GLASNOST DEFENSE FOUNDATION'S DIGEST No. 171 (February 24, 2004)

Ukraine. Editors of Russian-language media in Donetsk Region demand equality with colleagues issuing newspapers in Ukrainian.

By Mark Agatov ,
GDF staff correspondent in Ukraine

The editors of more than a hundred newspapers and magazines in the region of Donetsk have sent Ukraine's President and Speaker of the Supreme Rada (parliament) an open letter requesting equitable treatment for the Russian-language and Ukrainian-language press. Of the 930 periodicals issued in the Donetsk Region, only 19 are in Ukrainian. Meanwhile, the newly-established tax rates (see the previous edition of the GDF Digest) threaten to ruin the regional Russian-language media.

"If we ever had some advantages over the Russian press, they are all gone now. Considering the fact that the newsprint is cheaper in Russia, and that country's advertising market is larger, the actual prices of newspapers and magazines are lower there," said Oleg Shabada, deputy head of Ukraine's Novy Mir publishing house. "The Russian-language media in Ukraine will have a hard time trying to compete with their Russian peers."

"In our region, there are actually no Ukrainian-language periodicals for the mass reader," Dmitry Durnev, editor-in-chief of Moskovskiy Komsomolets v Donbasse, said. "We compete only with those issued in Russian, like our newspaper. Under the circumstances, levying VAT on the Russian-language press will deal a blow on the residents of the Donetsk Region in the first place".

Rimma Fil, editor-in-chief of the publishing firm Donetskiye Novosti, maintains that "imposing VAT on the Russian-language press is a discriminatory measure providing for the gradual ousting of Russian and artificial promotion of Ukrainian".

The editors and publishers of Russian-language media in the Donetsk Region insist that all the media people in Ukraine must be placed in equitable conditions and enjoy equal rights as taxpayers.