Western Media Coverage

Strong complaints about Western views and media coverage were expressed by Oksana Zabuzhko, who reported making several unsuccessful efforts in 2014 to gain press coverage, particularly in Germany.

The general perception among the Ukrainian commentators was that in 2013-14, Western journalists often paid little attention to the “Ukrainian file” and did not consider it a priority. Moreover, they were frequently suspicious of comments coming from people of Ukrainian background. As a result, the Western press tended to rely on journalists stationed in Moscow, who read and wrote in Russian, inhabited a “Russian infor­mation space,” and had become accustomed to viewing things “through Moscow’s eyes.”

At the same time, however, several interviewees were sympathetic toward the dilemmas of the Western journalist who had been assigned to writing a story and dispatched to Kyiv for two days. Preordained views, stereotypes, and a superficial understanding of issues in most cases shaped the narra­tive. Short conversations over coffee on Independence Square were often insufficient to substantially affect the published story. Interviewees none­theless expressed an understanding of the political pressures exerted on Western governments and publics, especially the reluctance to lose Russian markets. Therefore, the decision, in particular by members of the European Union, to go against its own immediate economic interests by applying sanctions was lauded (Shevchenko).

The most commonly expressed view among those interviewed, most of whom had earlier spent time in the West and during the Euromaidan had

The Euromaidan, Revolution, and War With Russia 153 maintained regular contact with Western journalists, was that Western elites had over the course of events in 2013-14 understood the situation and realized that they were dealing with a Russian aggressor (Finberh, Zakharov).

The inability of Western journalists to understand Ukrainian national­ism was discussed at length by Volodymyr Kulyk, who indicated how institutional change since independence in 1991 had prepared the ground for a new sense of Ukrainian identity and had guaranteed that Russia would be seen as an enemy.⁵ Less than a year after the Euromaidan, an amazing 64% of the population registered support for integration into NATO, a figure previously inconceivable, and a phenomenal reorienta­tion if one considers that for decades this population had been taught to see NATO as an aggressive imperialist:

The new attitude toward nationalism flows from this. It is something Western critics fail to understand, when, for example, they discuss the law on decommunization and continue claiming that to validate the UPA or the OUN is to further push away the south and east [of Ukraine]. Today this is no longer the case. The south and east no lon­ger fear these terms. They are less positive toward them than the cen­ter and much less so than the west, but there is a steady movement toward more and more support. This change has been brought about by institutional practices, such as the teaching in schools, which has been more neutral in discussions about the OUN and UPA and has not demonized them.

According to Kulyk, the main identifying feature of the OUN and UPA in the minds of contemporaries is their armed struggle against Russia, which was long, fierce, and—to a large degree—successful. The inspira­tion provided by this example of militancy was what most people were looking for during and after the Euromaidan:

If the reality of what the ideologists said in the 1930s, what happened in Volhynia in 1943, what was done to the Jews, comes out, what will

be the effect? It will be sobering. One group will deny everything for a long time, but most people will modify their views. They will say: “We admit that terrible things occurred but on the other hand these terrible things do not negate the fact that they fought the enemy who came to their lands.” This is something that foreign critics fail to understand. They say: “If you admit to Volhynia, or to the fact that a pogrom took place in June 1941, then you have to admit that the OUN and the UPA and in general everything to do with nationalism was terrible.”

When the population asks whether that means that the only legitimate heroes of the time should be sought in the Red Army, Western critics reply: “You have the dissidents, the good men Dziuba, Grigorenko, and Dzhemilev. In a multicultural spirit, take a Ukrainian, a Tatar, and a Jew, and make a pantheon.” But things do not work this way, com­mented Kulyk:

People need to see not only wise men, but also fighters. In any nation one cannot simply focus on meek sufferers who hated violence and spoke wisely; one also has to find room for those who punched peo­ple in the face. People want to see these individuals because right now there is a great need to do some punching in the face. One of my theses is that the Maidan’s legitimization of violence as an important (maybe the only important) means of resistance led to a search for predecessors who in earlier periods had taken up violence as a means of resisting. In our history these are nationalists, various Otaman Zelenys [charismatic leaders of the peasantry], the boys of Kruty [Kyiv students who tried to stem the Bolshevik advance in 1918], and so on, but above all—the OUN.