Just six months ago they were saying the same thing about the Ukrainian media market that they have been saying about the Russian market for a long time: tightening the screws. Yanukovych began to prepare the media space for the 2015 elections according to a scheme well known in Russia : “cleaning up” opposition channels, denigrating the reputation of news agencies, purchasing the largest holdings by pro-government oligarchs. But with the start of the protests in Kyiv, the Ukrainian media unexpectedly perked up - the authorities no longer cared about any screws in the media field, and the need for prompt information about what was happening on the Maidan and around it grew many times over. Over these months, the audience of Ukrainska Pravda alone increased from 250 thousand to a million unique users per day, and new Internet television - Espresso TV and Hromadske TV - began to overtake the main terrestrial channels in popularity.

But, as for the Russian media in their time, opposition speeches have become a test and temptation for participants in the Ukrainian media market. Liberal publications and television channels began not only to talk about what the pro-government media were silent about, but also to actively express their own position - it was important for Ukrainian journalists to emphasize that they are “with the people” and against the authorities. “Ukrainian Pravda” at the peak of Euromaidan was renamed “European”, “Hromadske TV” argued live with deputies from the Party of Regions.

Talking about professional ethics and impartiality with people who work in combat essentially conditions is difficult and awkward, especially when you yourself are sitting in a safe Moscow editorial office. From a human perspective, it is impossible not to sympathize with them - they live in a country that literally gives “soul and body” for its ideals and which is now still loomed over by an aggressive neighbor. But any revolution and struggle for ideals presupposes that for the sake of the interests of some, the interests of others are sacrificed. And the media, which take a revolutionary position, even if it seems to them at the moment the only possible one, inevitably lose objectivity and begin to cover what is happening one-sidedly.

Having taken the position of “ we are with the people ,” the Ukrainian media, which supported the protests, actually took the position of “we are with the Maidan.” That part of the population that is afraid of the Maidan and does not want a revolution for a variety of reasons, for them, as it were, was not a people all this time, and few people cared about its interests. Now, in connection with the crisis in Crimea, this people has been talked about in the media and on social networks, but in some compassionately derogatory formulations (and also familiar to us): “duped,” “zombified.” Or even: “titushki”, “cattle”, “traitors”.

The pro-Russian part of Ukraine has been “fooled” and “zombified,” of course, by Russian television and local media, which talk about the “rampant fascism” on the Maidan and the West financing the “Banderaites.” The majority of the Ukrainian media, together with the Western press and the liberal part of Russian journalists, indignantly talk about the information war unleashed by the Kremlin, in whose arsenal is Dmitry Kiselev with another batch of accusatory speeches, censored songs of BG, falsified stories about Ukrainian “militants”. Articles and entire websites are devoted to analyzing and exposing aggressive Russian propaganda. And, in general, fair.

The only problem is that in response, Ukraine is hearing its own propaganda more and more clearly, only now instead of Yanukovych, with Putin as the main enemy. Propaganda that both the liberal Russian media and the West try not to notice. Some people, even worse, perceive this as an absolutely justified action: a state on the verge of a split is defending its integrity, and all means are good. As a result, Kiev operators turn off Russian TV channels, and there are proposals to ban in principle Russian media in the country, which influence the consciousness of the population in a variety of ways - they say, even “pornography causes less harm than variations of “Cops” on the evening air.”

Of course, many Ukrainian media understand that the ban on the Rossiya-1 TV channel will immediately turn it into an analogue of Radio Liberty during the Cold War, and the split within the country will only intensify - already in Crimea they are responding to the shutdown of Russian TV by turning off pro-Maidan channels. Many also understand that this kind of restrictions is no better than the censorship that, among other things, Maidan stood against.

Alas, it is unlikely that Kremlin propagandists will voluntarily give up the information war; in this sense, there is more hope for Ukrainian journalists. In such a situation, when no one really understands what is really happening, and when every biased opinion can provoke open conflict, it is more important than ever that there remain media that report in detail, soberly and balancedly about what is happening. Even if this means revealing unpleasant facts about those with whom you humanly sympathize.

Truth to Truth About the information war in Ukraine