On the wreckage of the Kremlin lies

How the Russian -language television channel of Ukraine works in the conditions of war

"Ukrainian crisis", "Special operation of the Russian Federation in Ukraine." These are narratives that Russian propaganda uses not only to influence the internal audience, that is, the inhabitants of the country. Also, Russian television channels speak with the audience abroad with the same terms. For years, Russia imposed on Western countries the appearance of “from its bell tower”. Now, when in the center of Europe a brutal war, unleashed by the Kremlin, the Russian propaganda gradually cut off the channels.

This text was first published on the website of the Donbass News

Freed instead of RT

For more than a year, events in Ukraine have been setting the tone of geopolitics around the world: grain crisis, the threat of an atomic catastrophe and, finally, high risks of nuclear war. It is Russian propaganda that will hasten to tell the viewer in the West that the Ukrainian ports were blocked by Kiev, and at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, the Russian military, together with the employees of Rosatom, valiantly control the situation. Now the Russian media has become fewer opportunities to sow a lie.

Ukraine was one of the first countries, which in 2014 banned the broadcast of the RTR Planet, NTV, Russia-24, Russia-1, TNT, REN TV, Zvezda, EURONEWS and several others. The European Union, Great Britain, Australia, Switzerland and Montenegro stopped RT broadcasting on their territory in March last year. A little earlier, in 2020, the Baltic countries abandoned Russian propaganda.

But in order for Western countries to better understand what is happening in Ukraine, it is not enough to drown out Russian propaganda. Galina Petrenko , director of the public organization Detector Media, notes that this problem existed long before the Russian invasion.

- The Ukrainian media as a whole did not develop international editions. This is an old story - even before 2014, when they talked about the weaknesses of the Ukrainian media, it was most often noted that they did not have their own view of the world, because they took many news from international news agencies. That is, they retired their view of the world. Accordingly, the world did not have a Ukrainian vision of our country. Another problem was that a lot of foreign media correspondents who covered our region were based in Moscow.

It is very sad, but now many foreign media are prescribed to cover the events in Ukraine with extensive experience in Russia. I think that these journalists have been curved in one way or another, ”Petrenko believes.

A year ago, an information marathon Freedom started in Ukraine. This is a Russian -speaking channel that broadcasts the content of several Ukrainian media groups to the foreign audience. The satellite broadcasting of the canal is available to the audience of all of Europe, as well as the western part of Russia.

- We launched the information marathon on the UATV in Russian on February 28, 2022, and from March 10 it received the name Freed. Naturally, a full -scale invasion caused a large request for information from Ukraine and about Ukraine. During the year of video, about seven billion times, and the vast majority of these views are not from Ukraine were watched in Dijital. Our satellite coating has expanded: now we are on six satellites, and at the beginning of 2022 we were two. We are in more than 700 cable, DTH, IPTV networks of 44 countries, 22 countries were added in 2022. Yes, we understand that this growth is also caused by the war, but our task is to use this impulse and consolidate the Ukrainian outrage in the world, ”said Julia Ostrovskaya , general director of the state enterprise“ Multimedia Monitoring of Ukraine ”, which includes a television channel.

She notes that after the closure of Russian propaganda television channels of the Russian -speaking audience in the West, a healthy alternative should be offered.

-If a person abroad is used to consume information in Russian, then he will continue to look for it in this language. Therefore, yes, let it sound paradoxically, but for the state security of Ukraine we must give such an information to such an information in Russian, but from a Ukrainian point of view, ”says Ostrovskaya.

Galina Petrenko agrees with this and the media expert.

- The Russian -speaking television channel, which broadcasts abroad in Russian and has the goal of convincing the audience of the enemy, is quite permissible. But he should not broadcast in the country itself, otherwise it will already be propaganda for the Ukrainian viewer.

Nevertheless, the Russian -speaking channel in Ukraine during a full -scale war with the Russian Federation is a rather unusual phenomenon in the representation of many Ukrainians.

- Broadcasting in Russian at this historical moment opens up the opportunity to talk about Ukraine not only in Russia, but also where people are ready to perceive information in Russian. This is a big audience. Perhaps in the future the share of these people will be reduced, and we, say, in Georgia, everyone understands that the news in Ukraine will be enough to broadcast in English. But we are not in the future yet. Now our work seems to me very important and useful, ”says the host of the television channel Saken Aimurzaev.

In the top of cities on the views of the telemarathon-Moscow, St. Petersburg, Krasnodar and Yekaterinburg. In the top ten countries, Ukraine is in tenth place (0.8% of the audience).

- It is important to note that Freed is one of the components of Ukrainian state outrage. But we have other sites, there are English, Arabic, Ukrainian. Freed is not addressed to the Ukrainian audience. Yes, it can be seen in Ukraine on the Internet, but through a satellite, cable, and the depth platform, it conducts broadcasting exclusively abroad. Its potential viewer is more than 200 million Russian -speaking people around the world, and not only in Russia, and the main task is to bring the truth about the Russian war against Ukraine and destroy Russian propaganda, ”said Yulia Ostrovskaya .

By the way, one of the most popular materials in the Russian segment of YouTube was the appeal of the President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky regarding mobilization in Russia.

How to turn the viewer to yourself if you criticize him?

The reverse side of the foreigner lies in how Ukraine speaks with Russian -speaking spectators abroad. Petrenko emphasizes that often these spectators already have a stable vision of the situation. For example, about what happened in the Donbass for eight years and who is to blame for the escalation, the picture of the world is partly complicated because Russian propaganda tried, partly because these people have Russian roots.

- The idea to broadcast the enemy’s audience during the war is good. But the question is in detail. What exactly are we broadcasting on such a television channel? I had a conversation with the person who worked there as an ordinary journalist. In his opinion, one hundred percent hit the idea does not happen due to the fact that Russians abroad are not ready to listen to hostile voices against themselves. They are ready to listen to criticism of the Russian government, but not to their address. In this case, the television channel needs to penetrate the Russian agenda, broadcast from their position for their own, ”the media expert said.

Freed, in turn, notes that this psychological factor takes into account.

- The fact that for the security of the country we will need to reach the Russian -speaking viewer in the world, we also understood until February 24. We saw and analyzed how their propaganda works and where, in fact, our enemy. Even before a full -scale invasion, some of our sites were broadcast in Russian, in particular the UATV channel (now free). True, the content there was softer and multi -crown: news, cultural projects, journalism, entertainment, films, series. Of course, the war exacerbated many tasks, reset something or reformatted, ”Ostrovskaya notes.

The main task of the telemarathon is to become a favorite for the viewer abroad. It is this task that determines the choice of experts and programs of the channel.

On the one hand, to reporters, being in Ukraine, it is easy to refute the lies of Russian propaganda. On the other hand, there is a lot of work, because the refutation of fakes is only part of the iceberg.

- We are citizens, journalists, but first of all we are people. In human life, the war brought separation, anxiety, fear for loved ones, thoughts of unexpected death. This could not but affect work. Journalists have the concept of “monotem”-this is when the entire release of the newspaper or the release of news on TV is devoted to one thing. Our monotem has been going on for more than a year. The war, in fact, brought up to itself all the diversity of the world. It is important not to turn the news about the war into routine. Behind each statistics of the war - tragedies, crippled fates, unrealized hopes. Behind each message from the front - incredible power and courage of actions. A separate task now is to record the crimes of the Russian army, the Russian regime and, of course, the crimes of Russian propaganda. I always try to think and remember this. As a journalist and TV presenter, and as a person wants one thing: so that all this ends as soon as possible and we told the world about the incredible pace of restoration of Ukraine, they talked about a free and strong country. Well, about sentences to those who unleashed and incurred this war - a big dream to survive until that moment, ”Aimurzaev shared.

Journalists devote a separate place in the work of the telemarathon to fight Russian fakes. For this, it is not enough to conduct investigations. In this duel, Ukrainian journalists use all formats: from historical documentary programs-to stories of ordinary people who have lost everything because of the Russian war.

- We have a constant analytics of narratives of Russian propaganda. This can be a direct refutation of the fake, we even have the project “Let's check”. Or there may be the filling of the Russian narrative with facts, information, comments that hack it from the inside. For example, Russia has a constant story that Western partners are tired, help is reduced, sanctions do not work and the like. Of course, if we say that this is not true, our viewer will not believe us. But when we show events contrary to these narratives, we tell, explain how and what works, a person begins to think and something changes in his head.

We have programs, documentary projects, special records that affect different issues of Russian and Ukrainian history and reality, on which Russian propaganda likes to speculate. We show documentary projects on the consequences of occupation, about the fate of dictators, on the real state of affairs in Russia. But in our focus not only Russia. We are preparing special projects from the countries of the post -Soviet space and other European countries, ”Ostrovskaya said.

With the support of the media network