Nearly 30 years after the fall of communism, Ukraine continues to struggle with building a strong and independent press due to internal and external pressures from a corrupt elite and information warfare by Russia. Ukraine’s oligarchs continue to dominate the media landscape in the country and use them as their own propaganda channels. This leads to a monopoly of information by a small, corrupt elite that uses the media’s support to secure elections and, indirectly, access to public resources. One of the only beacons of truth for the world against these pressures is the Kyiv Post, which is Ukraine’s oldest English-language newspaper.
As Ukraine grapples with the challenge of building its democracy, it is also fighting a war with Russia not just in the trenches in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine, but also through television and in the minds of viewers on the information frontlines where politicians, oligarchs and even Russia are fighting for influence. The media are leveraged as a weapon on this battlefield.
The corrupt elite in Ukraine ensures positive coverage of themselves and their businesses by intimidating editors and journalists. In October 2019, the recently-elected Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky even spoke about de-oligarchization of the media. Part of the present fragility of media freedom in Ukraine and Eastern Europe may be due to their historical experience after the fall of communism.
During the transition from communism, many formerly state-owned media companies were sold to private and often foreign individuals. In the past decade, business interests with strong ties to the government started buying large shares of the media market in a number of Eastern European countries.
Almost all media outlets in Ukraine remain controlled by oligarchs, who use them to further their business or political interests. For example, over 75 percent of Ukrainians regularly watch TV channels owned by Ukrainian oligarchs Viktor Pinchuk, Ihor Kolomoisky, Dmytro Firtash, and Rinat Akhmetov. Apart from established media channels, new and upcoming media projects such as Espreso.tv have also been linked to politicians. While much of Ukraine’s media landscape is free, it is not independent entirely due to strong oligarch control in the space.
Ukraine ranked 80 out of 180 countries in the 2021 World Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders. As a result, it only adds to the importance of English-language publishers like the Kyiv Post who can provide quality reporting to a Western audience and promote the Ukrainian perspective.
The environment for being a journalist in Ukraine and Eastern Europe remains dangerous. Since 1992, 18 journalists have been killed, imprisoned, or have gone missing in Ukraine. Georgiy Gongadze was a Ukrainian journalist who helped found the popular internet newspaper, Ukrayinska Pravda. Gongadze was kidnapped and murdered in 2000 under suspicious circumstances. It is suspected that the murder was ordered by Ukraine’s then-president, Leonid Kuchma.
The circumstances of his death became a national scandal and a focal point for protests against Kuchma’s administration. During the cassette scandal of 2000, audiotapes were released where Kuchma and other top-level administration officials are heard discussing the need to silence Gongadze’s reporting about high-level corruption.
The dangerous campaigns against independent investigative journalists who dare to expose corruption are just some of the problems that have plagued the media landscape in Ukraine for years. Kateryna Handzyuk was a Ukrainian anti-corruption activist who exposed corruption in her hometown of Kherson. She was attacked with sulfuric acid on 31 July 2018 and died from her injuries a few months later.
Another activist was also shot on the same day Handzyuk was attacked.
Vitaly Oleshko, a veteran of the conflict with Russia, also spoke out about government corruption in his native city of Berdyansk. He was shot in the back and killed. Similar attacks continue to highlight the pressure being put on civil organizations and journalists in Ukraine, where corrupt politicians and mobster businessmen are suspected of suppressing investigations by violent means.
Apart from the domination of the oligarchy, Russia has been aggressive in waging an information war against Ukraine and peddling an anti-Western message. Ever since the EuroMaidan Revolution took place in Ukraine in 2013, where Ukrainians took to the streets to denounce the country’s endemic corruption and demand closer European Union relations, Russia has focused its information warfare on Ukraine. For years, Russia has continued to produce and promote false narratives about the revolution, which ended Kremlin-backed Viktor Yanukovych’s presidency. The aim was to weaken the movement and provide justification for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
As a result, the very existence of the Kyiv Post plays a crucial role in promoting Ukraine’s perspective for a global audience. The Kyiv Post was instrumental in providing coverage of the Euromaidan Revolution and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. With the majority of Western news outlets only having a press bureau in Moscow, large publishers like the New York Times often promote false narratives about Ukraine and Russian propaganda without realizing it.
The AGT Communications Company published findings from its survey that found that the Kyiv Post is the most-quoted Ukrainian source of news by American and European news organizations. The Kyiv Post has withstood an ample amount of threats against its existence since 1995, including pressure by the government to conduct tax audits, oligarchs filing libel lawsuits against them, and pro-Yanukovych oligarchs trying to buy the paper to run it down and transform Ukraine into the kind of managed democracy Vladimir Putin has built in Russia.
Dmitry Firtash, an oligarch with powerful Russian backers such as Putin helped Firtash make a fortune, largely by allowing him to buy gas from Russia and sell it in Ukraine. This same oligarch strongly backed Yanukovych’s successful 2010 bid to become Ukraine’s president.
Firtash thought the Kyiv Post’s reporting damaged his own reputation and sued the Kyiv Post in London. He had moved there trying to build a life as a philanthropist and where the libel laws favor the complainant. Luckily, the judge disagreed and the Kyiv Post won the trial. It was believed that just losing the case would have bankrupted the Kyiv Post, although Firtash’s aim was to have the Kyiv Post shut down.
The Columbia Journalism Review’s author Oliver Bullough wrote that: “The more you learn about the Kyiv Post, the more you realize how remarkable it is that it holds its own against these (other media) behemoths. Its newsroom budget is less than $25,000 a month. It has but 19 editorial staff; it has faced repeated attacks from regime-allied oligarchs.”
As Ukraine struggles with the challenge of building its democracy in the face of significant threats, the West needs to double down on efforts to promote the freedom of information coming from Ukraine. The country serves as the battleground for Russia’s hostility towards the post-1991 international order.
The official motto of the Kyiv Post is “Ukraine’s Global Voice,” but more so, it is a voice against Russia’s information warfare against the West which begins with Russia’s war in Ukraine. To confront the first line of warfare, the West should seek to ensure papers like the Kyiv Post have ample support and can continue to grow and provide reliable information to the West. This is the first line of defense against Russia’s hybrid campaign against the Western order.
David Kirichenko is an editor at Euromaidan Press, an online English language media outlet in Ukraine. He tweets @DVKirichenko.
