In part I, we covered Ukraine’s opposition media in the era of the Soviet Union, and in part II the first genesis of Ukrainian television in the nation after regaining its independence. Here, we examine the growth of regional coverage and a burgeoning online media.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. The development of online media in the regions happened differently. Where there were fewer resources and big business showed little interest in developing regional initiatives, the surge in activity came somewhat later – as soon as a new generation of politicians emerged in the regions and began fighting for power. A vivid example is Kherson, a city in southern Ukraine and one of the country’s largest ports and shipbuilding centers. Serhii Nikitenko is the creator and longtime head of the regional online outlet Most (ukr. “The Bridge”), which has operated continuously, including during the Russian occupation of Kherson in 2022. He continues to report extensively from the front line, often putting his life at risk. We explore what that experience has been like for him. “The active surge in local media happened in two stages – the first in the early 1990s, and the second in the early 2000s, when local businesses began to have money. In Kherson, a city of 350,000 people, there were six television channels before the war; in Odesa, a city of more than one million, there were more than 20. The online media boom came around the turn of the 2010s. The first online media appeared earlier, in 2006-2008. But in the 2010s, it became a somewhat cheaper undertaking, and a great many media outlets appeared in Kherson – immediately a dozen or so different websites. As a rule, these media consisted of one, or at most two, people,” Nikitenko recalls.