While the number of reports, analyses, investigative materials and commentaries on Ukraine including its EU membership bid, as well as the issue of Kyiv’s Western support, has increased tenfold in European papers in the past four years due to the Russia-Ukraine war, it is worth taking a look at the Ukraine-related articles of one certain outlet that plays a really important part in shaping public opinion.
With its reaches including 91.1 million+ monthly page views, 27.9 million monthly unique visitors, 250K Newsletter subscribers (including Brussels, London, Paris, and Berlin Playbooks) and, 3.4 million+ podcast downloads, POLITICO is the most influential news source among EU institution staff and Brussels opinion formers. In addition, POLITICO Europe has a significant social media presence, with over 241,000 followers on their LinkedIn page.
POLITICO now employs around 350 people in Europe, of whom approximately half are journalists, senior executive editor Kate Day said in an interview on the outlet’s 10th birthday in Europe celebrated in April, 2025.
Against this backdrop, POLITICO EU has a tremendous responsibility for its contents, especially when it comes to Ukraine.
When examining the Ukraine-related pieces of POLITICO EU, it is striking that most of them have been written by Ukrainian authors such as Zoya Sheftalovich and Veronika Melkozerova. Sheftalovich was born in Chernivtsi, Western Ukraine and grew up in Australia. Melkozerova is a Ukrainian journalist from Kyiv.
In light of the articles written by these two authors, we can cynically ask the question of where the relatively moderate reporting of the mid-2010s has gone, when the outlet’s Ukrainian articles were written by Serhiy Leshchenko, one of the then best Ukrainian investigative journalists…?
The key, in fact, is Leschenko himself. He has a history of collaborating with and being featured in POLITICO’s coverage of Ukrainian anti-corruption and press freedom issues in the mid 2010’s, although he has never been a staff journalist at the outlet.
Regarding Leshchenko, it is worth noting that after his studies in the UK, he undertook an intership at the National Endowment for Democracy in the US. He was elected a member of the Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna Rada in 2014. Since 2019, he has been serving as an advisor to Andrii Yermak, the former right-hand man of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. (Yermak, the head of the Presidential Office was removed from office by Zelenskyy in late 2025.)
It can be said that, most probably, it was Leschenko who had brought Zoya Sheftalovich to the POLITICO to be promoted right to the crème de la crème at the outlet as she was a founding member of POLITICO Europe in Brussels in April 2015. Zoya Sheftalovich also become the editor of the outlet’s most popular podcast and newsletter, the Brussels Playbook with 135K+ subscribers. Previously she was the editor of the London Playbook, with 95K+ subscribers. Due to her role as an editor, she has full control over all EU-Ukraine related content published on the portal.
Thus, it can reasonably assumed that it was Leschenko who, using his influence in both Washington D.C., Kyiv and Brussels managed to ensure that, since the start of Russia’s agression in Ukraine in 2022, the POLITICO EU’s coverage of Ukrainian issues reflected a Ukrainian perspective, that is a biased one, shaped by Ukrainian editors and journalists such as Zoya Sheftalovich and Veronika Melkozerova.
It is also worth noting that Leschenko became widely known for articles published in POLITICO’s commentary section, such as ’Journalists can save Ukraine – The war against corruption is a war for information’ in 2015, in which he outlined the challenges a post-Yanukovich Ukraine faced in the field of corruption and censorship. ’Corruption is currently a far greater threat to Ukraine than the war in the East. It weakens the economy; destroys the army; and makes the country an easy prey for Russian aggression. A hybrid war will not be effective against corruption. This war should be waged by openly naming names. It is a battle that must end in complete victory.’, he wrote.
An interesting episode in Leshchenko’s biography is that in September 2016, a group of deputies of the Verkhovna Rada appealed to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) with a request to check the purchase of Serhiy Leschenko of an apartment of 192 m² in a new building in the centre of Kyiv. This apartment purchase has caused a great public outcry in Ukraine. Criticism has undergone both the fact of luxury purchasing, as well as sources of financing as the case was indirectly related to Dmitro Firtash, one of Ukraine’s infamous oligarchs.
Against this backdrop, it was already Ukrainian MP Leshchenko, who leaked Paul Manafort’s secrets to The New York Times in 2018, revealing an effort by Trump’s former campaign manager to cover up payments he received from a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine.
From this point, it was only one step away from becoming an advisor to President Zelenskyy in 2019, a president who dismantled the independence of Ukrainian anti-corruption agencies such as NABU and SAP in the summer of 2025 and restored it within days due to public pressure and Western criticism. In his current role leshchenko also serves on the supervisory board of Ukrainian Railways.
The fact that, despite having retired from journalism, Leschenko is asked by the Western media from time to time to comment on developments in Ukraine suggests that he continues to play an important role in the media. In an interview with BBC Ukraine last year, Serhiy Leshchenko explained: ’We have to be visible to the world. If public opinion is on Ukraine’s side, there is a better chance to get help from the international community.’
This is exactly what he achieved at POLITICO EU which, instead of providing unbiased coverage of Ukraine, repeatedly attacks EU leaders, such as Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico and his Hungarian colleague Viktor Orbán, who do not support the EU’s stances on Ukraine.
As part of this overall negative approach to these leaders, the Brussels Playbook podcast held discussions on the threats posed by the Hungary-linked outlets claiming that, the emergence of them shows ’the EU is seen as a critical battleground for ideas and influence. These outlets are part of a broader trend where certain national political players seek to shape the narrative in Brussels.’ All this leads to a new media scene in Brussels, the outlet concluded.
In her most recent article published in POLITICO EU, Zoya Sheftalovich, together with Melkozerova and other contributors, referring to unnamed European officials and diplomats, expressed the hope that Orbán would lose the upcoming election in Hungary. In that case, Orbán would not be able to use his veto on Ukraine’s fast-track EU membership. If US President Donald Trump fails to convince Orbán to change his mind about Ukraine, the only viable solution would be to strip Hungary of its voting rights in the EU. 5 steps to get Ukraine into the EU in 2027 – POLITICO
In his response to this article, Hungarian PM said all this ’would be an open declaration of war against Hungary’ adding that he believed POLITICO had ’published Brussels’ and Kyiv’s latest war plan, the five-point Zelenskyy plan.’
It was also POLITICO EU that recently claimed in a report that Slovak PM Robert Fico, a Trump ally and a critic of the regime in Kyiv, told leaders at the EU summit in January that, a meeting with Donald Trump at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida left him shocked by the U.S. president’s state of mind… Fico was allegedly concerned about Trump’s psychological state, according to POLITICO. Similarly to the case of the Hungarian PM, the outlet referred to unnamed European diplomats its black campaign against Fico who rejected ’the lies of the POLITICO portal’,adding that the meeting was pleasant and normal.
In the fourth year of the war in Ukraine, it is particularly important that Europeans be provided with unbiased and accurate information. One of Europe’s leading news portals simply cannot afford to be as biased as the examples above suggest. It is time for the POLITICO EU to stop echoing pro-Ukrainian views and take a more neutral stance. Only a more balanced view of the situation can help EU citizens form their own opinions on Ukraine.
