Launched days after the start of the Russian full-scale invasion, Ukraine: The Latest is the leading English-language podcast on the war, with over 800 episodes and more than 100 million downloads.

Every weekday, the team combine battlefield updates, political analysis, and narrative segments, putting voices of Ukrainians at the heart of our reporting. They feature The Telegraph’s roster of leading journalists on the ground and regularly travel to Ukraine for exclusive testimony.

In its third year, though, Ukraine: The Latest faced huge challenges. In September 2024, the creator and host, David Knowles, passed away suddenly at the age of 32. The team were committed to continuing the podcast every day, so had to sensitively navigate the outpouring of grief by listeners, as well as their own, whilst not losing sight of the core stories.

Despite continued growth in numbers and scope, the show still runs on a small team of freelance and remote producers. Despite that, they managed to react to breaking news stories and publish long-form content and deep dive interviews.

Ukraine: The Latest is a flagship podcast of The Telegraph. It demonstrates that a pay-walled, subscriptions-based publisher can generate mass-interest and attention on a story that is emotionally challenging and requires significant concentration and commitment to understand.

Throughout its third year, Ukraine: The Latest has grown in scope and formats, while constantly engaging with and reaching out to audiences around the globe.

In 2025, the team travelled twice to Ukraine, including to the front-line city of Kharkiv, to report original stories on the human cost of war – from survivors in Bucha to children in underground schools in Kharkiv. They’ve also launched a regular segment on the resistance in the occupied territories. In March 2025, the team was amongst the few British media invited to a private briefing with President Zelensky following his emergency visit to the UK.

After touring the show in America in 2023, the team was invited to speak at the US embassy in London, at the Chalke History Festival and at Armed Forces Day in Scarborough about the Ukraine war. Then, in February 2025, they launched Ukrainian and Russian translations thanks to a sophisticated AI voice cloning and translation model, replicating the English version of the podcast into both languages, while maintaining the cadence and tone of the presenters. The Telegraph is the first news publisher to pioneer the use of AI in this way, and it allows those living most affected by the conflict to access the reporting and expertise.

The podcast has demonstrated the incredible importance of community with the audience and converting them to subscribers to the wider business.

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