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After infamously bragging about how he and President Volodymyr Zelensky’s team have no need for journalists because they communicate directly with the public, chief of staff Andriy Bohdan has found reason for a mini-media blitz recently.
He’s given interviews to Ukrainska Pravda and, on Oct. 30, to the Kyiv Post.
“Classic journalists got used to perceiving themselves as the society,” Bohdan said this summer in a video comment to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. “But as our election campaign has proved, we communicate with society without mediators, without journalists.”
In the Kyiv Post interview at the presidential administration, Bohdan denied saying that he doesn’t need to speak with journalists, but sounded like that is what he meant.
“I said that traditional journalism is losing its significance,” Bohdan said. “All print publications are either subsidized or shutting down. Online journalism is also losing its influence. Social media and bloggers emerge and take the space that freed up. We have to understand that politicians, including the U.S. president and Ukrainian president communicate with their admirers directly, including via social media.”
As the newspaper learned during the hour-long interview, he called us in not only to answer our questions, but also to repeatedly complain about an Oct. 3 article about him.
The article, which only ran online, reported that then-Constitutional Court Judge Petro Stetsyuk testified several years ago that, in 2010, Bohdan — then working for ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s government — attempted to pressure him into a ruling that helped Yanukovych monopolize power. Bohdan called the accusation in the article a “lie.” Yanukovych was ousted by the EuroMaidan Revolution in 2014.
Since then, however, Bohdan has repeatedly complained about the article to others and, finally, on Oct. 30, to the Kyiv Post directly 12 times in references to the article specifically or to “corrupt journalism” generally. (The headline of the story: “Zelensky’s chief of staff allegedly pressured top judge to issue ruling favoring Yanukovych.”)
Here are the references he made during the Kyiv Post interview:
No. 1:
“Why I’m talking to you now. I wanted to look you in the eyes. Because you published an article about me that is very far from the truth and that is negative. I thought that if I meet with you and you hear me out, you would have the courage to apologize for that story. I really want it to happen. If you follow journalistic standards, you must do it.”
No. 2
In response to a question about the demonization of him in the press, he said “only among the readers of the Kyiv Post.”
No. 3
“But sometimes I really don’t understand diplomats and journalists who publish stories that were clearly paid for and don’t try to get to the essence of the story but just chase hype. Do you even understand — maybe it’s wrong and you won’t like me saying this… Journalism is the fourth estate, globally and in Ukraine. We talk a lot about corruption in power in Ukraine; and Ukrainian journalism is also deeply corrupt. Thank God there are media that don’t depend on sponsors and dirty money, and some media are trustworthy. I’d like your media to be a trustworthy one; and I want to deliver my thoughts to you directly, so that you don’t go asking some ‘experts’ from the previous regime who want to come back here (in power), but rather ask me questions and I will give honest answers. I don’t know if you will have the strength of will to publish them without distortion. I hope you do.”
No. 4:
“I feel very uncomfortable when well-respected European Parliament members and very well-respected media spill dirt on me.”
No. 5
“And if you will be destroying us morally, we will leave tomorrow and the old politicians will return here, and you will find it very ‘comfortable’ working with them. This is what you are trying to achieve.”
No. 6
In response to the hesitancy of public officials to make hard decisions, he said: “They’re afraid, they react to Facebook, they react to your articles.”
No. 7
“So I gather these young people and tell them: Yes, sometimes you will need to get dirty. Look at me. Even the Kyiv Post is publishing paid-for articles about me. But I don’t stop, I keep moving forward, and so should you.”
No. 8
Again speaking about officials: “If the Kyiv Post will be running paid-for stories about them, they won’t be (effective). They will be afraid and won’t be doing anything, and will go away.”
No. 9
The same subject: “If you destroy them in the media, there will be none.”
No. 10
About lawmakers: “And because of the paid-for stories in the Kyiv Post, it can come to a situation where many of them say ‘I don’t want this’ and we’ll be left with the shit that was in the (Verkhovna) Rada for 27 years.”
No. 11
“I don’t really want to meet with the journalists of the Kyiv Post after you run paid-for stories about me.”
No. 12
About the article: “It’s clearly ‘jeansa’ (a slang term for an ordered or paid-for story). I clearly understand how it happened. It’s very sensitive because the Kyiv Post (is being) put on all the ambassadors’ table. And they’re reading and going, ‘Oooh, bad boy.’”
Agreeing to disagree
The interview ended with debate over the article in question. In the end, Bogdan and the Kyiv Post agreed to disagree — and to move on. “I hope it was a misunderstanding, and we will be working together for the future,” Bohdan said. “I’m trying to be effective here. I’m trying to do the right things. And I want you to understand this.”
