You're reading: Turchynov demands to ban major TV station, calls it pro-Russian

Hard times are coming for Inter, a major television station that's been attempting to break into profits through broadcasting Russian film serials and music twice as much as local ones.

On Jan. 2, National Security and Defense Council secretary Oleksandr Turchynov demanded to take Inter’s media license away as on the New Year night the station entertained its viewers with songs of Russian performers known for their aggressive attitude towards Ukraine due to the conflict in Crimea and Donbas.

“In order to counteract the threats to the national security in the information sector I am turning your attention to the activity of Inter television channel that continuously and obviously ignores the national interests of Ukraine,” Turchynov wrote in a letter to Yuriy Artemenko, head of the Television and Radio Council that will consider it on Jan. 15.

Performance of Iosif Kobzon and Nikolay Baskov during the de facto war violate Ukraine’s legislation, according to the letter.

Meanwhile, Kobzon, a Donbas-born Russian singer, was banned from entering Ukraine in October, while Latvia did the same in July and the U.S. yet in 1995 as a musician was suspected of having a relation to organized criminal groups.

“Inter, Channel 5, 1+1, First National – it doesn’t matter,” Information Minister Yuriy Stets wrote on Facebook commenting the issue. “When the new plenary week (in parliament) begins, I’ll submit a draft of the law on applying a persona non grata term to the mass media.”

“If a person is banned from entering (the country), then it should also include attempts to “break into” Ukraine through the television… But before this happens (adopting the law), I’d like to ask the media managers to turn off the cash registers in their heads and find a drawer that contains patriotism in their brains.”

Meanwhile, Inter called the accusations unfair.

“Criticism of Inter is aimless and groundless,” reads station’s news release published on Jan. 1, a day before Turchynov wrote a letter when the whole deal yet had a shape of a public discussion. “The TV listing was organized in accordance to the long-time traditions of celebrating the New Year and norms of Ukrainian legislation.”

Launched in 1996, Inter has quite a controversial history. Staying in the orbit of Social Democratic Party led by Viktor Medvedchuk, now a head of a minor pro-Russian movement, channel lost a substantial part of its audience during the 2004 Orange Revolution that Medvedchuk opposed.

Valeriy Horoshkovsky received control over Inter in 2005 and sold it to a chemicals and energy mogul Dmytro Firtash in 2013 for a premium price of $2.5 billion, which is ten times what Amazon founder Jeff Bezos paid for the Washington Post, a successful newspaper in the U.S.

Firtash’s partner Sergiy Lyovochkin, who took a seat in a current parliament after heading the President Viktor Yanukovych’s administration, got a minority stake in the channel.

Right after the start of the EuroMaidan Revolution, on Nov. 29, 2013 Inter’s management interrupted the Shuster Live, a political talk show, when the then-opposition leaders Vitali Klitschko, Oleg Tyahnybok and Arseniy Yatsenyuk came to the studio. Viewers were offered to watch a Russian serial instead.

Telekritika, a media watchdog supported by the USAID, reported that Inter was extensively violating the standards of journalism during the parliamentary campaign this year. The channel didn’t reply to the Kyiv Post’s request to comment on this.

Meanwhile, Inter is the nation’s third biggest broadcaster of the Russian content and the biggest local client for the Russian movie serials, according to Otpor civic movement and KVG, a Moscow-based media research center.

Kyiv Post staff writer Olena Gordiienko can be reached at [email protected].