You're reading: Enter TV apologizes for Okean Elzy slur

The Enter music television channel has apologized for a report aired July 10 which claimed that popular Ukrainian rock band Okean Elzy had paid to be featured on the covers of a number of magazines.

The television station said that Kostyantyn Ratushny, the correspondent who prepared the report, was “incompetent” and had left the station shortly after the piece was broadcast.

Members of the band and its publicist held a news conference on July 18 to deny the allegations.

They were supported by representatives of several of the magazines involved, who denied that the band had paid for coverage or to have frontman Slava Vokarchuk featured on covers.

Over the last six months, the band has been prominently featured in nine Ukrainian magazines, including The Ukrainian, Akademia, Miks, Otdokhni and Meridian.

The Enter report cited unnamed “reliable sources” as having said that the band paid to be featured on magazine covers, and claimed that the band’s sudden popularity in the media was unwarranted and resulted in other groups being denied coverage.

Mykola Milinevsky, a publicist for Vopli Vidoplyasova, a Ukrainian group best known as VV, has identified himself as one of Ratushny’s unnamed sources.

He said that he had been asked to pay for coverage because rival band Okean Elzy had paid.

Milinevsky said that when he contacted publications about featuring less well‑known musicians, “I was given the price for the cover and, after a bit of discussion, was told that I’d have to pay for it, just like Okean Elzy had.”

Vokarchuk denied his band ever did.

“We never pay to get on the covers of any magazine,” he said. “We have never paid for our popularity.”