Укрінформ

What is Укрінформ?

Укрінформ is a Ukrainian news agency that describes itself in its English edition as the Ukrainian National News Agency. It publishes around the clock in nine languages — Ukrainian, Russian, English, German, French, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish and Polish — and organises its output into standing sections for war, reconstruction, politics, economy, fact-checks, world news, regions, society, culture, diaspora and sport, alongside podcasts, interviews, photo and video services, infographics, long-reads, official documents and press releases.^[1]

Its footer gives the online media identifier R40-01421 in the Ukrainian register of media subjects, and states that the agency was founded in 1918.^[1] The register entry is an administrative fact; the founding year is the agency's own account of itself and is reported here as such. Its own «Про нас» page gives the same origin more precisely and adds the instrument by which the agency acquired national status, Presidential Decree No. 1230/2000.^[2]

What does Укрінформ cover?

The agency runs a standing sports desk in both its Ukrainian and its English editions rather than treating sport as occasional output. Read on 21 September 2026, the Ukrainian sports section was publishing same-day items, including coverage of Ukraine's performance at the chess olympiad.^[3]

The English edition's sports section, read on the same date, carried athletics including Yaroslava Mahuchikh's high-jump results, tennis coverage of Elina Svitolina and Marta Kostiuk, gymnastics including Nazar Chepurnyi's European vault title and Taisiia Onofriichuk's world rhythmic gymnastics title, Ukrainian Premier League and Ukrainian Cup football, and rowing, swimming, judo, boxing, chess and volleyball. Its most recent item then was dated 11 September 2026 and concerned Ukraine's role in international anti-doping policy.^[4]

That last strand places the agency alongside the institutional side of sport as well as results; the general framework is set out at anti-doping.

The two editions are not identical in pace. The Ukrainian section was publishing on the day it was read, while the most recent English sports item then carried was ten days older, so an English-reading user receives a selection rather than the full Ukrainian output.^[3]

How large is Укрінформ's audience?

No audited audience or reach figure for Укрінформ, or for its sports desk, could be retrieved for this page.

A wire service is in any case measured awkwardly by site traffic, because its output also reaches readers through the outlets that carry it; the agency's own terms require an external link back to ukrinform.net when its material is cited, but publish no circulation or subscriber count.^[4]

The audited currency that exists in Ukraine covers television and was then the Nielsen panel. A trade report of 9 September 2026 records that the panel then in use reached only settlements of 50,000 inhabitants and above, and that the market was discussing who should conduct and fund a replacement, participants citing cost, technology and what one of them called the realities of electricity supply and of population displacement.^[5] Commercial traffic estimators are not audited measurement and none is used here.

Since when has Укрінформ existed?

The agency's own footer states «Засновано у 1918 році» — founded in 1918 — in both its Ukrainian and its English editions.^[1] Its own «Про нас» page is more precise and supplies the chain: «16 березня 1918 р. було засновано Українське національне агентство — Укрінформ», with a predecessor Ukrainian Telegraph Agency founded in 1918 at Katerynoslav, now Dnipro, and national status conferred on the then State Information Agency of Ukraine by Presidential Decree No. 1230/2000.^[2] Both are the agency's own accounts of its own origin, and are reported and attributed rather than adopted.

Two further dates are separable from it. The copyright line on the site runs from 2015, which is a statement about the current web publication rather than about the agency.^[3] The media identifier R40-01421 records the agency's entry in the Ukrainian register of media subjects, a registration made under the media legislation now in force rather than at foundation.^[1]

Why does Укрінформ matter in Ukraine's sport?

Its first function is multilingual distribution. Because the agency publishes in nine languages, a Ukrainian result reported by its sports desk is available in English, Polish, German, French, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese from the same source, which is what a national agency rather than a sports title supplies.^[1]

Its second is coverage of the institutional side of sport alongside results — anti-doping policy, federation and ministry decisions — carried in the same sports section as match reporting.^[4]

Its third is continuity through the wartime media arrangements. Presidential Decree No. 152/2022 of 19 March 2022 gave effect to a National Security and Defence Council decision on unified information policy under martial law, implemented by combining national television news channels into a single round-the-clock marathon.^[6] The agency, which is not a television channel, has continued to publish its own dated sports output through that period in both editions.^[3]