Newspaper's new policy is hailed by women's rights groups, police as positive social step.
Ending a long-established practice, the Kyiv Post’s new owner said the newspaper will no longer sell classified advertising under the “introduction” and “relaxation” headings.
Publisher Mohammad Zahoor told the newspaper’s staff of his decision during a Sept. 1 meeting. He said that the ads – purchased by women generally understood to be engaged in prostitution – “bothered me from day one.” When Zahoor conducted business meetings since his July 28 purchase of the Kyiv Post, people asked him: “Why do you allow this?”
After hearing the question a few times, Zahoor said he didn’t need any more convincing to stop selling the ads that he disliked anyway. “Even if it makes economical sense, I don’t like it,” Zahoor said. “I think we should earn money in a better manner. It gives a bad name to us, not to those women…I just don’t want to advertise it” in Ukraine.
Zahoor said he has no plans to engage in a moral crusade or curtail other types of paid advertising involving legal commercial activity. The publisher said he wants to end the “introduction” and “relaxation” categories “as soon as possible.” Acquaintance ads promoting legitimate marriage agencies will remain.
Advertising sales director Yuriy Timonin said that the ads will no longer appear after the Sept. 4 edition. Timonin estimated that such ads brought in revenue of $35,000 to $100,000 a year, depending on the economy and the hryvnia’s value. Former publisher Jed Sunden, who founded the newspaper in 1995, always defended accepting such ads on commercial and free-speech grounds.
Kateryna Levchenko, president of La Strada, an international women’s rights center in Kyiv, reacted to the news by saying: “Thank God! At last! Most people in Ukraine do not welcome the sale of sexual relationships.”
Levchenko said that, as a gateway information source for foreigners in Ukraine, the Kyiv Post ads contribute to the image of a nation where escorts and other types of sexual services are widely available. “It forms an impression that Ukraine is full of accessible girls, educated and beautiful,” Levchenko said. “And this, in turn, attracts sex tourists” who feel emboldened “to do things here that they would never dare in their home countries.”
Volodymyr Polishchuk, Kyiv police spokesman, said that during regular weekly meetings, the police chief discussed the issue of escort advertising in publications including the Kyiv Post and on websites. Officers were tasked to work towards the reduction of such ads. “By printing such announcements the publication effectively serves as a procurer [in violation of Ukrainian law],” Polishchuk said.
Polishchuk said he personally supports the decision because it may help reduce the number of sexual tourists who come to Ukraine just to proposition women for sex. “We had information from the field that many tourists have come to the country not to enjoy the beauty of Kyiv’s Pechersk Lavra, but for cheap girls. Any nation should be offended by this kind of attitude.”
