Ukrainian media at war. Battles behind, battles ahead

The war has put Ukrainian journalists at risk. As of April 2024, ten Ukrainian journalists and media workers have died during their assignments, while 76 have died serving in the army or as a result of hostilities. Photo: Rospoint / Shutterstock

In the initial phase of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukrainian media unified in resistance against the invaders and gave the authorities their trust. But as soon as the dust of the first battles settled, independent outlets returned to scrutinizing the government and uncovering corruption. The authorities, in turn, eagerly continued to exploit their new wartime prerogatives and influence. The explosive rise of alternative media, most importantly Telegram, made the media landscape less transparent and less resistant to Russian influence. While the resulting status quo has more and more critics, the battle over the national psyche is intensifying and it could prove decisive when it comes to societal acceptance of the war’s outcome.

The showman on his own stage

Arguably, no other contemporary political figure has explored the relationship between power and media more radically than Volodymyr Zelenskyy. In 2019, in a stunning display of political technology at work, the widely popular actor and scriptwriter stepped into the presidency straight out of a political sitcom. He lost much of his record-high support after two years in charge. However, to the amusement of observers both at home and abroad, Zelenskyy regained it as he transformed into a wartime leader and a global media icon in response to Russia’s invasion. 

The impact of Zelenskyy’s undeniably charismatic persona and communication skills on popular sentiments in Ukraine and abroad cannot be dismissed. His bold and empathetic narrative of Ukrainians’ plight defined the understanding and experience of the war for millions. His daily updates in the form of short videos, cinematically produced clips and constant engagements with the people kept audiences focused on the war. Nonetheless, as Olga Onuch and Henry E. Hale argue in their book, The Zelensky Effect, many observers fail to understand that Zelensky’s role in the beginning of the invasion is “less about the man himself than about the civic nation he embodies”.

Direct, emotional messaging; everyman rhetoric; calls to unity; and promises of a new Ukraine have been the backbone of Zelenskyy’s political repertoire since he announced his presidential bid during the Kvartal 95 New Year’s Eve concert in the last minutes of 2018. On the other hand, the president/showman, as the American journalist Simon Shuster described him in his recent book, has always kept his distance from independent media outlets and has preferred to get his message to the public first via social media and later via state-controlled TV. Critics have noted that after the full-scale invasion, he also preferred foreign journalists, ensuring his star continued to shine bright without Ukrainian peers asking him difficult questions. Most importantly, however, since before the full-scale invasion, and especially after it, Zelenskyy, whose comic image overshadowed his careers as an influential producer and media manager, has been carefully constructing an increasingly tight media apparatus. This has given him more control over the media than any of his predecessors.

Telemarathon

For the Ukrainian public, this approach is epitomized by the so-called “Telemarathon”. On the first day of the invasion, the main Ukrainian TV channels came together to broadcast the same round-the-clock programming co-produced with state officials. When Russian troops were attempting to invade Kyiv, the move was widely seen as vital for ensuring order and countering disinformation. In a conversation back in July 2022, the then-Minister of Culture Oleksandr Tkachenko told me that the “unified information policy” pursued by the government is “moderate in its philosophy”, as it does not fully use the provisions of Ukrainian martial law legislation allowing the authorities to take over media outlets, stop their work and introduce military censorship.

It is not clear how the Telemarathon was exactly created despite several accounts from various sources. From the onset, it included the parliamentary channel Rada, the public broadcaster Suspilne, and four commercial channels: ICTV/STB, 1+1, Inter and Ukraine 24. These last four groups were controlled by or closely tied to the tycoons Viktor Pinchuk, Ihor Kolomoyskiy, Dmytro Firtash and Rinat Akhmetov respectively. According to Tkachenko, who had been a long-time manager of the 1+1 media group, the idea of the Telemarathon came from “the head of one of the channels”. However, many in the media industry doubt this and say that it was initiated by Zelenskyy’s office. Svitlana Ostapa, a chairwoman of the supervisory board of Suspilne, told me that on the first day of the full-scale invasion, Tkachenko informed her that the public broadcaster’s airwaves would be taken over by the state-run Rada TV. This was done without providing any official decision about the takeover.

Not all the big commercial channels joined the Telemarathon – most notably Channel 5 and Pryamiy, linked to former President Petro Poroshenko, and opposition-oriented Espresso TV. According to Tkachenko their managers “failed to find a compromise” with the ministry. Espresso TV’s editor-in-chief Anastasia Ravva told me that the channel did not receive an offer to join at the start of the full-scale invasion. Later, in April 2022, these three channels were taken out of the national system of digital broadcasting, which further limited their outreach.

Meanwhile, several close associates of Zelenskyy from his pre-political career as a comedian and actor in the Kvartal 95 Studio aired their own shows on the Telemarathon. Yevhen Koshoviy and Oleksandr Pikalov, Zelenskyy’s friends who were involved with Servant of the People, the sitcom about an accidental president played by the real world’s future president, run a satirical news programme called “Bayraktar News”. It mocks Russian propaganda and airs political talking points that go far beyond the ostensibly apolitical and unifying spirit of the Telemarathon. Koshoviy admitted to me that he regularly meets with Zelenskyy to “discuss tasks ahead” and he also said he believes that Ukraine is “not countering Russian propaganda well enough”.

The Kvartal 95 Studio, which was co-founded by Zelenskyy and is known for its sharp political humour mixed with slapstick sketches, continues to produce and air comedy shows that praise the authorities and ridicule their opponents during the Telemarathon’s prime time hours. Their producers have told me that promoting studio’s work through the Telemarathon allows them to compensate for the war losses inflicted on their business.

The Telemarathon was initially focused on providing information on current events and promoting patriotic attitudes. But over time, the public has started to view it as a public relations operation for the president and the authorities, rather than a reliable source of information. The share of total viewership dropped from 40 per cent in March 2022 to 14 per cent by the end of 2022, according to Ukrainian media monitoring organization Detector Media. Now it is down to around ten per cent. It is widely criticized by independent journalists and often dismissed among soldiers, with both groups viewing it as potentially harmful “propaganda of success”. The trust in the Telemarathon dropped from 69 per cent in May 2022 to 36 per cent in February 2024, according to Kyiv International Institute of Sociology. In April 2024, the US State Department said that the Telemarathon negatively impacts press freedom in Ukraine.

Tkachenko, now a former minister, told me in July 2022 that the project “won’t run for another year or many years, because the war will be over”. Almost two years later, the Telemarathon continues and is still strongly valued by Zelenskyy. With more than 1.5 billion hryvnias (37.8 million US dollars) of state funding given to the Telemarathon and foreign broadcasting in 2024, the channel owners and managers are determined to keep the project going, Svitalan Ostapa told me recently.

Decline of oligarchic influence?

Some praise the Telemarathon for diminishing the influence of the oligarchs on television, which had been a key source of information and entertainment as well as the main arena for political infighting in independent Ukraine. Like never before the state has become a central media actor in Ukraine. Despite this, such an optimistic view has few backers. According to the Ukrainian political commentator Vitaliy Portnikov, what we are observing is better described as a transformation of the oligarch-controlled oligopoly into a state-controlled cartel. In a conversation with me, Mykola Knyazhytskiy, a lawmaker from the opposition European Solidarity party and former media manager, expressed a view that “the deal that is mutually beneficial to oligarchs and authorities will end once the financing is over and we may see a comeback of oligarchic television.”

For now, the oligarchs have preserved their indirect ownership of the TV channels but refrain from impacting editorial lines. One exception is Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man who announced the closure of all his channels in July 2022. Several months later, former employees of his Ukraine 24 created a new channel – My-Ukraina – which reportedly has a warm relationship with Zelenskyy’s office. The Telemarathon has been criticized for giving space to journalists formerly associated with pro-Russian positions. Some of them left after a petition calling for their removal was signed by dozens of big names in Ukrainian media.

Looking back, the Telemarathon gave Zelenskyy an unexpected opportunity to achieve the aim he previously pursued through the so-called “anti-oligarch law”. Back in November 2021, after the biggest peacetime political battle of his presidency that resulted in some deputies, including the then Parliamentary Speaker Dymytro Razumkov, leaving his party, Zelenskyy pushed through a bill aimed at crushing the influence of the oligarchs in the media. The law did not take effect due to Russia’s invasion but it was received with criticism both in Ukraine and abroad. The Swedish economist Anders Aslund argued that this bill emulates the policies of Vladimir Putin in the early 2000s, when media assets were snatched up from oligarchs and handed over to more loyal businessmen.

The law was not the first radical decision in the media domain taken by Zelenskyy before the invasion. In February 2021, the president shut down three pro-Kremlin television networks controlled by Viktor Medvedchuk, a friend and associate of Putin. The Venice Commission voiced concerns but the United States backed the decision. A month later, Ukraine launched a Russian-language state TV channel called Freedom (FREEДОМ, formerly UATV), which continues to work and influence Russian-speaking audiences both in and outside of Ukraine.

Under fire, under pressure

While Zelenskyy and his team gained control over much of the country’s television, Ukrainian independent media outlets remained vibrant despite unprecedented wartime challenges. The war has put Ukrainian journalists at risk and turned many of them into war reporters. As of April 2024, ten Ukrainian journalists and media workers have died during their editorial assignments, while 76 have died serving in the army or as a result of hostilities, according to the Ukrainian Institute of Mass Information. Moreover, 14 have gone missing, 34 have been wounded, and there have even been 25 instances of kidnapping recorded. Russia has been also continuously targeting media outlets and telecommunications infrastructure to cut the Ukrainian population off from independent information. It has shelled 19 TV towers, including on the territory of Babyn Yar in Kyiv in March 2022 and in Kharkiv in April 2024. It has switched off Ukrainian broadcasting 29 times and seized or ruined 19 editorial offices. In the occupied territories it has been replacing Ukrainian media with Kremlin propaganda.

The war has led to the closure of 234 Ukrainian media outlets. In its initial phase, the work of newsrooms was disrupted and some came under economic strain mainly due to the collapse of advertising revenues. Over time, however, many of the journalists who initially left endangered cities, including Kyiv, got back to their offices. Income from grants alleviated the initial shock and it is now a vital source of funding for some outlets. Media have adapted and even many new projects have taken off. In March 2023, a new media law went into effect, bringing Ukraine’s media market regulations in line with European legislation.

Although war reporting and the investigation of Russian war crimes dominated coverage in the wake of the invasion, independent outlets quickly returned to their traditional watchdog role. They soon found themselves on a collision course with the authorities. This conflict erupted in full force in January 2024, when a video aimed at discrediting journalists from an investigative outlet Bihus.Info appeared online. The recording published by “The People’s Truth” YouTube channel, a fake channel created for this occasion, showed the company’s camera operators allegedly taking drugs during a corporate event. In an investigation following the scandal, Bihus.Info established that cameras were installed in the vacation lodge where the company held the event by agents of the Security Service of Ukraine. According to Denys Bihus, the founder of Bihus.Info, his employees had been under surveillance by as many as 30 individuals for at least several months. He told me that in his view authorities’ behaviour was “aimed at intimidating the entire independent media community with various degrees of pressure”

Another top investigative journalist, Yuriy Nikolov, the chief editor of Nashi Hroshi, an anticorruption outlet monitoring government spending, was targeted just two days earlier. Unidentified men tried to break into his home and vandalized his door with graffiti demanding he enlist in the military. The move was preceded by a smear campaign on anonymous pro-government Telegram channels. Nikolov broke the biggest corruption story of the war when in 2023 he reported that the defence ministry had been buying eggs and other products for troops at inflated prices. The investigation sparked questions about military spending and prompted Zelenskyy to fire several top officials, including Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov. 

Both events sparked outrage among Ukraine’s media community. Mediarukh, an independent media association, said that pressure on journalists undermines Ukraine’s democratic credentials and stated that other outlets, including Ukrayinska Pravda, NV, Tsenzor, Vavilon, and Liga.net, were also targeted. Oksana Romanyuk, director of the Institute for Mass Information, said that the situation resembled the times of President Viktor Yanukovych, when many journalists were prosecuted and targeted by similar campaigns.

In response, Zelenskyy said that such pressure on journalists was unacceptable. Ukraine’s Security Service said it had opened an investigation into the actions that targeted Bihus.Info. Moreover, ambassadors of the G7 countries met with leading Ukrainian journalists to address concerns about the decline of press freedom in Ukraine.

These attacks on the media marked a definite end of the media’s extraordinary wartime trust in the authorities. Bihus told me that in his view the story of surveillance showed that the Ukrainian authorities are prone to rely on “manual control” and “act emotionally”. Nikolov has in turn pointed out that with an absolute majority in the parliament; extraordinary prerogatives granted to the president under martial law; and the manual control of the judiciary; all power in Ukraine is in the hands of Zelenskyy and his confidants, such as the head of his office Andriy Yermak. “With no balance of power in Ukraine, media are the last instance able to control the authorities,” he said.

Ukraine’s independent media are under pressure but they do fight back and feel powerful. As Sevgil Musayeva, the editor-in-chief of Ukrainska Pravda, put it during the media conference organized in Bucha in May 2024, investigative journalism became “a powerful factor of political life” throughout the decade following the Maidan protests of 2014. Dozens of top officials lost their jobs due to critical domestic coverage and even the conduct of military operations is increasingly scrutinized.

Social media of war

The Ukrainian wartime media landscape does not consist solely of government-controlled TV and independent quality-driven outlets. Far from it. Most Ukrainians get their daily news from social media: above all from Telegram, which became a leading news source in Ukraine due to its quick access to unrestricted information, as well as YouTube, which turned into a popular alternative to television.

As many as 73 per cent of Ukrainians use social media to get their news as compared to 41 per cent relying on news sites, 30 per cent on television, ten per cent on radio, and three per cent on printed newspapers, according to a study conducted by independent media development organization Internews in late 2023. The popularity of Telegram has surged since the invasion, with as many as 72 per cent of Ukrainians using it to get their news in 2023, compared to 20 per cent in 2021. It is followed by Facebook with 19 per cent and YouTube with 16 per cent. The usage of largely uncontrolled TikTok rose from one per cent to five per cent during war time.

Primarily a messaging app, Telegram owes its success as a news source to its straightforward design. Users can easily set up channels and post content to an unlimited number of followers in a top-down manner with no algorithms interfering and almost no advertising. Ihor Lachenkov, the creator of one of Ukraine’s most popular Telegram channels, told me that the platform “out performs the alternatives” not only because it is most efficient in terms of audience outreach but also because it does not filter out some popular war-related content as too graphic or purportedly promoting hate speech or violence. Other social media outlets such as Facebook or Instagram often end up doing this.

Ukrainian officials and institutions, for example President Zelenskyy, Ukrainian railways, or the popular Mykolaiv regional Governor Vitaliy Kim, run their own hugely popular channels, all contributing to Telegram’s boom in the country. However, only 12 of the app’s 100 most popular channels belong to established media, officials or public figures. Many popular channels mix news with speedy half-official information about air attacks and sensational content. Despite having millions of followers, they often ignore journalistic standards. Unlike official media in Ukraine, many Telegram channels are in Russian, and some are widely regarded as pro-Moscow. Ukraine’s Security Service published a list of channels it said “carry out special information and psychological operations in the interests of the Russian Federation” in March 2022 and later expanded it. Ukraine’s main intelligence directorate said that Russia has spent 250 million US dollars to promote its narratives on the platform in Ukraine. On the other hand, some influential Ukrainian channels such as “Vertical”, “Joker” and “House of Cards” are likely secretly tied or close to the Ukrainian presidential administration, according to the Detector Media. They publish unverifiable insider information and dark PR targeting critics, including independent journalists and political opponents.

Telegram’s founder, Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov, vows that Telegram aims to be a “neutral platform” and not a “player in geopolitics”. Critics in Ukraine, however, accuse it of ties to the Russian state and contributing to its war effort. Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, has registered a bill that aims to regulate the workings of the platform, but it is unlikely that lawmakers will try to shut the popular application down altogether.

How has the war changed Ukraine’s media? Despite multiple challenges, Ukraine jumped from 106th to 61st in the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index between 2022 and 2024. But this judgement, if warranted, shout not overly reassure us. In the wartime reality, Ukraine constantly needs to strike the right balance between preserving unity, mobilizing resources and enabling criticism and freedom of speech. Moscow appears determined to show the western world that its political system is superior, and that Ukraine’s fragile democracy is destined to fail. Ukraine’s media are fighting to prove this wrong, and they won many battles, but most likely many still lie ahead.

Aleksander Palikot is a journalist covering politics, history and culture in Central and Eastern Europe.

journalism, media, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Ukraine