Dear readers,
At the end of this month, it will be two years since I founded Ukraine Rebuild Newswire. Back in July of 2023, I promised to try to hold the global community accountable for their promises to help rebuild Ukraine after winning the war against the Russian invasion.
I've been bootstrapping URN since, working 6 or 7 days a week and paying wages and all other expenses out of my own savings. We even sold an apartment we owned in Bucharest to help cope.
I was prepared to foot the bill for 16 months - a year and a quarter - and hoped that the venture would break even within that time.
Unfortunately, after several extensions to my own deadline, it has not. 23 months later, I am still working more than full time and paying the bills our of my personal account. Even worse, the end of the war doesn't seem to be that much closer.
So, I'm sorry to say that I will have to pause URN's publication.
We will stop publishing for some months while we await greater clarity on the war and foreign investment. In essence, we are waiting until the international community gives some sign that it's good for its word.
The news is not all bad though. When we do return, we plan to come back better than ever.
We have plans for a redesign of the newsletter to give it a glossy magazine feel - we want it to be a newsletter that investors save onto their hard drives and pass around.
Plus we will launch several new article series modelled after our successful Tips for Investors series. One series, called 2 Yays & 1 Nay, will review Ukrainian startups and another, the Reconstruction Toolshed, will review online tools designed to help the reconstruction. We will also introduce a weekly interview series and are discussing plans for a podcast.
For that, though, we need market interest.
I apologize to all paid subscribers - if you paid monthly for June, you have already been reimbursed, or will be reimbursed shortly. If you paid annually, I will personally reimburse you for the unused portion. I will be writing each of you individually on Monday. We very much appreciate your support and hope you continue to support URN upon relaunch.
We'd also like to thank CMS Ukraine, Riley Risk, Alex Gordin of the Ukraine Rebuild Association, the European Business Association, Forvis Mazars, CFC Big Ideas, and many of the individuals, companies and organizations that have supported us since the beginning. Stephen Butler of Strategy Council has given URN front row seats to the many excellent conference on Ukraine they offer, and AHK Ukraine, USUBC and others have kindly let me in to events normally not seen by journalists.
I would also like to thank my immensely patient, optimistic and hardworking newsroom chief, Valentina Bajic, as well as the other staff that have helped us along the way, including the efficient and super-professional Aga Januszczyk. I would also like to thank Magnus Helander, who did a fabulous job as an expert with Ghost, our publishing platform, and was extremely generous with his tech knowledge.
We will keep the website running and occasionally update it over the next few months, and I will see you all, hopefully, in a few months - in an era of renewal and intense optimism for Ukraine and eager participation of its allies.
I can be reached, as usual, at adam.brown@ukrainerebuildnews.com. I will be pausing my Google Workspace account, so I'm not sure how that will affect the email address though. If that doesn't work, I am also at adammacbrown@gmail.com.
Yours sincerely,
Adam Brown
