Oleksandr Shvets is one of the most successful editors on Ukraine’s newspaper market. Over the last decade he has launched three mass market titles, all of which have quickly built up large readerships.
aderships.
Shvets is currently chief editor and a co‑owner of Fakty i Kommentarii [Facts and Commentaries]. With a print run of 850,000, Fakty is one of the largest circulation dailies in the country.
For years, Fakty’s male readers have habitually opened the paper at the notorious back page, which invariably features a salacious shot of a scantily clad model.
Shvets, who also sits on the board of trustees of Bulvar, a weekly scandal sheet, makes no apologies for the populist content of his publications.
“[Fakty’s] tabloid style is a professional orientation, it is an indicator of popularity and mass appeal,” Shvets said.
However, in Ukraine, a large readership does not always guarantee profitability, and newspapers tend to be used less as business projects than as political vehicles for their financial backers.
In addition to populism, Shvets has built his career on loyalty to the authorities, in particular, to President Leonid Kuchma, even when that has led him into conflict with his backers.
Shvets claims to have been on familiar terms with Kuchma since the 1994 presidential election campaign and boasts that he can talk business with him at any time. He also claims to enjoy good relations with a large segment of the country’s elite.
“I have access to the highest offices in the land,” Shvets said. “I am in a position to address about a third of these people in the familiar ty form. I’ve been following the careers of many of them for 20 years. I live this way because it benefits the paper.”
Two vedomostis
Shvets was born in the town of Birobidzhan in Russia’s Far East in 1955. The town was the center of a Jewish Autonomous Region established by the Soviet government in 1934 as a national home for the country’s Jews.
Shvets moved with his family to Kyiv when he was six years old. After military service and study at Taras Shevchenko University, he started his journalistic career as a reporter for Vecherny Kyiv [Evening Kyiv] in 1982.
Over a decade at that paper, he rose to the post of deputy editor. He was given his first opportunity to take charge of a project of his own in 1982. Serhy Kichihin, a regular contributor to Vecherny Kyiv, invited him to launch a new project titled Kievskiye Vedomosti [Kyiv News].
“[Kichihin] said: You take care of the idea, and I’ll find the money,” Shvets said.
Kievskiye Vedomosti was the first tabloid to draw a mass readership among Kyivans. At the time, Shvets claims, there were no other papers in the country that could compete with it in terms of quality and the originality of its editorial policy.
“Everything in it was all wrong from the standpoint of Soviet journalism,” Shvets said. “The front page would carry a photo of then President Leonid Kravchuk, and the headline next to it would read ‘Homicidal maniac detained.’”
Under Shvets’ editorship, the newspaper rapidly built up its readership. However, Shvets was fired after just a year.
Shvets claimed that Kichihin wished to take over the post of editor in order to turn the paper into a mouthpiece for Kravchuk during the 1994 presidential election. Meanwhile, Shvets had just got to know former Prime Minister Leonid Kuchma and he favored his candidacy in the election.
However, some have suggested that politics was not necessarily the main reason for Shvets’s dismissal. Yulia Mostova, now deputy editor at Zerkalo Nedeli weekly, worked in the political department of Kievskiye Vedomosti at the time.
“It was more like the publisher’s jealousy toward the editor, since Shvets had his own cult of personality going at the paper,” Mostova said.
Kichihin is now editor of the pro‑presidential weekly 2000.
Within three months of his dismissal from Kievskiye Vedomosti, Shvets was launching another paper called Vseukrainskiye Vedomosti [All‑Ukraine News]. The editorial offices of the two Vedomostis were located across the street from each other, and Shvets was able to tempt some of the staff he worked with at Kievskiye Vedomosti over to the new paper.
“I consciously allowed myself to compete with my own past for a while,” Shvets said.
With the rival papers going head‑to‑head in the fight for readers, the competition sometimes reached the point of absurdity. For example, Shvets claims that when he launched a supplement to Vseukrainskiye Vedomosti titled Dayly‑Kopeyka, Kichihin did exactly the same thing with Kievskiye Vedomosti.
The paper’s strategy involved building market share by selling at dumping prices.
Shvets claims he was able to find part of the financing for Vseukrainskiye Vedomosti from his friends among the publishers of other Kyiv newspapers. But they were not able to cover the expenses required for dumping.
In the search for richer backers, Shvets eventually came across businesses linked to Yulia Tymoshenko, a Dnipropetrovsk entrepreneur and a close associate of then Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko.
Tymoshenko’s companies acquired an interest the paper.
Shvets’ second paper also gained popularity quickly. But politics intervened once again.
In summer 1997, Lazarenko left the post of prime minister and went into opposition. He later fled the country after being accused of misappropriating state funds and is currently awaiting trial in the U.S. on money‑laundering charges.
Shvets disagreed with the owner’s change of position and was fired.
He says that he was given his marching orders by Tymoshenko, now a prominent opponent of Kuchma.
“That is the same Yulia who leads the opposition and is now shouting about freedom of speech,” Shvets said.
Facts, facts, facts
The same year, Shvets founded Fakty i Kommentarii. The paper again targeted the mass market, built circulation at dumping prices, and was loyal to the president. The entire staff was made up of former employees of Vseukrainskiye Vedomosti.
In 2002, Shvets was earning Hr 5,000 (just under $1,000) a month from his salary and the leasing of real estate in Kyiv.
Shvets has held a 10 percent stake in each of the newspapers he started up.
“My 10 percent stake is my little condition, one that fixes my contribution,” Shvets said.
Again, however, he had to turn to the rich and powerful for the rest of the money needed for the project.
Shvets eventually found a backer for Fakty in Viktor Pinchuk, a parliament deputy and businessman. He was introduced to Pinchuk by his old university classmate Serhy Osyka, who was then minister for foreign trade.
For a long time, Pinchuk’s businesses financed Fakty. Only in the last couple of years, Shvets says, has the paper ceased to be a political project, having made the transition to a profitable business.
“What was Pinchuk’s interest in a non‑profitable newspaper? The point was to demonstrate loyalty to the president,” Shvets said.
He says the same motives guided the backers of his other papers.
“I was able to work easily with all of them. If you work honestly with your partners, everything should work out normally. That was how it was with Tymoshenko, and that is how it is with Pinchuk’s businesses now,” Shvets said.
Shvets claims he never has felt political pressure from any of his investors. That was never necessary because he has always known the necessary line to follow.
Shvets claims that he knows the secret of how to keep the president happy.
“Leonid Kuchma told me: What I like about you is that you don’t lick boots like the others do, and people feel it. They understand that you support the president but without any idolatry,” Shvets said.
This article was originally published in Russian in Korrespondent magazine in October 2002 as part of its series devoted to the Top‑100 most influential individuals in Ukraine.
