Dmitry Ilyich Gordon (; Dmytro Illich Hordon, ; born 21 October 1967) is a Ukrainian journalist, TV host, and blogger. From 1995 to 2019, he served as the chief editor of the newspaper Gordon Boulevard and has been hosting the program Visiting Dmytro Gordon since 1996. He is the founder of the online publication GORDON and owns two YouTube channels that have received YouTube's Gold Creator Award for surpassing 1 million subscribers. Between 2014 and 2016, he was a member of the Kyiv City Council. In June 2019, Gordon became the head of the election headquarters of the party Strength and Honor.
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in May 2022, a criminal case was opened by the Russian Investigative Committee against Gordon. He has been added to the list of "foreign agents" in Russia, despite not being a citizen of Russia. Russian authorities accused Gordon of dissemination of fake information about the Russian army. Gordon continues taking a stand against Russia throughout its war, proactively fundraising for the Ukrainian military as well as supporting Ukraine during media appearances.
Early life and education Gordon was born on October 21, 1967, in Kyiv, Ukraine, into a Jewish family. His father, Illіa Yakovych Gordon, was a civil engineer, and his mother, Mina Davydivna Gordon (1939–2018), was an economic engineer. Dmytro was their only child . His parents eventually emigrated to the United States after winning a Green Card lottery, settling in Boston, Massachusetts, and obtaining U.S. citizenship.
He attended Kyiv schools No. 205 and No. 194. Gordon claims he taught lessons and graded classmates’ work at the request of his third-grade teacher. In fifth grade, he sent letters to 100 Soviet celebrities requesting autographed photos; responses came from famed singers Leonid Utyosov and Joseph Kobzon. Gordon graduated from high school at age 15, skipping the sixth grade by passing exams externally.
Despite his journalism career, Gordon did not formally study the field; he graduated as a civil engineer from Kyiv Civil Engineering Institute in 1988. However, he found little interest in his chosen field, describing his academic years as “torture”. After his third year, Gordon was drafted into the Soviet Army and served two years in tactical missile forces.
Journalism career At age 16, while in his second year of university studies, Gordon began writing for leading Kyiv newspapers. His first interview, conducted in 1984, was with his idol, the legendary midfielder of the Dynamo Kyiv football club and the USSR national team, Leonid Buriak. This interview was published in the Luhansk-based newspaper Molodohvardiyets (“Young Guard”). During his time at the university, Gordon published his works in some of Ukraine's top newspapers, including Vecherniy Kiev (“Evening Kyiv”), Komsomolskoe Znamya (“Komsomol Banner”), Molod Ukrainy (“Youth of Ukraine”), Sportivnaya Gazeta (“Sports Newspaper”), Sovetskaya Ukraina (“Soviet Ukraine”), Pravda Ukrainy (“Ukraine's Truth”), Rabochaya Gazeta (“Workers’ Newspaper”), Prapor Kommunizma (“Banner of Communism”), and Molodaya Gvardiya (“Young Guard”). Additionally, he collaborated with Komsomolskaya Pravda (“Komsomol Truth”).
Upon graduating from the university, Gordon was assigned to work in the editorial office of the Vecherniy Kiev newspaper. He noted that this was an unprecedented decision by the dean, as Soviet-era distribution policies typically aligned job placements strictly with one's professional specialization.
Gordon worked at Vecherniy Kiev until 1992. He then transitioned to Kievskiye Vedomosti (“Kyiv Gazette”) and later to Vseukrainskiye Vedomosti (“All-Ukrainian Gazette”).
In 1995, the journalist founded his own weekly newspaper, Boulevard (renamed Gordon Boulevard in 2005). Gordon Boulevard became one of the most popular and widely circulated newspapers in Ukraine. According to Gordon, the newspaper reached its highest circulation between 2002 and 2003, with 570,000 copies printed at its peak. The newspaper was distributed not only in Ukraine but also abroad for a period, including in the United States. The editorial board of Boulevard Gordon was chaired by the renowned Ukrainian-Russian poet and journalist Vitaly Korotich. It included notable figures from Ukraine, Russia, and other countries, such as former Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk, Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, former Ukrainian football players Andriy Shevchenko and Oleh Blokhin, Ukrainian artists Yevhenia Miroshnychenko, Mykola Mozhovyi, Andriy Danylko, and Sofia Rotaru, Georgian singers Vakhtang Kikabidze, Nani Bregvadze, and Tamara Gverdtsiteli, and Russian performers Muslim Magomayev, Lyudmila Gurchenko, Edita Piekha, among others. In early 2014, the editorial board of Boulevard Gordon was disbanded due to the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian war. In 2019, Gordon stepped down as the newspaper's editor-in-chief. He transferred its publishing operations to another company, LLC “Mega-Press Group”.
In 1996, Gordon began recording television interviews under the title “Visiting Dmytro Gordon”. From 1996 to 2008 and again from 2010 to 2015, the program aired on Ukraine's First National channel (currently Ukraine's public broadcaster). Over the years, the show was also broadcast on other Ukrainian television channels, including Tonis, Central Channel, 3s.tv, and 112 Ukraine. From 2017 to 2019, the program aired on 112 Ukraine, but in May 2019, Gordon announced that he and his wife, journalist Olesia Batsman, would terminate their cooperation with the channel due to its ties to Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian politician and close associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Medvedchuk has been accused of high treason in Ukraine and, following Russia's full-scale invasion, was handed over to Russia in a prisoner exchange for soldiers of Ukraine's Azov Brigade. He was also stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship. After ending his association with 112 Ukraine, Gordon stopped appearing on its talk shows and later ceased collaborations with NewsOne and ZIK, two other channels linked to Medvedchuk's network . Gordon's program now exclusively airs on YouTube.
In November 2013, at the start of mass protests in Ukraine that escalated into the Revolution of Dignity, Gordon launched the online publication GORDON. Today, the outlet is one of Ukraine's most popular internet media platforms. The editor-in-chief of GORDON is his wife, Olesia Batsman.
YouTube Projects Gordon runs two YouTube channels: (founded in 2011) and (founded in 2012). These channels feature interviews conducted by Gordon, Olesia Batsman, and other journalists from Gordon's team, livestreams where Gordon comments on significant events in Ukraine and the world, answers viewers’ questions, and interviews he gives to other platforms. As of June 2024, the Dmytro Gordon channel has 3.48 million subscribers, while Visiting Gordon has 4.42 million subscribers. In 2020, the channels received YouTube's Gold Creator Awards for surpassing one million subscribers.
Gordon's interviews have repeatedly ranked among the top 10 most popular videos of the year in Ukraine and other countries, according to Google. In 2020, his interview with Andriy Bohdan, former head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, was among Ukraine's top 10 YouTube videos of the year, while his interview with Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko ranked in Belarus. In 2021, his interview with Russian rapper Morgenshtern ranked among Ukraine's most popular videos.
As of November 2024, Gordon has conducted over 1,400 interviews, including with 14 current and former heads of state. These include former Ukrainian Presidents Leonid Kravchuk and Viktor Yushchenko, current President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, former Polish Presidents Aleksander Kwaśniewski and Bronisław Komorowski, former Latvian President Egils Levits, former Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid, current Moldovan President Maia Sandu, former Georgian Presidents Eduard Shevardnadze and Mikheil Saakashvili, former Belarusian leader Stanislav Shushkevich and current leader Alexander Lukashenko, and former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.
In 2019, before the presidential elections in Ukraine, Gordon conducted an interview with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, founder of the Kvartal 95 studio and actor. During this interview, Zelenskyy effectively admitted for the first time that he would run for president. Critics described this interview as a “programmatic” one, where Zelenskyy outlined his plans as president.
According to Gordon, his most memorable interview was with Soviet caricaturist Boris Yefimov. At the time of the interview, Yefimov was 107 years old; he died at 108.
In January 2022, Gordon and Batsman launched their political talk show on YouTube, titled GORDON. Gordon declared it to be the world's first political talk show exclusively on YouTube. The program aired weekly, featuring studio guests discussing current political and social issues. The first episode, released on January 27, gained over 1 million views within 24 hours and became one of the most popular videos in the Ukrainian segment of YouTube. By February 24, 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, four episodes had aired before the show was temporarily halted.
Gordon is the most popular political YouTube blogger in Ukraine. According to an analysis by the portal “Slovo i Dilo” for 2022, Gordon topped the rankings of Ukrainian YouTube bloggers covering the Russian-Ukrainian war, boasting the largest audience. His channels ranked first and second in terms of total views, with approximately 2.6 billion combined. Gordon's two channels had more views than the rest of the bloggers in the top ten combined. He was also the only Ukrainian blogger whose channel surpassed 1 billion views. In 2023, his channels ranked second and third in a similar ranking, while in 2024, they ranked first and third.
Gordon has also consistently ranked among the most popular bloggers in Ukraine, according to public opinion polls conducted by the international non-governmental organization Internews with support from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). In 2021, Gordon topped the rankings, with 18% of respondents in Ukraine stating they read or watched his social media content. In 2022, he placed second. He also featured in similar rankings in 2023 and 2024. Additionally, in 2023, Ukrainians in liberated and frontline regions named Gordon among the public figures they trusted the most, with 7% of respondents in a Kyiv International Institute of Sociology survey (conducted with USAID support) selecting him.
Svoboda Satellite Package project