KYIV -- "Slobidskyj Kraj," a regional newspaper in Ukraine's Kharkiv region, was published with blank pages this week to protest the staff's months of unpaid salaries, RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service reports.
The paper carried a statement from the staff on September 22 explaining the reasons for the blank issue and included the signatures of the daily's employees. The newspaper's staff has not been paid for five months.
"Slobidskyj Kraj" is the official newspaper of the Kharkiv regional government, which claims to have no money to continue financing the publication.
Volodymyr Revenko, the paper's editor in chief, told RFE/RL that initially the paper's subsidies from the government were cut by 30 percent and the last funds the newspaper received barely covered the costs for paper and printing.
"Slobidskyj Kraj" is the region's only Ukrainian-language paper and has a circulation of 32,000. Kharkiv is the capital of Kharkiv Oblast and has a population of 1.4 million people.