On December 31, 1992, the first issue of Krymska Svitlytsia, Crimea’s only regular Ukrainian-language newspaper, was published. The newspaper was founded by the All-Ukrainian Society Prosvita named after Taras Shevchenko and the civic organization Crimean Center for Business and Cultural Cooperation “Ukrainian House.”

Krymska Svitlytsia emerged as a socio-political newspaper and, according to its founders, was intended to become a central publication in Crimea, counterbalancing the Russian-language Krymskaya Pravda. The newspaper was published every Thursday with a circulation of 10,000 copies.

The publication garnered significant support from Ukrainians in Crimea as well as from the Ukrainian diaspora in Australia, Canada, and the United States. At the same time, parts of the Crimean public reacted with hostility to the newspaper’s release, and its editor-in-chief, Oleksandr Kulyk, faced constant pressure.

In April 2010, following Viktor Yanukovych’s rise to power, the newspaper temporarily ceased publication as a print edition due to the termination of funding by the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine. During the effort to ensure the newspaper’s survival, a website titled “For Ukrainian ‘Krymska Svitlytsia!’” was launched. Through a court decision, the editor-in-chief was reinstated, and the publication of Krymska Svitlytsia resumed on October 22, 2010. From that point forward, issues of the newspaper have been made available on its official website in PDF format. In July 2011, the newspaper once again began printing in its familiar format.

In May 2015, the print edition was discontinued due to Russia’s occupation of Crimea. However, publication was revived in Kyiv in 2016.

Since April 2017, the imprint of the print version of Krymska Svitlytsia has indicated licensing under CC BY. This made Krymska Svitlytsia one of the first printed media outlets in Ukraine to be published under a Creative Commons license.

In 2018, the newspaper’s editorial team underwent reorganization, and in 2019 it obtained a new certificate of state registration as print media. Today, the newspaper is funded by grants from international donors.