorial teams of the state-owned enterprise Ukrainian State Center for International Broadcasting (MPIU), content production also involved media groups 1+1, Starlight Media, and Inter Media Group, and until July 2022 — Media Group Ukraina.

In July — and again in November — MPIU signed contracts for producing content for FreeDom with:

At the same time, the contract with the Ukraina news group was terminated in July because Rinat Akhmetov’s SCM exited the media business.

In 2023, the state allocated nearly 2 billion UAH for content production (this includes state broadcasters, international broadcasting, and the United News and FreeDom marathons, among others). The direct producers of United News received about half a billion UAH. By then, the channel We Are Ukraine was already receiving its full share of this funding. On the media market, this broadcaster was associated with the then–Head of the Presidential Office, Andriy Yermak. We Are Ukraine is even jokingly referred to as “Alla Borysivna’s channel.” Among the military, MPs, and in the corridors of the Presidential Office, Andriy Yermak is nicknamed “Alla Borysivna” because his initials are A.B.

The largest amount — 146 million UAH — went to We Are Ukraine LLC. SLM Novyny LLC received 112 million UAH, Studio 1+1 Broadcasting Company LLC received 109.7 million UAH, and Inter TV Channel PJSC received 97 million UAH.

Notably, We Are Ukraine consistently had the highest cost per hour of content for the United News informational marathon. At one point, Detector Media asked the channel why this was the case. The press service responded that the cost was influenced by the use of in-house versus rented resources, logistics, and technical standards.

In 2023, production of the marathon was included in the Rada channel’s budget (192.9 million UAH). Out of this budget, the channel allocated 120 million UAH to Kinokit for marathon production. In these artistic “competitions” of the state channel, the winner never changes.

The State Audit Service launched an inspection into the legality of the procurement procedure of the parliamentary TV channel Rada, which in early January signed a new agreement worth 104.9 million UAH with the company Kinokit for producing TV content for the United News marathon in 2024. In response, the Rada channel stated that it cannot produce the marathon on its own because its studios are located in the government district, it lacks regional bureaus, and its equipment is outdated. Funding for producing the marathon, as in 2023, came from the channel’s general budget. In 2024, the overall funding for parliamentary media increased: Rada channel and the Holos Ukrainy newspaper together received 198.29 million UAH (compared to 192.9 million UAH in 2023).

Meanwhile, commercial broadcasters received over half a billion UAH in 2024 for United News. The largest contract for 2024 — worth 190 million UAH — went to We Are Ukraine LLC. SLM had a contract worth 142 million UAH, and 1+1 received 139 million UAH.

However, in 2024, the Public Broadcaster Suspilne exited the marathon and launched its own broadcast. More details about why this happened can be found in Detector Media’s report. Suspilne did not receive any additional state funding for producing the marathon apart from its regular budget, which is allocated to sustain its 24 regional branches, the First Channel, Suspilne Kultura, Suspilne Sport, and its radio stations.

Suspilne’s departure from the marathon created a need to increase funding, as the volume of airtime that commercial media groups had to fill with content grew.

Thus, in 2025, the state allocated over 800 million UAH to the United News marathon. All four media groups received almost identical amounts for producing the marathon:

The total amount of funding allocated for the marathon increased compared to 2024: 738 million UAH was provided for 2025, while in 2024 it was 593.6 million UAH. Initially, the budget request for 2025 planned to keep this amount unchanged. However, changes were later made within the budget program, redistributing the funds allocated for the marathons and international broadcasting.

The reason is that in 2024, media groups additionally received 144.3 million UAH to produce their blocks for the FreeDom channel. That is precisely the amount by which funding for the United News marathon increased for 2025. Starting from March 1, 2025, FreeDom has been produced entirely by the Multimedia Platform for International Broadcasting (as in 2024, it was allocated 162 million UAH). Thus, the state reduced funding for FreeDom, but redirected those funds to media groups for producing the marathon.

The Rada channel also did not remain without funding for the marathon. It should be recalled that in 2025, funding for parliamentary state media was reduced by half: while expenditures amounted to 198.2 million UAH in 2024, the allocation for 2025 was 78.2 million UAH. According to the budget request, 19.5 million UAH of this was planned for Holos Ukrainy. This means 58.8 million UAH remained for producing TV programs — and this was not intended for United News production.

Nevertheless, the Rada channel once again held its artistic procurement competition and again selected Kinokit as the producer of the Rada block in the telethon, signing a contract in January 2025 worth 101.5 million UAH. As Detector Media found, these funds were provided to Rada by the Ministry of Culture and Strategic Communications under the budget program Ensuring Strategic Communications, Information Security, and Measures for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration. This program specifically included 101.5 million UAH for “the provision of services for creating (producing) audiovisual works (television programs) to ensure the round-the-clock informational marathon in 2025.”

Funding for the marathon (for all producers except Rada) is allocated under the same budget program that finances international broadcasting and Ukrinform. Its expenditures remained unchanged compared to 2024 — 1.5 billion UAH.

In the draft state budget registered in early autumn, funding for the marathon was again included under the same budget program. Its expenditures increased slightly to 1.557 billion UAH (compared to 1.5 billion UAH planned for 2025). However, much has since changed — both in the staffing policies of the Presidential Office and in the mood of MPs within the Servant of the People faction, where, according to Detector Media’s sources, many are no longer opposed to reallocating funds from the telethon to other needs.

Thus, funding — and therefore the very existence — of the telethon in 2026 is now in question. If funding is not provided, the first to be affected will be Inter, which currently covers all of its operational needs with marathon funds. It will also hit We Are Ukraine, whose informal curator, according to our sources, was Andriy Yermak.

1+1 and SLM are also unlikely to be ready to lose such a significant state subsidy, as they would then have to produce TSN and Fakty at their own expense. This is why the idea of continuing the telethon may still have strong media lobby support.