Muscovites seem to know pretty well about recent developments in Ukraine. This is not only thanks to the analytical articles, reports, or interviews given by the active participants of our political wrangling. Russian or Russian-language media are readily filling their readers in on the Ukrainian president’s stand. First, Leonid Kuchma appeared on the Radio Liberty Russian Service, and then next came his interview on Russian television. There is nothing bizarre for the Russian listeners and viewers that a head of state should talk so much to the press, if it were not for one thing — they have not been told by anyone that, from the very outset of the cassette scandal, the Ukrainian media were deprived of the possibility to talk seriously with Leonid Kuchma.
Relations with Russia are beyond any doubt an important component of our policy. But citizens of a neighboring country should not get priority in terms of information over Ukrainians. The president’s compatriots should definitely have right of the first night on his time and any dialogue with him. If there is no such dialogue, any talk focused on foreign countries is simply a waste of time.
However, there could be another motive why the president chooses to talk to the Russian media. According to the a priori conviction of the presidential aides, Ukrainian television cannot match the Russian in terms of the level of trust it enjoys in Ukraine. Hence, the Ukrainian president is in a way talking to his own citizens via Moscow journalists. And he is not alone here. Many representatives of the Ukrainian state and opposition sound much more outspoken and to the point appearing on Russian television or in the press than speaking on their own turf, although lesser Ukrainian political players do appear on domestic television. The interest shown by Ukraine’s top leader in talking to foreign media intermediaries is a clear signal that something is wrong with our own media. Of course, the authorities have a point — no one trusts state-run Ukrainian Television, its audience is small and the service it renders is inferior. But who is to blame that the Ukrainian television has lost the battle for viewers to the Russian? Not the broadcast journalists.
If those in the Presidential Administration really believe that by being so soft on talking to the Russian media the Ukrainian president is sending a signal to Moscow they cannot be more mistaken. Even now the Kremlin speaks freely to the press, hand-picked as it is almost on a daily basis. And every journalist knows that behind the so-called Presidential Administration sources there can be none other than President Putin himself. There is nothing strange about this, just as there is nothing strange about President Kuchma’s interview. But we in Ukraine view Kuchma’s betting on the Russian media as a pointed neglect of domestic journalists, whatever their political positions. This is more than a mistake, this is a sign of disrespect.
