March 2018, Odesa-based businessman Adnan Kivan, a Syrian native and Ukrainian citizen, purchased the Kyiv Post from Zahoor for a selling price both said was more than $3.5 million. Kivan pledged editorial independence of journalists in an interview with Kyiv Post chief editor Brian Bonner. The newspaper is operated by his Businessgroup LLC. Kivan owns the KADORR Group of companies that specializes in construction and agriculture. His wife, Olga, and three children participate in his business. He used to be active in metals trading in the Black Sea port city from 1991-2007. Sunden created the newspaper in the early years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, starting with $8,000 in capital, three computers and a staff of seven people working from a small flat in Kyiv. The first 16-page issue was put out by an editorial staff of two people. Sunden built the newspaper into a profitable enterprise, one that served the needs of the expatriate community that then regarded Ukraine as a potential hotspot for investment. During Sunden's tenure, he held to libertarian and anti-Communist views on the editorial and opinion pages, but established the business model of editorial independence on the news pages. He said the policy is good for business and news. Sunden was controversial for allowing paid "massage" advertisements from women engaging in prostitution. After Zahoor bought the newspaper, he retained the entire editorial team. One of his first acts as publisher, however, was to eliminate the paid "massage" advertisements, saying he didn't want to own a newspaper that promoted prostitution. Zahoor sustained the policy of editorial independence, with limited exceptions. After the newspaper's editors endorsed Yulia Tymoshenko over Viktor Yanukovych for president in the 2010 Ukrainian presidential election, the publisher issued a policy to forbid editorial endorsements of any political candidate or political party, saying the newspaper should remain non-partisan even on its opinion pages. Zahoor relaxed the policy during the May 25, 2014 presidential election, when he and his wife, singer-actress Kamaliya, came out publicly in strong support of billionaire Ukrainian businessman Petro Poroshenko's election as president. While the newspaper was free to endorse any candidate for the election, its editorial board made no endorsement in the contest that Poroshenko easily won. Zahoor's purchase and significant investment improved a newspaper that had been badly battered by the global recession of 2008-2009, a sharp downturn that struck the Kyiv Post particularly hard in October–November