GLASNOST DEFENSE FOUNDATION'S DIGEST No.193 (August 2, 2004)

Ukraine - Autonomous Crimean Republic. Crimean Peninsula's most popular newspaper cloned.

By Leonid Ivanov, Simferopol (Original article can be found on Obkom's website at http://w3.obkom.net.ua/read/1919.html).

A new independent public and political weekly, Krymskaya Pravda - Narodnaya Gazeta, has hit the SoyuzPechat kiosks across the Crimea. Significantly enough, the first part of the name of the newspaper founded by the Crimean Congress of Russian Communities (the very organization which suggested late last year nominating President Kuchma for yet another term) has been borrowed from the Peninsula's most popular daily, Krymskaya Pravda.

The new publication's editor Sergey Shuvainikov, who is also a member of the Supreme Rada of the Autonomous Crimean Republic (ACR) and president of the Congress of Russian Communities, makes no secret of the fact that his newspaper was established as a counterbalance to its namesake. The first issue's editorial says that Krymskaya Pravda, which used to be the mouthpiece of the Crimean Regional Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party in Soviet times, is controlled today by two former speakers of the ACR parliament - Sergey Tsekov of the "Russian Bloc" and Leonid Grach, leader of the Crimean communists, who is said to "spare neither time nor money to regain the power he so recklessly gave up".

"Fulfilling the political orders of Moscow's business circles, Bakharev's newspaper (Krymskaya Pravda - Obkom) has actively tried to portray the incumbent leaders - in the first place, the Crimean Council of Ministers and its head Sergey Kunitsyn - as negatively as possible, not only criticizing their performance but also collecting all kinds of rumors, gossips and unchecked information about them in a bid to undermine their public image," the editorial goes on to say.

Mr. Shuvainikov stresses that the policy pursued by the "old" Krymskaya Pravda is "a far cry from meeting the genuine interests or supporting the human rights struggle of the Russian people who have been turned in Ukraine and the Crimea into a Diaspora, an ethnic minority". "Obviously, it it because of his 'care' for the promotion of Russian-Ukrainian friendship that the KP editor-in-chief published a dirty pamphlet by some literary worker named Buzina, 'Taras Shevchenko the Vampire', in which he poured on the reader all the mean gossip and idle talk that literary pygmy had managed to dig up about Ukraine's greatest artist and poet," Shuvainikov says in his editorial. "This kind of filth can only be made public by a person who is either a clinical case or a pathological hater of the fraternal Ukrainian nation with its language, culture and history so inseparably linked with those of the Russian state and Russian people. After that publication, for all I know, many people, including Russians, have lost all interest in the newspaper calling itself Krymskaya Pravda ['Crimean Truth' - Translator.]"

"The newspaper made an even meaner step last spring, on the eve of the 60th anniversary of the forced resettlement of Crimean Tatars to Central Asia, by publishing a series of articles damaging the ethnic and human pride of a whole ethnic group," the editorial goes on to say. "That had nothing at all to do with criticism of the Medjlis radicals; it was a provocation designed to drive a wedge between the Slav and Tatar population. The question is why set up the Russian people who are generally opposed to any interethnic strife and who only want to see all the residents of the Crimea enjoying equality before the law and the conflict-fanning elements being held answerable for their unlawful behavior."

In conclusion, Mr. Shuvainikov expresses the hope that his newly founded newspaper (with a circulation of 20,000) will be "a whole lot better" than the "old" Krymskaya Pravda. That makes one recall the old popular saying: "Great boast, small roast." Many observers have agreed the new paper's content and tonality are generally similar to its namesake's. Suffice it to quote a passage from a KP-NG article entitled "Crimea to Support Viktor Yanukovich" which says: "The sole candidate with an extremely low popularity rating in the Crimea is Viktor Yushchenko, a politician supported by a group of nationalists. A handsome man capable of making many ladies sigh with admiration, he is generally disliked by the majority of male politicians who can well see his weaknesses and inconsistencies, his dependence on more powerful political figures, and his inability to think big or make independent decisions. He is disliked even by those electors who will not go to the polls on the voting day. Therefore, we are calling on them to go and vote for our own nominee."

Some say Mr. Shuvainikov's newspaper is backed by the Crimean Premier Sergey Kunitsyn who is known to have had his fill reading the "old" Krymskaya Pravda. This is indirectly proved by the fact that the first one to congratulate Krymskaya Pravda - Narodnaya Gazeta on its establishment was the Internet-based publication Krymskaya Liniya (Crimean Line), also a brainchild of Mr. Kunitsyn's. As it warmly welcomed the release of the new newspaper, it expressed the hope that "Crimean residents will rely on it as a source of genuinely trustworthy and serious information about all aspects of modern life".