I use this website every day, because I listen to what has come to be called the “night address”. This is the video of a short speech that President Zelenskyy gives every night just before retiring. English captions or captions in the language of your choice can be set if you don’t understand Ukrainian, and you can print a transcript from the website in either Ukrainian or English. I always save a copy in PDF format.
With the help of Google Translate®, you can read the address in just about any language. Conveniently for me, the “night address” is posted in my early afternoon, since I’m ten hours behind Ukraine (Mountain Time). The address always summarizes and comments on the events of the day, describes the situation at the front, and often includes hints about what to expect the next day.
While informative and up to the minute, the night address is just one of many reasons to get acquainted with this site. Some of the other reasons are: galleries of photos, including of distinguished visitors, a video collection with the speeches the President has given at various forums such as the European Council and the U.N., plus videos and transcripts of all the night addresses. Also there are articles about activities of the Presidential staff and of the First Lady, including the many rebuilding projects already underway, links to the President’s social media channels, to other government sites, and to a copy of the Constitution of Ukraine.
It’s the logical starting point for anyone interested in what’s happening in Ukraine. There is so much to describe about this website that this post is very long. But no worries; I’ve prepared a PDF of the entire post that you can download. The link is at the foot of the page.
A link in the sidebar of Слава Україні goes to the English version of the President’s site. At least, it should open in English if everything is working normally. If it somehow opens in Ukrainian, you will know instantly, because Ukrainian is written in a version of Cyrillic, an alphabet derived from Greek uncials and used by many Slavic peoples. Today Cyrillic is used to write the official language of nine countries, including Ukraine, Serbia, Bulgaria, Belarus, and russia*.
Translating The Site
The site is set up to be toggled between Ukrainian and English. (In truth, it also can be converted to russian*, but I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t talk about that at this time.) To make this change, use the links in the upper right corner of the page. To set it for English, obviously you would tap the “Eng”. For Ukrainian, tap what looks like “Ykp”, if they were Roman letters, but in Cyrillic “Ykp” is equivalent to the “Ukr” at the beginning of “Ukraine”. A little further on, I’ll reveal a reason why you might want to look at a news item in Ukrainian, even if you can’t read it.
Main Topics
The Main Topics of the President’s site are spread across the page not far below the logo, and consist of News, Photos, Videos, and three more I’ll leave for you to explore on your own. When you choose one of these, you get a drop-down menu, but the choices also appear in the blue bar if you are looking at the site on a large screen. We’ll take a closer look at the News topic first.
Current Events
The first thing to look at is news about Current events. To list those, pull down the menu under the News link and choose the first item.The exact location of the News link will vary, depending on the operating system and the device, but Current events is always at the top of the menu, and the titles and descriptions of the news items for Current events will appear down the right side of the page. Choosing an item opens and displays it from the left side of the page over to the Current Events list. If items in the list have an attached video or photo gallery, that will be indicated in the description.
Speeches
Next you’ll want to check out the second link down the News menu, Speeches. This link leads to a list of speeches with a description for each one. The links in the list open the actual speech page. Each of these has a photo at the top, a transcript of the speech, and the video at the foot of the page. The video opens in YouTube®, where you can sometimes set subtitles. I say “sometimes”, because that feature may be disabled. By disabled, I don’t mean toggling the subtitles to OFF using the small CC icon; I mean really unavailable. Sometimes you will find that the only language available is Ukrainian. This may be helpful if you find a speech delivered at a conference, because the introduction might be in a language you don’t know.
Customizing The YouTube Display
Here’s a rather odd tip: if Ukrainian is the only language listed for subtitles, choose it even if you don’t understand it. Then go back in and you will see an added choice, Auto-translate. Choose that, and you will have a long list of languages to choose from. The translation will be from Ukrainian into the language you choose. If everything is functioning, you’ll probably get fairly good subtitles. Sometimes the auto translator accidentally produces a strange or even funny result, but we always can use a laugh! Also check the setting for video quality, and be sure to choose the highest resolution available on your device and operating system.
And here’s a fun tip: While you were in the dialogs to set subtitles, you may have noticed a link marked Options at the top. Open that, and you can style the subtitles. I like to set it with yellow text on a blue background, the Ukraine flag colors. I also set the text for 50% of full size. With my large monitor, I can read the smaller captions easily, and they don’t cover up so much of the video. Conversely, if you have low vision, you can use Options to set a high contrast set of colors, enlarge the text, and even change the font.
Congratulations
Below the Current events link on the News menu is Congratulations. That topic isn’t being kept up for now; check back on the day of the victory. Yes, I have no doubt that it will happen.
Presidential Office
The next menu item is an important one, Presidential Office. These are news items about the activities of the President’s very able staff. Some of these articles appear in the Current events list along the right edge of the page, but I have discovered that some do not. However, all of them will be in the list under Presidential Office. So if you are checking out the news, be sure to look at Presidential Office along with Current events. I’ve read many interesting articles under this link, including ones about rebuilding damaged schools with alternate classrooms underground, that also serve as air raid shelters. Getting these ready by the September 1 start of school was a race, but as usual, the Ukrainians got it done.
President’s Wife
Because the President rarely left Ukraine early in the war, the First Lady, Olena Zelenska (notice the feminine ending on her name), did much of the diplomatic traveling. Now that President Zelenskyy is doing a lot of diplomatic traveling, the First Lady has a full schedule of travel in connection with her own war-related projects, such as school kitchens, mental health (especially of children), and Ukrainian bookshelves in libraries worldwide to keep temporarily displaced persons connected to Ukraine.
In general, because of the war, the articles under this topic are even more interesting than they would be in peacetime. For example, the First Lady, along with Prime Minister Shmyhal, represented Ukraine at two conferences in France on December 13, 2022. But, she also is keeping up the humanitarian activities more often associated with her office. Olena Zelenska is a very busy First Lady!
All News
The last item on the News menu is All News, and that is where I usually go to find items from a few days ago or just to make certain I haven’t missed anything. Here you can browse a list of news items from all menu categories, going back for the last day or two. For any farther back into the past, you need to use the archive buttons or perhaps Search.
News Archives
The archive buttons are a line of dark blue circles with white numerals, larger numbers being farther back into the past. They are located near the foot of the page when you are looking at one of the menu topics such as Current events or Speeches, but they don’t appear when you are reading an individual item. How far back each button takes you varies, because there were more items in a news category on some days and fewer on others. If you are looking for a specific topic, try putting a word or two into the Search box, located near the top right of the page.
Photos
The next main menu topic is Photos, and it has a drop-down menu similar to the one for News. However, I’m not sure if the categories on the Photos menu are being kept up during the war, plus I find it difficult to guess where a given set of photos might be placed. For those reasons, I’ve been going to the last topic on the Photos drop-down menu, All Galleries. It has the latest gallery at the top, or you can scroll down to choose earlier galleries.
To explore a gallery, first click on the button to enlarge the photo (upper right, a circle with a small “x” inside). You will know when you have successfully enlarged the photo, because the border around the photo will be black instead of the dark blue of most borders in the site. I like this view because of the handy forward and back arrows.
Other controls available along the right edge of the window in this view vary in function, depending on the device, operating system, and browser you are using. For example, clicking the download button (down arrow pointing to a rectangle representing a hard drive) when viewing a gallery on my iMac® (browser: FireFox) immediately sends a copy of the photo to my Downloads folder. The same button in iOS on my iPad® opens a dialog asking if I wish to View the photo (fullscreen) or download it to Files.
Right-clicking the photo on iMac opens a menu with “Save image as…” among the various choices, while a long-touch on the photo in iPad lets you add it to the Photos app on iPad. So try out these controls to find out what is available with your particular device, operating system, and browser. There also is a curved arrow button that opens a selection of icons enabling sharing the photo with various apps.
Photo Archives
At the foot of the All Galleries page is a row of archive buttons, dark blue circles with white numerals, that look identical to the analogous buttons on the All News page. However, on the All Galleries page the buttons take you to past photo galleries, not to news items. Like the All News archive buttons, how far back in time each button takes you varies because the number of photo sets varies from page to page.
Licensing Requirements On Photos
Keep in mind the license requirements on these photos. As of 10-4-22, all photos on the official Presidential site are licensed (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Int.) You are required to give attribution and cannot use these photos commercially. The ND abbreviation is less common. It means no derivatives, which precludes photoshopping any new elements in or taking anything out. I presume it also means that you can’t crop a photo to use only part of it, for example, to isolate one person in the image. In general, it means that you can use the image as is but you cannot alter it. The only other requirement is a link back to https://www.president.gov.ua/.
Videos
The next main topic is Videos, and this video collection seems to be limited to speeches by the President. I don’t use this link very much, since I like to have a transcript of each speech, and if you go to the video through this link, you won’t see the text transcript. Instead, you see the poster frame for that video and the controls to run it. To see a transcript of the speech, a downloadable copy of the poster photo, and the video with controls all on the same page, use the Speeches link under News.
However, the Videos link is helpful if you are looking for a specific speech because you can see the exact title, poster image and description of several videos at once, depending on the size of your screen. Having the exact title lets you quickly find the same video under Speeches, by putting that title into the Search box. At the foot of the page are the familiar blue circles of the archive buttons, to search through videos from farther back in time.
You can pick out the night addresses by the timestamp, which will be close to midnight on a 24-hour clock. The night addresses are set up with English as one choice in captions, but for other speeches you may need to use the tip I gave you to access auto-translate. Warning: auto-translate can be very creative at times, and more entertaining than accurate.
Besides the videos on the website, there are videos in the President’s YouTube channel (URL is https://www.youtube.com/@PresidentGovUa). It is worth taking a look at these because they include videos other than speeches, such as press conferences, interactions with various international visitors, and special days such as Flag Day. I also see that they have multiple copies of the night addresses, already set up with subtitles in frequently used languages such as French and Portuguese. Another place you’ll find short videos is the President’s Telegram® channel. I’ll tell you how to get to it later.
Try It In Ukrainian
It seems that items are posted separately in Ukrainian and in English; that is, posting something in Ukrainian doesn’t mean it automatically is also posted in English. Items definitely appear first in Ukrainian, as would be expected, so if you are eager to read a specific item, it’s worth setting the site to Ukrainian (click or touch Ykp in the top right of the page) to see if it has already been posted in Ukrainian. If you can’t wait for the English version, use Google Translate® or another translation app so that you can read the item in the language of your choice, if you don’t know Ukrainian.
Some items only appear on the Ukrainian side of the site. For example, when the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, visited Kyiv, there was a news item about President Zelenskyy taking him on a walk that included the Memory Wall. On the English side of the site, that item is just above a post about a conversation between President Zelenskyy and Irish students.
But if you set the site to Ukrainian, an extra news item appears between those two. It’s about a press conference that took place during Prime Minister Sunak’s visit. That item never appeared on the site in English. Sometimes, these Ukrainian-only news items are about topics that would only interest people living in Ukraine; but often, like this example, there is no obvious reason why the item was never translated. I suspect that this happens when there are too many posts to translate in one day.
A final reason to try putting the site into Ukrainian is that there often are photos that don’t appear on the English side of the site. If the item is the transcript of a speech, it probably will have only one photo with it, placed before the text of the speech, in both languages. But if it is an item about something else, such as a meeting, there often are extra photos on the Ukrainian side.
Other Neat Stuff
There are three more features of the President of Ukraine’s official site that you won’t want to miss. These are: a set of links to social media channels, a set of links to the other government sites of Ukraine, and the indispensable On-site Search box.
Actually, there are two sets of links to social media channels: one for the President’s channels and one for the Office (the staff of the President’s Office), both located in the upper right corner of the page. The President’s channels include linking icons for Facebook®, Twitter® (now X®, but the domain is still twitter.com), Telegram®, Instagram®, and Flickr®, respectively. Channels for Office include Facebook, Twitter, Telegram, Instagram, and YouTube.
I don’t have Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram accounts, so I haven’t investigated those. However, even though I don’t have a Telegram account, Telegram has a Preview channel, in which I can see everything except longer videos such as the night addresses, but they are viewable on the website. I haven’t followed any of the Office links, because the posts seem to all be in Ukrainian only, and often repeat what is in the President’s Telegram channel.
I’ve gotten in the habit of checking the President’s Telegram channel daily (using the Preview channel), because things often are posted there first, including an excerpt from the night address. Also, there are short items that only appear in the Telegram channel, including a collage of photos most mornings. There often are additional short videos, particularly if there are visiting dignitaries. Sometimes, text is posted both in Ukrainian and English.
It’s also worth checking out the the President’s Flickr PhotoStream, which is updated periodically. The Original sizes of these photos often are of higher resolution than the same photo on the website. Be sure to check the licensing if you download a photo from the PhotoStream to use in a project. Although most photos from this source are public domain, there are some that have all rights reserved; usually the ones with celebrity visitors other than government officials.
Government Portal
Finally, at the very foot of the page, there are links to the websites of some of the other parts of Ukraine’s government. The first of these is labeled Government portal. This site (which can be displayed in either Ukrainian or English) covers the activities of the various ministries, including the Prime Minister, and often has interesting articles.
For example, I often look at a short item titled “Situation update of General Staff of UAF regarding russian invasion as of 6.00 a.m., [month, day, year]” to read a concise summary of what has happened during the day. The article will list the situation at various locations along the front, describe equipment captured or destroyed, and recount interesting incidents such as wounded russian soldiers being transported to other hospitals in Luhansk to relieve overcrowding at the Starobil’s’k city hospital, or the continued harassment and home searches imposed on families of Crimean Tatars in Occupied Crimea.
To see the entire Cabinet of Ministers, including the Prime Minister, look for the word Cabinet in the lower left of the dark blue banner at the top of the home page, then click Government of Ukraine (the first item) on the short menu that opens. Ukraine has ministries not found in most governments, such as the Ministry of Digital Transformation.
The addition of new ministries and removal of unneeded ones seems to happen often. In the two years I’ve been using the site, I’ve seen one ministry’s duties combined with another, and looking just now there is a new appointment: Acting Minister of Veteran’s Affairs. Clicking on one of the names opens a short bio of that minister so that you can find out more about her or him.
There also is a somewhat difficult to find media gallery with the following URL: https://www.kmu.gov.ua/en/gallery. So far, photos from this site have a more generous use license, (CC BY 4.0 International), than the new license on the Presidential site. Another thing I like about the Government portal: most articles have a button for a specially formatted print version.
Finally, in the upper left of the home page of the Government portal, there is an inconspicuous blue rectangle above a yellow one, and beside them is “gov.ua” and below that “State sites of Ukraine”. Click on State sites and a menu opens with four links. One will take you back to the President of Ukraine’s site, but what we’re interested in now is the link to the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine. Click that link now.
It’s another whole site to explore! To set it into English, look for a tiny Ukraine flag next to an eye icon in the upper right, hover on it to open to a British flag, and click on that. The National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine is the coordinating body in matters pertaining to national security and defense, so expect some very interesting articles. I’ll let you explore this new site at your leisure.
Verkhovna Rada (legislature) of Ukraine
The next link is labeled Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, which translates roughly as “Supreme Council of Ukraine”; in other words, the legislature. It is a unicameral body, and the elected members are termed “People’s Deputies of Ukraine”. This site also can be set to English, helpful if you are not used to reading Ukrainian in Cyrillic script.
It took me quite a while to locate the media gallery, but it is well worth browsing. Here’s the URL: https://fotobank.rada.gov.ua/. Like the photos on the Government portal site, the photos and videos on this site are licensed (CC BY 4.0 International), which means you can use them, and even crop parts of them, if you provide attribution information.
Constitutional Court of Ukraine and Constitution of Ukraine
I haven’t done much exploring of the final two links, Constitutional Court of Ukraine and Constitution of Ukraine. The last time I looked, neither had a working English version. That’s easily mended: I just copy a chunk of text and paste it into Google Translate. I’m guessing that the Constitutional Court of Ukraine functions similarly to the U. S. Supreme Court, only it seems to have many more members. Trying to read the Constitution of Ukraine is heavy going, but I like the fact that it’s there on the site where it can be read by anyone.
Search the Site Function
Last, but definitely not the least useful, is the On site search box, located in the upper right just below the social media icons. I’ve used search functions on a wide variety of sites, and found a very wide variety of quality. Ranked at the bottom are the ones that give you “no results match your search terms” when you search for the name of the site, or anything else.
At the top of the rankings are complicated ones that can find the proverbial needle in the haystack, if only you can figure out the correct syntax and selection of secret codes known only to the site manager…maybe. The one on the President of Ukraine’s site is a lot like Ukraine itself: not fancy, not complicated, but it always gets the job done.
Why I No Longer Capitalize russia
*I no longer capitalize putin, russian or russia. After the nazi-style atrocities, the kidnapping of Ukrainian children, the abuse and execution of pow’s, and especially after the many days of dropping cruise missiles and Iranian combat drones onto civilian targets in Ukraine’s cities, none of those words deserves the honor of a capital letter. I’m in good company: the official Ukraine government sites have made the same gesture, and no longer capitalize russia, russian, putin, moscow or kremlin.
LinkTo download a PDF of this post, including all screenshots, click here. Printable copy of the entire post, including the illustrative screenshots.