Linnea Hubbard, the host of The Russia-Ukraine War Report podcast has left the show, according to Malcontent News. Chief Content Offiicer David Obelcz posted a message on Patreon this afternoon:
Linnea has abruptly left Malcontent News and is no longer working on the Russia-Ukraine War Report Podcast. This is an unfortunate situation.
On June 6, 2023, Linnea Hubbard disagreed with the analyst team's preliminary assessment in the June 5, 2023, Situation Report that the Kakhovka Dam had likely experienced an engineering failure. When the report was created, that was the best available information, supported by multiple news outlets. Linnea expressed she was uncomfortable sharing some of the content in the podcast for June 6, and I agreed with her request to leave it out. That was, apparently, inadequate.
Linnea accused the analyst team and me of spreading "misinformation" in a June 7 e-mail and brought up other issues, and felt the Situation Report damaged her reputation. I asked her if she was resigning, which she denied.
I repeatedly requested Linnea to meet with me 1:1, which she refused, and I asked her to forward additional information she had received about the dam, which was never sent. As a team, this created an internal struggle on how to position the situation at the Kakhovka Dam. In the June 6 Situation Report, there was an extensive clarification based on new information, which Linnea deemed inadequate.
There was a heated meeting on June 9 with the leadership team, where we landed on an official position, which was released in the June 9 - 10 combined Situation Report, and was included in the June 12 podcast covered by Yewleea.
On Monday, I explained our position again to Linnea via e-mail, shared the available information on June 6, and pointed out that even on the evening of June 6 in Ukraine, the Ukrainian National Security Council did not have an official position that the dam was blown up. I offered to pay her closing invoice, in full, with a couple of caveats on timing for unrealized revenue yet to be reported by Spotify, and added that the door was open to move forward.
On June 13, Linnea replied to me, "I appreciate your response. I’ll get back to you in 24 hours or so about how we can move forward."
Linnea decided to move forward without Obelcz and Malcontent News and has started her own Ukraine War Brief podcast. The Russia-Ukraine War Report has been part of my Ukraine related listening, along with Ukraine: The Latest, Battleground: Ukraine, In Moscow's Shadows and Explaining Ukraine. I really appreciate the work Linnea clearly puts in to learn to pronounce Ukrainian names and places, instead of the word salad you get from most western journalists (looking at you Dom Nichols!) I also love her sly, sarcastic asides that she will often whisper for wonderful effect. And now I also really appreciate her journalistic ethics for refusing to work with Malcontent after the bungled dam story.
I just canceled my subscription to Malcontent, I'm team Linnea all the way!