Being an experienced specialist in the media sphere, Zelensky understood that his popularity largely rested on the loyalty of nationalwide television channels. Poroshenko’s story showed that charisma and the loyalty of the core electorate were not enough for victory. The voter must be in an atmosphere that creates the illusion of the absence of a viable alternative to the incumbent president. This is exactly what Putin did at the beginning of his first presidential term. And, as you see, he succeeded in eliminating all potential competitors.
Volodymyr Zelensky, as it turned out, has some traits of an authoritarian ruler. For example, he really dislikes criticism. One might even say he hates it. As the former head of the President’s Office Andriy Bohdan recalled, Zelensky even wrote to him at two in the morning to find out information about some little-known author of a critical post on Facebook. Bohdan was very surprised by this, as the former “Kvartal 95” comedian came to power using not only harsh criticism but also the most disgusting ways of mocking his opponents.
Zelensky’s painful reaction to any criticism combined with a keen desire to prevent opposition media from accessing a wide audience. For example, in the first year of Volodymyr Zelensky’s presidency, observers noted that he and his former business partner Ihor Kolomoisky negatively mentioned Tomas Fiala several times — a Czech investor who has been living and doing business in Ukraine for many years.
Who is Fiala? He is not yet an oligarch — his fortune is estimated at about $200 million, which is not that much compared to others. He is not a friend of Poroshenko, he does not own a TV channel, and he is a foreigner living in Ukraine with a residence permit. But on closer examination of Tomas Fiala’s personality, everything falls into place. Zelensky and Kolomoisky sensed danger because Fiala began to buy and open media resources. Over several years, he and his companies gained control over the “NV” magazine, its website, a radio station, and two financial news websites.
In Ukraine, there are cases when someone not from the ruling team owns a media holding. But if the owner of these media does not want problems, they must, at a minimum, demonstrate loyalty to the president. For example, the mayor of Lviv, Andriy Sadovyi, through his family, controls a small by Ukrainian standards TV channel 24, the news website Zaxid.net, and the Radio Lux network. He has no problems with licenses or tax inspections. And no criticism of Sadovyi himself has ever come from the president. It just so happened that the media resources of the mayor of Lviv are very loyal to Volodymyr Zelensky.
Unlike Andriy Sadovyi, Czech investor Tomas Fiala demonstrated an independent stance, although he cannot be considered opposition. Moreover, considering that his residency status in Ukraine prohibits political activity. But for Zelensky, the mere fact that a person not loyal to him had access to a large audience already posed a danger.
Fiala, obviously, realized that his independence in the media market began to worry the president, and in the near future, this could threaten his investment business. The problem was solved in a somewhat unusual way for Ukraine. To guarantee the absence of problems from the authorities, in the autumn of 2021, Fiala bought one of the most influential political online newspaper − “Ukrainska Pravda”. It was hardly necessary for him, both from an investment point of view and for expanding political influence. Especially since the new owner publicly promised not to interfere in the editorial policy of the site. However, the mere fact of owning “Ukrainska Pravda” removed all claims from Zelensky towards Fiala. Otherwise, the website could once again change its owner. And the popular site could get a new editor. Say, someone more friendly to Poroshenko or Medvedchuk.
In other words, it was a non-aggression and mutual understanding pact. “Ukrainska Pravda” remained neutral towards Zelensky (although they always had a dislike for Poroshenko, for example), and the president forgot Fiala’s surname. Indeed, after the Czech became the owner of “Ukrainska Pravda”, Volodymyr Zelensky never mentioned Tomas Fiala again in his press conferences and interviews.
As for the opposition, from the very beginning, the president deliberately limited its influence on the television market. And if the pressure on Medvedchuk’s media holding could be easily explained by his connections with the Kremlin, then with the pro-Western opposition in the form of Poroshenko, it was necessary to come up with a different scheme. The war and martial law helped.
A month after the war began, the state regulator turned off three opposition TV channels loyal to Petro Poroshenko from cable networks and digital broadcasting: “Pryamiy”, “5 Kanal”, and “Espreso”. They were left with only broadcasting on YouTube and some streaming services, which significantly narrowed the Ukrainian audience.
At the same time, the largest nationalwide channels, controlled by oligarchs, joined the “Unified Marathon” − a state channel that broadcasts news and video reports around the clock, mainly about the situation in the country and military topics. The idea of this project was that channels “1+1”, “ICTV”, and “STB” would supply content in the form of news and television reports for the marathon, and the state would pay them for it.
Trying to establish control over the information space, Zelensky’s team did not forget to earn money on state television. For example, in the state budget for 2024, the government allocated 170 million hryvnias (about $4 million) for financing the parliamentary channel “Rada”. It turned out that two-thirds of this money was transferred without a tender to the private company “Kinokit”, which belongs to the former deputy head of the President’s Office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko. Instead of creating television content based on the “Rada” channel, its director signed a contract for content production with a private firm of a Presidential Office official.
Access to state funds allowed Zelensky’s team to solve two problems at once. After limiting the opposition’s influence on voters, they began financing unprofitable oligarchic TV channels at the expense of the state and created another corruption scheme for their own enrichment. The only requirement for the heads of the TV channels was simple: no criticism of the president.
In January 2024, almost simultaneously, two events related to criticism of Zelensky occurred in Kyiv. Two days after a journalist from the “Dzerkalo Tyzhnia” Yuriy Nikolov on one of the YouTube streams extremely negatively characterized the professional qualities of the president, unknown men tried to break into his apartment. They banged on the doors, shouted that they would send Nikolov to the front, called him a traitor and a provocateur. After that, the hooligans, filming everything on a phone camera, pasted leaflets with insults on the journalist’s apartment door. About 15 minutes later, this video was published in the Telegram channel “Card Office”, which often shares insiders from the President’s Office.
A few days later, a video from a hidden camera in a hotel room was published online, showing journalists of the Bihus Info project using drugs at a private New Year’s party. This project has long been known for its anti-corruption investigations, and its YouTube channel has about a million subscribers. Several months before the appearance of the video with drugs, the journalists of Bihus Info released several videos on their channel with investigations into the corruption of Zelensky’s associates.
Despite President Zelensky’s public condemnation of pressure on journalists, the customers of both incidents were never found. Notably, such practices of persecuting journalists with the involvement of special services were widely spread during the presidency of Yanukovych.
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