In a bid to counter Russian media propaganda in the east of Ukraine, the government is trying to restore Ukrainian TV and radio broadcasting on the frontline and even in the Russian-separatist occupied parts of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. But media analysts are skeptical these efforts will make much difference.
As of mid-December,
Donetsk regional state TV resumed broadcasting in six settlements in Donetsk
Oblast, according to Deputy Minister of Information Policy Tetyana Popova. Meanwhile,
residents of three towns in Luhansk Oblast –Starobilsk, Shyroky and Popasna –
recently regained a signal from Luhansk’s regional state TV channel. And local
Luhansk TV channel IRTA, which Russian-backed separatists cut off last May, has
resumed broadcasting in six communities in Luhansk Oblast.
Residents in
frontline areas can also watch national channels like First National Channel,
Fifth Channel or 1+1. These communities are located in government-controlled
areas in the Donbas that are either very close to or on the front line with the
territories where Russian-backedarmed groups have seized control.
Next year,
the government plans to resume Ukrainian TV broadcasting in occupied
territories in the east, said Popova.
But media
experts are skeptical that the resumption of Ukrainian TV and radio broadcasts will
help beat Russia’s propaganda. “The broadcasting of Ukrainian TV channels does
not mean that people who like (Russian President Vladimir) Putin will start
watching Ukrainian TV,” said Roman Holovenko, the head of legal projects at the
Institute of Mass Information, a non-governmental organization. Russia has much
more financial resources than Ukraine to conduct information warfare, he said.
“It’s
better to focus on the pro-Ukrainian public there,” Holovenko told the Kyiv
Post. “Maybe the Ukrainian media will have to change their content, as poor
quality counter-propaganda won’t satisfy the pro-Ukrainian public living in the occupied
territories.”
Around 60
percent of the population of Donetsk Oblast and nearly 50 percent of Luhansk
Oblast have access to Ukrainian television, according to Popova’s rough
estimates. “Before the war, nearly 80 percent of people living in these oblasts
watched Ukrainian TV, which means that the share of Russian media was very high in
those territories,” Popova said.
During 2014
and 2015 several dozen Ukrainian regional newspapers, TV channels, and radio
stations were shut down in Donbas, according to Pylyp Orlyk of the Democracy
Institute think tank. Currently, several separatist media outlets and more than
30 Russian TV channels operate in Donetsk Oblast. The media landscape in
Luhansk Oblast looks just as bleak, as several pro-Russian websites, print media
and two separatist-controlled TV channels operate there.
Besides the
occupied eastern territories, Russian TV channels are broadcast as far as Zaporizhzhya,
Sumy, Kherson and Chernihiv Oblasts, analysts say.
Next year,
the Ukrainian Information Ministry plans to install transmitters donated to
Ukraine by western countries in Chernihiv, Sumy, Kherson and Odesa Oblast to
boost the Ukrainian media presence there, Popova said. The
Ukrainian government has allocated Hr 2million to purchase antennas. “We plan to
cover all of Ukraine’s territory, including the occupied areas,” she said,
while conceding that it would be more difficult to do this in Crimea.
“To
broadcast Ukrainian TV into Crimea we’d need a 450-meter TV tower. We don’t yet
have the kind of money needed to build one,” Popova said.
Kyiv Post staff writer Nataliya Trach can be
reached at [email protected]
