ANALYSIS: "Good news" from Ukraine (05/11/03)

ANALYSIS

"Good news" from Ukraine

by Taras Kuzio
RFE/RL Poland, Belarus and Ukraine Report

The presidential administration's Department for Information Policy began sending, on a daily basis, "Good News from Ukraine" newspapers to the Ukrainian diaspora. The first issue included a cover letter signed by the head of the department, Serhii Vasyliev, stating that when used, "Good News" should be cited as the source (i.e., not the presidential administration).

This "news media project," as Mr. Vasyliev called it, aims to accomplish three things. First, by its very title the "media project" seeks to counter Ukraine's bad international image. "Good News from Ukraine" is the latest example of Ukraine's elites attempting to undertake various projects to counter this image, all with little success to date. It follows the creation in June 2001 of the Ukrayina Cognita NGO, after Ukraine's international image took a dive during the Kuchmagate scandal.

Second, the Department for Information Policy was created after Viktor Medvedchuk became head of the presidential administration in May 2002, and its policies reflect his more aggressive style. The Department for Information Policy has 38 staffers and is one of the largest in the presidential administration (the departments of foreign policy and of economics have 23 and 26, respectively).

The department was reportedly implicated in the release of "temnyky" - instructions to television stations on what to cover and what to ignore - in the summer-fall of 2002. Mr. Vasyliev attempted to counter criticism of growing censorship voiced within Ukraine and in the Council of Europe by organizing weekly surveys of the Ukrainian media showing how free it was in its criticism of the executive. These surveys were then sent to the Council of Europe's Hanne Severinsen. Mr. Vasyliev stopped producing these surveys after Ms. Severinsen publicly ridiculed them in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

Third, the aim is to influence the Ukrainian diaspora through its media outlets. The thinking behind the "media project" and the tactics used are similar to those in the Soviet era when Tovarystvo Ukraina (the Society for Cultural Relations with Ukrainians Abroad) published a weekly newspaper in English and Ukrainian titled News from Ukraine/Visti z Ukrayiny, which was unavailable inside Ukraine.

Tovarystvo Ukraina had limited appeal, except with Ukrainian Communist groups in the United States and Canada. "News from Ukraine/Visti z Ukrainy specialized in publishing attacks on Ukrainian nationalist émigrés, as well as accusations of their involvement in war crimes during World War II.

Will the presidential administration be more successful in influencing the Ukrainian diaspora than Tovarystvo Ukraina? Unlike when News from Ukraine/Visti z Ukrainy was published, "Good News from Ukraine" is appearing during the age of the Internet. Many different news sources on Ukraine are now available, and most newspapers in Ukraine also appear on the web. "Good News from Ukraine," therefore, has much competition from other, far better sources of information.

Why is "Good News from Ukraine" sent only to diaspora publications? Presumably because Western media outlets, just like the Council of Europe, would find the style and tone of information produced by the presidential administration unusable. There is also an assumption that diaspora organizations remain influential within the Western media and governments, something that is highly questionable.

"Good News from Ukraine" is also highly biased towards issues beloved by the Ukrainian diaspora. These include a heavy dose of articles devoted to language, culture, nationalist movements in the 1940s (the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists [OUN], and Ukrainian Insurgent Army [UPA]), and steps taken by President Kuchma in honor of nationalist events or historical figures.

Marco Levytsky, editor of Canada's largest Ukrainian newspaper, the biweekly Edmonton-based Ukrainian News/Ukrainski Visti, finds it suspicious that "Good News from Ukraine" is so heavily slated towards the news that the diaspora so wants to read. Mr. Levytsky asks, "If the presidential administration feels so favorably about OUN-UPA, why don't they rehabilitate them on the national level, and why don't they send these stories to newspapers in eastern Ukraine, which is where the most education about OUN-UPA is needed?"

"Good News from Ukraine" published a telegram dated March 13 and sent to the family of Yaroslava Stetsko, head of the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists, who died the day before. Yet, neither President Kuchma nor Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych attended her funeral three days later.

"Good News from Ukraine" is unlikely to be used by editors from the younger generation and those who edit non-party newspapers, such as Ukrainian News/Ukrainski Visti. It will, however, be favorably received by newspapers linked to OUN-B (Stepan Bandera) or OUN-M (Andriy Melnyk) and where editors belong to the older generation. This reflects similar divisions in Ukraine that have existed within the national-democratic camp between nationalist derzhavnyky (statists) and reformist anti-Communist oppositionists since 1992. That division still plagues Viktor Yushchenko's Our Ukraine, preventing it from fully moving into the opposition camp. Derzhavnyky place Ukrainian statehood above all else and see criticism of the president as destabilization of this statehood.

Only three months after "Good News from Ukraine" began to be issued, the Ukrainian World Congress (UWC), led by OUN-B member Askold Lozynskyj, issued an appeal "To Ukrainian National Central Representations in the Diaspora." This followed debates on the pages of The Ukrainian Weekly, North America's largest English-language Ukrainian newspaper, over how to respond to problems in Ukraine and whether criticism merely worsened Ukraine's image. The debates included letters from Mr. Lozynskyj; former editor of New York's OUN-B Natsionalna Trybuna newspaper, Ihor Dlaboha; a former head of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, Roman Kupchinsky and others.

The UWC statement, dated March 3, asked the diaspora organizations and media to "work towards a just and enlightened treatment of Ukraine." The UWC sees Ukraine as "collateral damage" after September 11, 2001, when the U.S. allowed Russia to increase its influence over Ukraine. The WCU has been a strong critic of the "amoral" Bush administration in what it sees as its double standards towards Ukraine and in its Iraq policy. These views within the nationalist wing of the Ukrainian diaspora reflect the suspicion that Russia is behind the Kuchmagate scandal.

In a similar pattern to recent claims of double standards by the presidential administration, the UWC statement also says, "Unfortunately, Ukraine has been singled out as one of the most corrupt and abusive countries in the world," while the West also has its fair share of similar problems. With such a similar political culture, "Good News from Ukraine" therefore, may be relatively more successful than what Tovarystvo Ukraina ever hoped to achieve.

Dr. Taras Kuzio is a resident fellow at the Center for Russian and East European Studies, University of Toronto.

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