Not the stars! The pensions of Donetsk grandmothers are used to finance terrorists! – in Kyiv, journalists had a fight over the DPR
At the debate “Dialogue in times of war?” held at the University of Kiev-Mohyla Academy. Ukrainian journalists have not yet come to a common opinion on whether negotiations with representatives of the DPR and LPR are necessary, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
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The first to speak was TV journalist Andrei Kulikov, who recently visited Donetsk and calling to dialogue between the warring parties and demonstration of the opinions of the republics on Ukrainian TV.
In his speech at the debate, he recalled the words of ex-president Leonid Kravchuk about the possibility of negotiations with the devil if he was confident of his victory, but supplemented them with his own interpretation.
“I believe that you need to sit down at the negotiating table even if you know that you will lose,” the journalist emphasized. – Because you will lose, but the word and proof will remain for the people who are watching that this is not only important, but also necessary. Some say, how can you conduct a dialogue with those who stand with arms against the independence of Ukraine and invited Russian aggressors. In my opinion, taking into account the fact that real power, including force, on the other side is in the hands of these people, it is also necessary to conduct a dialogue with them. And we need to conduct a dialogue with those who are under the power of these people.”
According to the speaker, these people need to be shown that they “are not considered complete traitors, scoundrels, sub-Ukrainians, and so on.” He also emphasized the importance of seeing other journalists from Ukraine in Donetsk.
“They told us: you are all lying,” recalls Kulikov. “They heard, and some saw the stories and realized that not all Ukrainians lie. Who will tear these people away from the interventionists if not us.”
The main opponent of this initiative was the editor of the OstroV portal Sergei Garmash, who left Donetsk after the start of the conflict.
“We need to have a dialogue with people, but not with terrorists,” he said. – We have created an entire Ministry of Information Policy for dialogue. The dialogue needs to be conducted through radio, by setting up our TV channels to broadcast there. Moreover, there are people there who are controlled from Russia.”
“And they say that we are controlled by the United States,” Kulikov retorted. “There are manipulations on both sides.”
“You are too famous a person, Andrei,” Garmash did not give up. – It’s the same if Stalin went to Berlin, which would be regarded as the surrender of the USSR. If you become a TV star, then be a star on your screen and don’t let journalists and politicians use you for propaganda purposes.”
It must be said that this was not the only critical remark addressed to Kulikov. Let’s say a journalist from the newspaper Den approached him with a question that immediately contained the statement: “Do you understand that your trip will legitimize the civil war?”
“With such trips, we actually recognize that this is not Russian aggression, but a civil war, as Putin spoke about,” Garmash supported his colleague.
The television journalist did not agree with such statements and expressed regret that the Den newspaper, having previously published critical material about his trip to Donetsk, did not call him first, but used exclusively the message of journalist Denis Kazansky.
Nevertheless, Kulikov was never able to convince the editor of the OstroV website, who noted that Ukrainian journalism suffers from fragmentation and does not want to see the whole picture.
“The journalist went there and talked to her grandmother, who is suffering from lack of pension,” Garmash gave an example. - That's all. It is necessary to pay pensions there, although this is an occupied territory, there is no presence of the Ukrainian state there. But some kind of deductions will go from these pensions, they will flow into the financial system of the terrorist organization, and then this money will be used to buy weapons or pay salaries to those who kill our soldiers. But we don’t think about it, we see grandmothers. Although there are so many such grandmothers walking around in Kyiv, we do not notice this and do not demand negotiations with Yatsenyuk or Poroshenko.”
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