SJFPG awarded for its Ukraine work at the Publisher Podcast Awards 2026
We are thrilled to announce that the St James's Foreign Policy Group (SJFPG) has won the Best Use of AI category at the Publisher Podcast Awards 2026! The recognition honours our joint work with The Telegraph on their critically acclaimed daily podcast, Ukraine: The Latest. The award ceremony celebrated the brightest innovations in the publishing world. In addition to our category win, our incredible partners at The Telegraph took home the ultimate crown of Podcast Publisher of the Year 2026, with judges praising their dedication to maintaining deep, daily coverage of vital global conflicts long after mainstream media attention has drifted.
Led by SJFPG’s own Mykola Kuzmin and Aliona Hlivco, this year-long initiative leverages artificial intelligence to do something fundamentally human: break down language barriers during a time of war. By utilizing advanced AI-enabled translation and voice synthesis technology alongside our technical partners at Adelie, we seamlessly translate daily episodes of Ukraine: The Latest into both Ukrainian and Russian. This pipeline allows us to scale a massive volume of complex, fast-moving journalism into multiple languages without losing the daily urgency of the news cycle.
The primary goal of this project isn't just translation for the sake of accessibility—it is about getting reliable data to the people who need it most. The multi-language feeds extend the podcast's reach deep into:
Russian-occupied territories where access to unvetted, objective news is strictly criminalized.
The Russian Federation itself, providing a vital lifeline of objective analysis to citizens who are opposed to the current regime but entirely surrounded by state-controlled propaganda.
During our team's closing remarks at the awards, we noted that this technology has given rise to a familiar historical parallel. In the 1970s and 1980s, shortwave broadcasters like Radio Liberty and the BBC World Service fought through the Iron Curtain, piercing the information isolation of the Soviet Union.
"AI-enabled translation lets us reach these isolated audiences much like Radio Liberty did decades ago—cutting through state-mandated silence with a daily, trusted source of on-the-ground news."
While the delivery mechanism has evolved from shortwave radio signals to AI-powered podcast feeds, the mission remains identical: giving people trapped behind information blockades the raw truth.
We are incredibly proud of this recognition, but we are even prouder of the real-world impact this project continues to have every single day. This achievement would not have been possible without the tireless dedication of our internal team, the visionary producers at The Telegraph, and the technology from Adelie. Thank you to the Publisher Podcast Awards judges for recognizing the critical intersection of journalism, technology, and foreign policy. We look forward to continuing this vital work.
