Masha Efrosinina — Ukrainian Television Host and Women's Advocate

Masha Efrosinina has been on Ukrainian screens for so long that different generations know her for different things. Some remember morning television. Others know her from Eurovision 2005 in Kyiv. Younger viewers found her first on YouTube. As of November 2026, this page follows the whole path, from a television debut at 19 to interview shows online and work with the United Nations Population Fund in Ukraine.

Quick facts

Name	Masha Efrosinina, also written Maria Efrosinina
Born	25 May 1979, Kerch, Crimea
Known for	Morning television, co-hosting Eurovision 2005, YouTube interviews, UNFPA work
Main works	Pidyom, Fabryka Zirok, Exam and Exam, Grown-Up Girls

Early life and languages

Efrosinina was born in Kerch, in Crimea, and moved to Kyiv with her family at a young age. Schoolwork came first in the family, and she graduated from school with a gold medal, an honour in the Ukrainian school system for top academic achievement.

She enrolled at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv in the Faculty of Philology, in the Department of Foreign Languages. She qualified as an interpreter and translator of English and Spanish. That training shaped her presenting style in a direct way.

A presenter who genuinely speaks English and Spanish can interview international guests without relying entirely on an interpreter, can read source material in the original, and can handle a live, unscripted moment with more confidence. The language background kept showing up later in her career, especially around international events, and it set her apart from presenters who had arrived on screen through a talent contest.

A television debut at 19, and Pidyom

Efrosinina debuted on television at 19, on Ukraine’s First National channel, in the programme Happy Bell. That is young by any standard, and it meant learning live television by doing it, week after week, rather than studying it from a distance.

Her next big step came on Novyi Kanal, the New Channel, as host of the morning programme Pidyom, also written Pidjom or Rise. Morning television is a hard test for a presenter: the audience is half-awake, the tone has to be warm without losing the thread, and the host has to move between light entertainment, interviews, and news-adjacent segments. Pidyom suited her, and the show won a Teletriumph prize for Best TV Show in 2002. Teletriumph is Ukraine’s national television award, so the prize was industry recognition, not a popularity vote.

From there, her television career spread across the major Ukrainian channels of the period, including STB, Ukraine, Inter, and ICTV. Channel-hopping was normal for a successful presenter in Ukraine, where presenters move between channels as formats change. It also means a single line such as “she worked at X” can mislead, and the honest picture is a familiar face across Ukrainian television, rather than a career tied to one channel.

Eurovision 2005 and the big live shows

For many international viewers, the single most recognisable entry in her career is Eurovision. In 2005, Efrosinina co-presented the 50th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest in Kyiv, alongside Pavlo Shylko, from the capital’s Sports Palace, to a Pan-European television audience estimated at around 150 million people.

Hosting a national morning show is one thing. Hosting a live, multilingual, continent-wide event, where a mistake is seen instantly in dozens of countries, is a completely different level of pressure. Efrosinina was only 26 at the time, and a few years into her presenting career. The fact she was chosen for it says a lot about how established she already was by 2005.

She also co-presented the UEFA Euro 2012 draw, held at the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw on 7 February 2010. That job fits the same pattern: a presenter picked for big, formal, high-visibility occasions, alongside everyday entertainment formats.

Compared with her morning-television peers, Efrosinina’s career stands out for the jump between the two worlds. Many morning hosts stay in morning television. She moved from it to a European stage, and then back to Ukrainian talent shows without losing her audience in either place.

Talent shows, talk shows and theatre

After Eurovision, Efrosinina’s career kept branching. She presented Fabryka Zirok, the Ukrainian version of Star Academy, with co-host Andriy Domanovskyi, on Novyi Kanal. Star Academy formats are intense for a host: young contestants live under constant pressure, with live audiences, judges, and weekly eliminations, and the host has to be encouraging without taking sides.

Other projects in her television work include Dreams Come True, Surprise, Surprise, and Frankly, along with further Novyi Kanal formats. She also hosted, at different points, the ICTV programme Liya Konfliktu, sometimes translated as Conflict Line, after moving to ICTV in October 2005, and the Inter talk show Odyn v Poli, sometimes translated as One in the Field, from September 2006.

She co-hosted the Teletriumph awards in 2016 with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, before his presidency, at Freedom Hall in Kyiv. That ceremony was not televised, which explains why it is hard to find a broadcast clip of it, even though the hosting credit is real.

There was also a brief theatre chapter. In 2007, she made her stage debut in a comedy-enterprise play usually translated as It Is So Easy to Help, or Where Children Come From. Her heavy television workload did not allow her to continue a theatre career in parallel. That is an honest, human detail: a presenter who tries theatre is not automatically launching a second career, and sometimes a person tries something, enjoys it, and returns to the work that pays the bills and fills the diary.

YouTube, interviews and a second career online

This is the part of the story that matters most in the category this page sits in. Efrosinina developed her own YouTube channel, where she is the author and host of interview and conversation projects. The best-known titles, as listed by profile sources, are Exam and Exam, New Reality, and the show Grown-Up Girls, which she co-hosts with Olya Polyakova.

The Exam format is built around long, personal interviews, with an emphasis on emotional honesty rather than quick promotional chat. Grown-Up Girls, by contrast, is a conversation show between two well-known Ukrainian women, which gives it a different, more peer-to-peer tone.

Editor’s take: the YouTube chapter is the most useful part of her career to watch now, because it shows a television presenter adapting rather than fading. A lot of presenters from the 2000s struggled when audiences moved online, and many did not make the jump. Efrosinina did, and she did it by slowing down instead of shouting louder, letting long conversations carry the work.

Women’s activism and the Masha Foundation

The most important turn in the later part of her career came in 2018, when Efrosinina became Honorary Ambassador, also described as Goodwill Ambassador, of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in Ukraine. Her work in that role focuses on gender equality and on work against domestic and gender-based violence.

Efrosinina is co-founder of the NGO Masha Foundation, focused on the psychological rehabilitation of women and children affected by war, and founder of the Charity Weekend series of charity events. Psychological rehabilitation is not the same as emergency aid. Emergency aid is food, shelter, and medical help. Rehabilitation is slower work, and it needs a different kind of organisation.

No further family detail is given here. Efrosinina married Tymur Khromaiev in 2003, and in 2020 she received the Order of Merit, III degree, a Ukrainian state honour.

Where to start

New viewers do best starting with an episode of Exam and Exam, because the long interview format gives the clearest sense of her interviewing style, unhurried and direct. Next comes Grown-Up Girls, where co-hosting with Olya Polyakova shows a warmer, more conversational side, and the contrast with the solo interviews is the point. The Eurovision 2005 final from Kyiv rounds out the set; search for the final with Pavlo Shylko as co-host, and the scale of the job becomes clear in a way a short clip does not show.

Frequently asked questions

Who is Masha Efrosinina?

Masha Efrosinina is a Ukrainian television presenter, YouTuber, and women’s activist, born on 25 May 1979 in Kerch, Crimea. She is best known for morning television, for co-hosting Eurovision 2005 in Kyiv, and for interview shows on YouTube.

What is Exam and Exam?

Exam and Exam is Efrosinina’s YouTube interview project, built around long, personal interviews with an emphasis on emotional honesty. It is the clearest example of her later career online, and the project she is most often associated with on YouTube.

What is the Masha Foundation?

The Masha Foundation is the NGO Efrosinina co-founded, focused on the psychological rehabilitation of women and children affected by war. She also founded the Charity Weekend series of charity events.

What is her role with the United Nations?

Since 2018, Efrosinina has been the Honorary Ambassador of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in Ukraine, working on gender equality and against domestic and gender-based violence.

Masha Efrosinina — Ukrainian Television Host and Women’s Advocate