American blogger and culinary specialist Uriel Shtern and the ex-editor-in-chief of the Kompanion (Companion), Utro.ua and Obozrevatel ezines Viktor Zubaniuk have launched the Lenta.ua ezine.

Shtern said at a press conference hosted by the Kyiv-based Interfax-Ukraine news agency that he purchased the lenta.ua domain for internet support for the Kvitna charity foundation he heads. He said it helped him to accumulate funds for the treatment of breast cancer patients, although Kvitna used other Internet resources and the lenta.ua domain was not needed.

Shtern said he had received offers from Russia to buy the domain, but he refused them, suspecting it would be used in hybrid warfare against Ukraine.

"And when I was introduced to Viktor (Zubaniuk) I became convinced that I could transfer the domain to reliable hands for the creation of an interesting, useful and quality publication with a future and, I emphasize, a patriotic, pro-Ukraine position, and so I did this," Shtern said.

Zubaniuk told Interfax-Ukraine he had received the rights to the domain lenta.ua as private entrepreneur Viktor Zubaniuk (not as a legal entity).

In his words, the site has for the last two and a half months it has been functioning in test mode and is already ready to enter full-fledged work in two languages: Russian and Ukrainian.

"There are 15 journalists in the project now," Zubaniuk said.

He announced the publication of high-profile journalistic investigations about the "gray cardinals" in Kyiv and shadow schemes for financing political forces, but at the same time stressed that the project was not created for elections. According to him, the publication was conceived and created as an independent information and analytical project. He said its editorial board intends to comprehensively cover all significant events and phenomena in various spheres of life in Ukraine and the world: from politics and economics to important trends in the development of public relations, culture and sports.

Shtern said under the contract with the editorial board he was deprived of the right to intervene in editorial policy. He stipulated only the possibility, as necessary, to publish in the publication information on Kvitna's activities, and in the appropriate section – recipes from his book on cooking.

Zubaniuk previously led a number of publications in the field of business, social and political press. In particular, he was a correspondent for the Moscow newspaper Kommersant, headed the Ukrainian bureau of the publishing house Kommersant, was first deputy editor-in-chief of Halytski Kontrakty, the editor-in-chief of Kompanion (Companion), Kyiv Weekly, the Internet project Utro.ua and Obozrevatel, General Director of MediaDom LLC (Gazeta 24 and 24.ua).