Naturally, Boris Lozhkin’s sale of the United Media Holding, consisting of dozens of popular newspapers, magazines and radio stations to Serhiy Kurchenko’s VETEK has resonated greatly within the journalistic community. 

The deal was to be officially announced on June 21 but one day before the announcement, the details of the $400-450 million deal, and – most importantly – the name of the buyer – were unexpectedly released by the chief editor of Ukrainian Forbes Vladimir Fedorin.

Moreover, his statement said the following: “I consider the sale of Forbes Ukraine to be the end of the project in its current state. I am convinced that the buyer is pursuing one of three goals (or all of them at once): 1) to silence journalists before the presidential election; 2) to whitewash his reputation; 3) to use the publication for purposes that have nothing to do with the media business.

“Like any other person, I can be mistaken, but nothing that I know from open and non-public sources, allows me to interpret what’s going on in any other way.”

More than a week after that statement, the journalists working at UMH are still feeling the shakes. Many of them took those accusations so close to their hearts that they are ready to quit tomorrow.

Lozhkin’s own assurances also haven’t improved the mood. He said he will run UMH until March 2014, and promised editorial independence. The buyer’s own statement furthermore didn’t have a favorable effect. 

In it Kurchenko not only assured that he will respect the work of newsrooms, including journalistic investigations – the most integral part of editorial –  but also vowed to sign an agreement with the staff on non-intrusion into editorial policy and even a three-way deal with the Americans about the work of Forbes, handing over content management to the mother company.

But not even Miguel Forbes’ statement that he was pleased that the new owner would invest more into the magazine could remove the after-taste left from the scandalous way that the deal’s details were revealed. 

The irony is that the Ukrainian Forbes was the first to publish an investigation into Kurchenko, and it didn’t shed much positive light on his business.

Any Western businessman or banker will tell you that spending close to half a billion dollars to buy a media holding just to ensure that another article won’t appear about you is totally absurd. Yet this thought was firmly planted into the heads of Ukrainian journalists. Most of them believe that this was Kurchenko’s main motive.

They’re shooting puzzled looks towards the West. They sincerely think that the home-grown distaste for oligarchs has to be inherent among Western media capitalists. Most of the comments came down to the argument that Americans should not cooperate with Kurchenko because he is an oligarch.

At the same time, they fail to ask themselves why the American Forbes should be worried about UMH’s acquisition by VETEK if Bloomberg is cooperating with BTB, the National Bank’s TV channel, while the Financial Times provides syndicated material to Kapital newspaper, both of which are usually tied to the name of former central banker and now First Deputy Prime Minister Serhiy Arbuzov.

There are no facts that we’re aware of as of today that would show us that freedom of speech is under threat at UMH. And those Ukrainian journalists who condemn big businessmen in the manner of medieval inquisitors in the 21st century without allowing them to have the presumption of innocence, are laughable to say the least.

Mykhaylo Kukhar is editor-in-chief of MYSL magazine.