Ukrainian Radio on 1386 kHz: the night relay from Viešintos, Lithuania

What you hear

From 21:30 UTC until 04:00 UTC, 1386 kHz carries the first channel of Ukrainian Radio, UR-1: hourly news, talk, music and the night programming of the public broadcaster, in Ukrainian. The catalogue lists several foreign-language inserts inside the block, at 22:00 in Slovak, at 23:00 in Bulgarian, at 01:00 in Belarusian and from 02:00 to 02:30 in Romanian. These are the external services of Ukrainian Radio, a few minutes each, and they are the easiest way to confirm you are on the right station if your Ukrainian is weak: a time check, a jingle, then a different language.

The channel is a time-share. Before 21:30 the same transmitter carries Radio Svoboda in Russian, described in the article on that programme, and the catalogue mentions NHK and Polish Radio in other hours. The handover is usually abrupt: one programme ends, a short pause, the next begins.

Who transmits and why

Ukrainian Radio is the radio arm of Suspilne, the public broadcaster of Ukraine. Its own medium-wave network has shrunk to a single transmitter, 1278 kHz at Kurisove near Odesa, which has a separate entry in the catalogue. Everything else on medium wave was switched off at the start of 2023, so to be heard across the border, in Belarus, in the occupied regions and in western Russia, the broadcaster hires airtime abroad.

The hired transmitter is at Viešintos in north-eastern Lithuania, operated by the Lithuanian state transmission company and listed at 300 kW. It is far enough from the front to be safe and close enough to Belarus and Russia to cover them at night. The overnight slot suits this purpose: medium-wave propagation is at its best, and listeners in the target area are at home.

When and where to listen

This is a night broadcast by design, and medium wave carries far only after dark. The ground wave of the Viešintos transmitter covers Lithuania, Latvia and the western edge of Belarus around the clock; the rest depends on the ionosphere. From about an hour after sunset until sunrise the signal reaches Poland, Finland, Scandinavia, Germany and Ukraine itself, and on winter nights much further. Since the whole block falls between 21:30 and 04:00 UTC, it is in darkness over the transmitter in every season; the difference between summer and winter is how far the dark zone extends, and in December it covers all of Europe for the entire programme.

Receivers in Lithuania, Poland and Finland hear it strongest. From central Europe expect a steady signal with slow fading; from western Europe a weaker one with other stations on 1386 kHz underneath. The sign-off at 04:00 UTC is a good moment to listen in winter: the frequency goes quiet, or hands over to the next programme, and the change tells you which transmitter you were hearing. The catalogue tunes AM; a narrower filter or a single sideband helps when a neighbour on 1377 or 1395 kHz is strong.

In ShackDeck

Station catalogue → Medium and long wave → Ukrainian Radio 1386 kHz (21:30–04:00 UTC). ShackDeck chooses a public receiver that hears 1386 kHz, tunes it and sets AM, so no receiver, antenna or account of your own is needed. The hours in the name are the Ukrainian block; for the Russian programme earlier in the evening use the Radio Svoboda entry on the same frequency.