You're reading: Crisis Media Center springs into action

Much like the EuroMaidan Revolution itself, the Ukraine Crisis Media Center sprang to life with speed, spontaneity, creativity, competence – and a strong sense of mission.

Although the center has been open only since March 4, its third floor headquarters in the Hotel Ukraine on 4 Institutska St. is already a required daily stop for dozens of Ukrainian and foreign journalists.
Ukrainian officials, religious leaders, politicians, diplomats, activists and other citizens appear at scheduled press briefings or participate in moderated roundtable discussions.

Volunteers offer simultaneous translation in Ukrainian, English and Russian for attendees, while the press briefings are live streamed at http://uacrisis.org/ and later posted to the group’s website for posterity. The center can also be followed on Facebook at facebook.com/uacrisis or Twitter @uacrisis.

The volunteer team of communications and international relations professionals came up with the idea for such a center not only to counter Kremlin propaganda and lies about Ukraine, but also to help the nation adjust to its rare turn in the international spotlight.

Ukraine has gotten an unprecedented amount of world attention since the EuroMaidan Revolution that forced Viktor Yanukovych from the presidency on Feb. 21, triggering the Kremlin’s Feb. 27 invasion of Crimea in response.

The biggest untruths that Ukrainians are trying to counter on the world stage include the Kremlin’s attempts to define the EuroMaidan Revolution and the new government as dominated by neo-Nazi extremists, rather than as a broad-based democratic uprising to topple a corrupt dictatorship. Moreover, the Kremlin has repeatedly carried on a campaign to blame EuroMaidan leaders for the slayings of 100 demonstrators and police officers, rather than Yanukovych and his top officials, who are fugitives wanted for mass murder and other crimes by Ukraine’s new government.

Besides the daily series of media briefings, the center’s volunteer professionals also help journalists find “fixers” – translators and other locals who help guide foreigners through a country unfamiliar to them. The center’s volunteers also try to connect the working press corps with academics, historians, officials and other experts to put Ukraine’s multiple crises into context.

Nataliya Popovych at the Ukraine Crisis Media Center on March 13. (Kostyantyn Chernichkin)

The group came together at Razumkov Center in Kyiv on March 2.

Nataliya Popovych, the president of Kyiv’s PRP Group, an affiliate of the global Webber Shandwick company, is among the founders.

Popovych said that the Kremlin is fast on its feet in spreading lies about Ukraine, whose government is often slow to respond to allegations and counter untruths.

“Everything is donated,” she said, and the choice of Ukraine Hotel is deliberately symbolic, since its lobby served as a makeshift morgue for many of the demonstrators slain on Institutska Street on Feb. 22.

The coordinating group meets on a daily basis to decide what voices and messages need to be urgently heard and who can provide “objective information,” Popovych said. When asked if Kremlin spokespersons are welcome, she said: “We feel Russian voices are very strong already.”

While the center hasn’t had time to reflect about its future, Popovych said that it may evolve into a permanent effort. “I believe that Ukraine has never had any serious effort to promote its own reputation,” she said.

She hopes that the EuroMaidan Revolution will help spur “a new model of leadership” for Ukraine in which Ukrainians “take responsibility for themselves” and don’t rely on others so heavily.

She doesn’t think the freedom won through bloodshed can be undone and thinks the nation is “obliged to those who are no longer with us” and to each of its citizens to pursue a true democracy. “The job of a president is not to drive a fancy car, but to serve the people,” she said.

The Russian invasion of Crimea, of course, is the most serious challenge to be overcome in preserving Ukraine’s independence and sovereignty. If Russia gets away with the invasion and annexes the peninsula, Popovych said, “my personal belief is they will never stop with Crimea. It creates a terrible precedent. It’s an illusion they will stop with Crimea.”

She comes by her nationalism and patriotism honestly. The married mother of three children was a teenager in Lviv, Ukraine’s unofficial “western capital,” when the Soviet Union collapsed. One of her grandmothers was exiled to Siberia during Josef Stalin’s relentless repression and attempts to destroy Ukrainian nationalism, most prominently through the 1932-33 Holodomor in which millions of Ukrainians starved to death.

She considers Ukrainians to be loving, peaceful and tolerant people and, while she didn’t consider herself a follower of iconic and controversial nationalist hero Stepan Bandera (1909-1959), she is now “proud to be called a Banderite.”

Whether Ukraine should have been more militarily prepared for a potential Russian invasion is “a difficult question,” she admitted, but said the nation should be able to expect solid Western support to defend the 1994 Budapest Memorandum in which Ukraine voluntarily surrendered its nuclear weapons in exchange for guaranteed sovereignty from the Unites States, Great Britain and Russia.

She said Ukraine might be open to a change in legal status of Crimea and its two million residents, but not “when people carrying Kalashnikovs are on the street.”

She has lived and worked in Moscow and is heartened by expressions of support from other Russians. She also believes that the center has helped the international news media gain a better, more accurate perspective of Ukraine. The more that journalists are able to get out of Moscow bureaus and witness the situation on the ground in Ukraine, she said, the more accurate their reporting.

“The world understands that Ukarine is not Russia,” Popovych said. “The more time they spend here, the more they understand why.”

Founders of Ukraine Crisis Media Center include:

Valeriy Chaly, Razumkov Centre, deputy foreign minister of Ukraine (2009-2010)
Ivanna Klympush-Tsyntsadze, Yalta European Strategy, director
Nataliya Popovych, PRP, president
Natalia Olbert-Sinko, PRP in Ukraine, executive director
Yaryna Klyuchkovska, independent communications consultant
Gennadiy Kurochka, CFC, founder and managing partner
Vasyl Myroshnychenko, CFC, partner
Alina Frolova, R.A.M. 360, CEO
Volodymyr Degtyaryov, NewsFront PR agency, director
Ivetta Delikatnaya, AGL, director of development
Maxim Savanevskyi, PlusOne DA, managing partner
Andriy Zagorodskiy, Newsplot, director

Kyiv Post chief editor Brian Bonner can be reached at [email protected].