Lesya Ganzha is a Ukrainian journalist and editor-in-chief of the Access to the Truth website. After the Russian invasion of 2022, she joined the Kyiv Territorial Defense Force.

Working as a journalist in the Ukrainian mass media since 1997, Lesya has published texts in Ukrainian Pravda, Dzerkalo Tyzhnia and Telekritika. She was also a cultural columnist and spokesperson for the Ukrainian Lviv Publishers’ Forum book fair. Lesya took an active part in the revolutions of 2004 and 2014, writing reports from the Anti-Terrorist Operation Zone in wartorn Donbass, and the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine from 2014 to 2022. For many years, she was the editor-in-chief of the women’s leadership platform Women are 50% of Success. In the Human Rights Platform NGO, Lesya Ganzha manages the Access to the Truth website, which combines news media regarding the access of public information in Ukraine with a service for processing information requests.

Lesya finds it difficult to adapt to the military lifestyle. In civilian life, she used to decide what to do and which tasks to perform; the situation in the military is the opposite. As part of the Territorial Defense, Lesya Ganzha makes an effort to feel useful: “Why did I join the Kyiv Territorial Defense Forces? I thought that with being in the military, I would have more information, and would understand more about what is happening. But these are mutually exclusive things – war, and the ability to understand what is happening. During the war, no one can really understand what is happening. It’s just pure, irrational evil.”