When it comes to following the evolving political crisis in Ukraine, social media has acted as a near-instant pipeline of information. Twitter has served up quick hits and standalone images.
But YouTube has grown increasingly instrumental to documenting the events. More than 90,000 videos related to the Ukrainian crisis have been uploaded since Feb. 1, representing 82% more videos than were shared to the service over the previous two months, according to data provided by YouTube.
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These videos, which include live streams that showed the chaos in the streets, have attained more than 25 million views between them. More than 200,000 people watched Espreso TV's live stream of protests in Kiev, Ukraine's capital city, on Feb. 18. Meanwhile Hromadske.tv, an independent news organization based in Kiev, had more than 165,000 viewers for its live stream on YouTube.
"YouTube is critical to giving people access to immediate and unfiltered information about what's happening on the ground from multiple perspectives," Tom Sly, YouTube's global head of news partnerships said in a statement. "Eyewitness reporters, traditional broadcasters and new made-for-digital news organizations are playing a big role in moments such as the protests in the Ukraine and Venezuela to enable information to reach more corners of the world via YouTube."

Ukraine's radical party leader Oleh Lyashko detained a separatist leader, Klinchayeva, earlier this month. The YouTube video has more than 1.4 million views.
Both traditional and non-traditional news organizations seem to be finding a voice on the video service. Hromadske.TV, a site made up of journalists formerly with major news outlets in Ukraine, only launched last November.
Brian Reis contributed to this report.
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