41_1-8

AUGUST 9, 2018 ISSUE No. 41 (1173)
Tel.: +38(044) 303-96-19,
fax: +38(044) 303-94-20
е-mail: time@day.kiev.ua;
http://www.day.kiev.ua
Dear readers, our next issue will be published on August 16, 2018
REUTERS photo
JUPITER’S MOON EUROPA:
Continued on page 4
A PLACE TO LIVE IN TOMORROW?
Professor Anatolii Vidmachenko on the likelihood of colonizing Mars, the Moon, and other celestial bodies
“Poland is and will remain
Ukraine’s strategic partner”
Ambassador Jan
PIEKLO met with Den’s
Summer School
students, answered
complicated questions,
and shared his ideas
about ways to preserve
the common heritage
Continued
on page
2
Dancing on journalists’ bones
Concerning the tragedy
that befell the film crew
of journalists Orhan
Dzhemal, Kirill
Radchenko, and
Alexander Rastorguev,
who were killed in the
Central African Republic
on July 31, 2018, some
things are obvious and
proven, while others are
still unclear
Continued on page 7

2
No.41 AUGUST 9, 2018
DAY AFTER DAY
WWW.DAY.KIEV.UA
By Solomiia NYKOLAIEVYCH, Den’s
Summer School of Journalism, 2018
Has the old conflict between the
two neighboring countries been
finally settled? Does a common
problem help unite the parties
concerned? These and other
questions were posed to Polish Ambassador
Jan Pieklo by young journalists of Den’s
Summer School of Journalism. “Poland is
criticizing Russia for its aggression in the
east of Ukraine and for the annexation of
Crimea,” said Mr. Pieklo. He went on to
assure those present that Poland and
Ukraine would “continue to cooperate” and
help each other. He noted that the Polish
government is already trying to slow down
the launch of the construction of Nord
Stream 2. This gas pipeline is apparently
not as important for Poland as it is for
Donald Trump the businessman. Mr. Pieklo
said that Poland and Ukraine share their
national heritage which is enormous,
invaluable, and indivisible on a world and
local scope. The Polish diplomat stressed
that Poles must stand shoulder to shoulder
with Ukrainians in building a joint nonstereotyped
future.
● EU APPROVES OF UKRAINE’S
REFORMS
Solomiia NYKOLAIEVYCH, Lesia
Ukrainka Eastern European National
University: “How would you briefly describe
the Polish view on the recent EU-
Ukraine and NATO summits, particularly
the meeting between Vladimir Putin
and Donald Trump?”
“Remarkably, three such events took
place within one week. This wasn’t planned
that way, but just happened. I think the
EU-Ukraine summit in Brussels had an effect
on the NATO summit that was attended
by your president and his Georgian
counterpart. The meeting between
Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump was interesting,
considering that it lasted for
about two hours and that we know nothing
about what happened in Helsinki then.
Both presidents were accompanied by interpreters
and no one else. No one knows
what they spoke about. There was a news
conference after their meeting. Putin
said a few words about Ukraine and noted
that Donald Trump doesn’t recognize
the annexation of Crimea. The US president
didn’t mention Ukraine at all, and nor
did he mention what was happening in that
European country. As for the EU-Ukraine
summit, preparations were made and
everyone knew what would happen. President
Petro Poroshenko wanted Ukraine to
be part of EU activities and the EU and
Ukraine to come out jointly against Project
Nord Stream 2. This didn’t happen.
The Ukrainian president also wanted to
discuss Schengen [visas], but it was impossible.
Instead, the EU approved of
Ukraine’s progress in making reforms,
particularly in regard to the Anticorruption
Court, as required by the IMF to issue
the next tranche. In other words,
that summit passed without surprises. At
the NATO summit, Hungary blocked the
meeting of the Ukraine-NATO Commission.
The Georgia-Ukraine Black Sea format
was adopted instead. Of course, this
wasn’t what Ukraine and some NATO
countries wanted, but the important fact
was the presence at the summit of the
Ukrainian and Georgian presidents. Getting
back to the meeting between Putin
and Trump, one wonders about the choice
of Helsinki as the site, considering that
the Final Act [of the Conference on Security
and Cooperation in Europe] was
signed there, providing for the inviolability
of frontiers. Symbolically, the two
presidents met in Helsinki after Putin had
breached all of Russia’s agreements on
this inviolability. However, their meeting
was very important. It meant that Russia
wants to take part in global politics. We
don’t know what decisions were made
then, but we’ll learn soon enough. Some
believe that a decision was made that
would be bad for Ukraine and negative for
Poland and Europe. Still, we don’t know
what decisions were made. Your colleagues,
US journalists, ranging from
Conservative to Republican, were very
critical about that meeting and the press
conference. That conference was the only
chance to learn something about what
was happening. We’ll see.”
“Poland is and will remain
Ukraine’s strategic partner”
Ambassador Jan PIEKLO met with Den’s Summer School
students, answered complicated questions, and shared
his ideas about ways to preserve the common heritage
Polish President Andrzej Duda made
a very strong statement at the NATO
summit. Would you care to comment?
“For Ukraine, it means that Poland
will continue to support Ukraine’s NATO
and EU membership aspirations; that
Poland is criticizing Russia’s aggression
against Ukraine and the annexation of
Crimea. The Polish president simply
stressed the good old postulates: Poland’s
stand in the matter of Ukraine, criticism
of Russia’s aggression and annexation of
Crimea, as well as the maintaining of
sanctions [against Russia]. Poland is and
will remain Ukraine’s strategic partner.
Neighbors are neighbors. We may quarrel
now and then, but we have common interests
in terms of security, business, and
economy. Our countries are interested in
learning from each other’s experience.”
● “I’M AN OPTIMIST, I KNOW
THAT WE MAY BLOCK
NORD STREAM 2”
Yuliia DOVHAICHUK, Taras
Shevchenko National University, Kyiv:
“Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic states are
blocking the launch of the construction of
Nord Stream 2. Poland is a member of the
EU, so what is there to prevent it from using
means of stopping the process?”
“We’re trying to do just that, but it’s
a very sophisticated process. Germany is
a powerful EU member and it is very interested
in Nord Stream 2, because very big
money is involved in the project and it
spells big profits for Germany and Russia.
There is also the EU energy directive and
we want to use it. Denmark is the only
country required to build Nord Stream 2,
considering that the pipeline, if built, will
pass through its territorial waters. Denmark
is still undecided. So far, everything
is being done in accordance with the
law, including the EU laws. However,
these laws can be interpreted in various
ways. Denmark will make its decision.
You and me wouldn’t want this decision to
be in favor of Nord Stream 2. The Danish
government is under a great deal of pressure
from some EU countries and Russia.
I’m an optimist, I know that we may block
Nord Stream 2. It’s interesting to note
what US President Donald Trump told
Russian President Vladimir Putin, concerning
the sanctions that will be imposed
on those who will take part in the construction
of Nord Stream 2. It is interesting
because it’s about money that will be
lost. Part of German society – particularly
the Greens – is resolutely opposed to
Nord Stream 2. For them, environmental
reasons come first and politics next. They
are very active in the European Parliament,
so we need an alliance.”
Viktoriia HONCHARENKO, Law
School, Dnipro: “How reliable is the US
stand in the matter of Nord Stream 2, considering
its resolute opposition to the
project before Donald Trump and Vladimir
Putin met, and the fact that this resolute
opposition was veiled during the press conference
while describing Putin as just a
competitor?”
“That’s an interesting situation, considering
that Donald Trump isn’t a professional
politician but a businessman.
Some believed from the outset that he
would take a different, businesslike stand
in the matter. The US-Russia trade ratio is
rather low and the US can transport gas to
other countries. In this sense, Russia is
America’s rival, considering that America
would want to sell gas to Europe. Poland
and Lithuania have built coast terminals to
accommodate such US gas deliveries. This
is an economic interest, not just politics.
Russia is using gas as a political weapon,
so this is a political matter for us while it
is an economic as well as political one for
the United States.”
● MINSK AGREEMENTS:
APPARENTLY INEFFECTIVE
Photo by Ruslan KANIUKA, The Day
Vladyslava SHEVCHENKO, Kyiv-
Mohyla Academy National University:
“You said in an interview that the Minsk
Agreements aren’t working the way you’d
want them to. Why aren’t Europe and the
United States taking any steps to change
the format?”
“I remember a meeting dedicated to
the Minsk Agreements and discussing the
matter with the German ambassador. He’d
been for the agreements from day one and
I said it was time to think of a new format.
Let’s face it: the Minsk Agreements are ineffective
and it’s also true that the US is involved
in the process. Some believe a UN
peacekeeping force should be deployed. I
have my experience of working with a
UN peacekeeping mission. I was a journalist
during the war in the Balkans and I
was badly shaken by the Srebrenica massacre
– considering that the Bosnian Muslims
were slaughtered when the UN peacekeepers
were in position. It is also true that
the conflict in the Balkans wouldn’t be ended
without NATO support – America’s support,
to be precise. I don’t think that the
Balkan case is closed. We’ve seen Russia
try to topple the Montenegrin administration.
It didn’t work and Montenegro is
now a NATO member despite all Russia’s
attempts to the contrary. There is no decision
on a UN peacekeeping mission in
Donbas and only its possibility is being discussed.
No one has come up with a proposal
on how this could be accomplished. We
don’t know whether this new concept was
discussed in Helsinki.”
Mykola SIRUK: “There are recent
media reports about Vladimir Putin allegedly
saying, during a meeting with
diplomats, that he can see a referendum in
the east [of Ukraine].”
“That’s incredible. Vladimir Putin
says what he thinks is best for Russia. Donald
Trump follows suit in his own way. He
says something [today] and will say something
different in 24 hours. Putin isn’t totally
sure how to handle Trump. I think he
did what Trump usually does, that if he said
that they had discussed ways to hold a referendum
in Russia, it was his wishful
thinking, although I don’t buy it.”
● CAPITALIZING
ON HISTORICAL ISSUES
Iryna LADYKA, Ivan Franko National
University, Lviv: “There existed a
please-forgive-us-we-forgive-you consensus
between our countries for a certain period
of time. Our president used this formula
addressing the Polish Sejm in 2014.
However, no events in history, not even the
most dramatic ones, can divide our nations.
Polish politicians have been using
such historical issues for political purposes
of late. Why?”
“I think it’s a balanced matter. You also
have such politicians. Ukraine is a
strategic partner of Poland. We know
that a secure Ukraine means a secure
Poland, and a secure European Union.
Building a [better] future is the most important
thing. You’ll have elections and so
will we. Some politicians believe they can
capitalize on historical issues and win
more votes. There is a part of history that
relates to the Second World War. There are
many interpretations. I think this part
should be discussed and written about, but
our future is the most important thing. We
must build a common future. President Andrzej
Duda said that ‘our goal is Ukraine’s
prospects for EU and NATO membership.’
This is also Ukraine’s goal.”
● A DIFFERENT CONCEPT
OF HONORING THE MEMORY
OF THOSE WHO HELPED
EVERYONE AT A TIME
OF ORDEAL
Daria CHYZH, Borys Hrinchenko
University, Kyiv: “Visiting Volyn, President
Andrzej Duda said that some 100,000
Poles died in that tragedy, compared to
5,000 Ukrainians. This is a striking historical
truth. However, a Ukrainian historian
said in an interview that the Polish
president had cited absolutely fictitious
figures… Do you think that we should resort
to such debates or leave the subject to
historians?”
“Like I said, you will have elections
and so will we. As for the number of victims
on both sides, I wrote an essay for the Lvivbased
magazine ‘Yi.’ It was about Volyn
[aka Volhynia. – Ed.], about Jedwabne, a
Polish village where Jews were massacred
during WW II, and about the war in
former Yugoslavia. I demonstrated the
same mechanism that triggered off such
crimes, when villagers would be told that
they could kill Poles living next door and
take their property. We remember that the
UPA [Ukrainian Insurgent Army – Ed.]
wasn’t strong in Volyn, but the mechanism
was there. The same was true of Jews in
Poland and of interethnic conflicts in
Bosnia. Everyone had to be killed, so there
would be no eyewitnesses. This mechanism
is so horrible, you can only try to imagine
it. We must pay tribute to all victims, especially
to all those mixed Polish-Ukrainian
and Ukrainian-Polish families. They
were traitors in the eyes of both sides. I saw
the same thing in former Yugoslavia where
a Serb married to a Croat or a Croat married
to a Serb would be the first victim. The
same is true of the Volhynia Massacre.
There is a very good concept of honoring
the memory of those who helped everyone
at a time of ordeal. This concept exists in
Poland and your president also says that
one shouldn’t focus only on victims, but also
praise those who helped fellow humans
during that horrible war.”
● EVERY EFFORT SHOULD
BE MADE TO MAINTAIN
A DIALOG
Andriana BILA, Taras Shevchenko
National University, Kyiv: “The Institute
of National Memory resumed functioning
in 2014, specializing in historical
issues and historical legacy. For some
reason, this institute is anything but popular
in Poland. Does it really pose a threat
to the Polish interests?”
“I know Dr. Volodymyr Viatrovych
personally and I don’t think that he can
pose any threat. We speak to each other and
speaking is necessary. I think that politicians
can make rash statements now and
then, but I also think that it is possible to
speak with Mr. Viatrovych, just as it is possible
to speak with the head of our Institute
of National Remembrance [IPN]. I remember
IPN head Jaroslaw Szarek’s visit
to Kyiv last year. He met with Mr. Viatrovych
and it was an enjoyable experience.
They shook hands and spoke. Then there
was a press conference and everyone agreed
that we’d solve all problems. Everything
was fine, but then things started happening.
Every effort should be made to maintain
a dialog. This is a very trying period
for you and for us. We’re marking the 75th
anniversary of the Volhynia Massacre.
However, we take a joint stand in regarding
Russia as a threat to our countries and
to the Baltic states. We remember what
happened in the past. When Poland,
Lithuania, and Ukraine were at odds, Russia
did as it pleased and divided those
countries.”
● TO DEVELOP AND
IMPLEMENT A JOINT
TOURIST PRODUCT
Yana KHROMIAK, Borys
Hrinchenko University, Kyiv: “Your
country is actively supporting Polish
culture in Ukraine. What is there to prevent
a joint project like restoring the castle
in Pidhirtsi where Polish nobility
used to play host to kings, including the
French one? There are many joint Ukrainian-Lithuanian
projects. What about
Ukrainian-Polish ones?”

WWW.DAY.KIEV.UA
DAY AFTER DAY No.41 AUGUST 9, 2018 3
“This is our common heritage. There
is no dividing it into ‘ours’ and ‘theirs.’ All
of it is ours and we must put our heads together
to figure out how to go about it. We
realize that you have no access to EU funds
to arrange for the restoration of that castle,
for example. We’re paying for the reconstruction
of those beautiful frescoes in
the Lviv Garrison Church that used to be a
Jesuit cathedral. We’re interested in preserving
this heritage and are willing to donate
to such projects. There are many gorgeous
castles in Lviv oblast – in Zolochiv,
Pidhirtsi, Olesk where John III Sobieski was
born. This could become an excellent tourist
project and bring us very good money as an
outstanding historic site. We should develop
and implement a joint tourist product,
so we could offer visitors from Europe,
America, China, and Japan guided tours –
like the Golden Horseshoe [popular tourist
itinerary in Lviv oblast]. This takes infrastructure
and investments. I’ve been to Pidhirtsi
and I love the place. It’s the world’s
most beautiful castle, but there is nothing
to show to the tourists. Investments must
be made and an exposition organized.
There is an idea, but it is still to be implemented.
The director of a gallery in Lviv,
a friend of mine, wants to do something
about it. He is a decent man with a European
worldview. He visited the curator of the
Wawel Royal Castle in Krakow and they
held talks. In a word, cooperation has begun,
but it will be quite some time before
one can say ‘We’ll get the money and
everything will be ready in a year.’ After
WW II, the Soviet Union wanted to draw a
clear line between the Ukrainians and
Poles, making Ukrainians bad guys and
Poles good guys. There was also a concept
to the contrary. This Soviet tradition is still
in our heads. I don’t think that you of the
younger generation have any such concepts,
but my generation was raised that way, and
that was precisely how your parents were
taught to treat the Poles. Today, we must
simply change this old worldview.”
● ACTIVE UKRAINIANS
BENEFIT UKRAINIAN AND
POLISH ECONOMIES
Yana KHROMIAK: “What about the
Polish Card? I’m half Polish, my grandmother
was a full bloodied Pole. Can I receive
the Polish Card?”
“The Polish Card is an interesting element;
it makes [the bearer] aware of being
part of the Polish community at large.
In Poland, this card ensures a number of
advantages, including free tuition at Polish
universities. As a matter of fact, a number
of Poles originate from Lviv oblast,
Ternopil, and Volyn. Their family roots
were destroyed by the Soviet regime. Today,
some two million Ukrainians live,
study, and are investing in Poland, particularly
in Krakow, my home town, Wroclaw,
and Lublin. These active Ukrainians
benefit the Ukrainian and the Polish economy.
Ukrainians are earning money in
Poland and sending them to their families
in Ukraine. Someone told me it’s bad for
Ukraine, that it’s brain drain. This is precisely
what happened in Poland after the
communist regime imposed martial law in
1981, when the plummeting living standard
and ration cards forced Poles to go to
Ukraine to buy things they needed.”
We know that you are a man of letters,
author of the book Zapach aniola [Scent
of the Angel] that was translated into
Ukrainian in 2015. Aren’t you planning
another book, this time about the Revolution
of Dignity or what’s happening in
the east of Ukraine, or the annexation of
Crimea?
“I’m thinking of writing another
book, but the ambassador’s daily routine
is such, there is simply no time left for anything
else, although I keep making notes.
I’ll probably write another book when I retire.
I promise you that it will be about
Ukraine and the Revolution of Dignity. I
read the Cyborgs script. A very good one.
The movie is still to be screened in Poland
after just one screening in Warsaw. I also
write poems and some have been published
in Ukrainian and Polish.”
Read more on our website
The Summer School of Journalism
is supported by the
NATO Information and Documentation
Centre in Ukraine
“Sentsov has no vacations”
As Ukrainian film director is still on hunger strike, activists
are seeking new ways to support “Kremlin’s prisoners”
By Mariia PROKOPENKO, The Day
About 20 people – artists,
human rights activists, and
just concerned individuals –
gathered near the Presidential
Administration in the
morning of July 31 to brainstorm
new ideas of how to draw the world’s
attention to “the Kremlin’s hostages.”
The picketers also demanded that
public administration bodies and
President Petro Poroshenko inform
the public about what is being done to
save Oleh Sentsov and other
Ukrainians illegally imprisoned in
Russia and the occupied Crimea, about
their condition and the possibilities of
exchange or certain arrangements.
“First of all, our goal is a dialog,” the
picket’s co-organizer Anastasiia SE-
HEDA says. “There should be a clear report
to the public – not only about behind-the-scenes
deals, even if they are
really being made. Campaigns in support
of Sentsov are very often held now – not
every day, as before, but still… We
managed to attract more people to this
matter and increase publicity. We cannot
come, break the bars open and free
the people, but we can at least cause a
stir so that the matter is discussed not
only in Ukraine, but also abroad.”
There were not many picketers
due to either the heat or the vacation
season. The upside is that this topic
still remains interesting to radio and
newspaper journalists – about 15 of
them – came with cameras.
● “THERE’S A DEAD CALM
NOW”
“I think it is especially important
to draw attention to this topic in the
off-season and at a time of vacations.
Sentsov is still on a hunger strike, he
has no vacations,” Mariia TOMAK, a
coordinator at the Human Rights Media
Initiative, emphasizes. “We know
that Oleh agreed to take at least a few
spoonfuls of nutritional mixture a
day. But, of course, this is not enough
for one to survive or function normally.
Sentsov in fact continues his
hunger strike, and we see no encouraging
signals that he may be freed in
the immediate future. At least, we
don’t know about this kind of signals.”
Human rights activists are trying
to appeal to international organizations,
but they also remain silent.
“The latest large-scale event occurred
in Helsinki – the summit of presidents
Trump and Putin. There’s a
dead calm now, and we want to hear
ideas from society,” Tomak adds. The
human rights activist recalls some
ideas she saw in social media after the
campaign had been announced, such
as the proposal to exert pressure on
the European Court of Human
Rights, which is still to hand down a
ruling in the Sentsov case, and the
idea to invite the President of
Ukraine to Labytnangi, where Oleh is
serving his term.
“Our diaspora in Switzerland
and France has taken an interesting
action: when Sentsov went on a
hunger strike, they chose a day and
began to jam the switchboards of the
Russian consulates in those countries.
Phoning there, they asked the
same question: ‘When will Oleh
Sentsov be freed?’ I think we can organize
sort of a large-scale campaign
to mark the anniversary of the conviction
of Oleh Sentsov and Oleksandr
Kolchenko,” Tomak says. The upcoming
anniversary of the conviction
is on August 25.
Another “greeting from France”:
a portrait of Sentsov was hung at the
Paris city hall’s facade on July 30.
The city mayor Anne Hidalgo supported
this action.
● “THE QUESTION OF
FREEING ‘THE KREMLIN’S
PRISONERS’ IS NOT BEING
DISCUSSED ANYWHERE”
Last week the Cabinet of Ministers
resolved to disburse a lump sum
of 100,000 hryvnias to the families of
the Ukrainians held in Russia for political
reasons. “I think this should
have been done long ago,” Tomak
comments.
At the same time Ihor Hryb,
whose son Pavlo was illegally arrested
in Russia, was appointed to chair
the department that deals with people
deprived of personal liberty at the
Ministry for Temporary Occupied
Territories and Internally Displaced
Persons.
“We have also lobbied the establishment
of the department Ihor
Hryb chairs, but this is sort of a tactical
structure which is supposed to
be responsible for monitoring and
collecting information for sanction
lists, maintaining contact with relatives,
etc. This does not resolve the
problem of the absence of a negotiator.
Hryb will not be dealing with this
or searching for the ways of liberation,”
Tomak says. “So this problem
remains topical, for we can see that
Photo by Yurii SAFRONOV
PARIS, JULY 30. A PORTRAIT OF OLEH SENTSOV HANGS ON THE CITY HALL WALL. THE FRENCH CAPITAL’S MAYOR
ANNE HIDALGO, WHO BACKED THE INITIATIVE, TWEETED ABOUT SOLIDARITY WITH SENTSOV: “WE ARE CALLING
FOR FREEING HIM AND REAFFIRMING OUR ADHERENCE TO FREEDOM OF THOUGHT AND RESPECT FOR
DEMOCRACY”. THE INSCRIPTION READS: “FREEDOM TO SENTSOV; PUTIN – TO THE HAGUE”
this question is not being discussed
anywhere. Russia won’t meet our demands
just like that, but we must
pressure it. The point is that this
question [of ‘the Kremlin’s prisoners.’
– Author] was not raised in Minsk.
We know Russia’s attitude – they
claim they are observers in Minsk,
where only the Donbas is being negotiated.
OK. But I don’t see the reason
why it is impossible to exert pressure
on Russia via our Western partners
and force them to speak, for example,
about the humanitarian situation in
Crimea and the release of the people
illegally detained in Crimea and Russia
on a certain alternative platform.”
● ENVELOPES WITH
A PORTRAIT OF SENTSOV
Some well-known people are also
coming up with the ideas of supporting
“the Kremlin’s prisoners.”
For example, writer Andrii
KURKOV suggested in Facebook
making postage stamps, a part of
the proceeds of which could be used
to help the families of the Ukrainian
“prisoners of conscience” in Russia
and Crimea. “Several times in my
life, I’ve come across stamps whose
price was indicated as a common
mathematical formula without the
‘equals’ sign, for example,
‘3 crowns + 2 crowns.’ This means
that the stamps were issued both as
a means of postage and a means to
raise funds for a certain good purpose.
In other words, the second
part of the value was intended for
public good. And I thought: it would
be a good idea if Ukrposhta [Ukrainian
Postal Service. – Ed.] issued a
series of stamps with portraits of
the Ukrainian political prisoners
who languish in Russian prisons and
the inscription ‘3 hryvnias + 2 hryvnias’
so that every two hryvnias
could be used to help the family of a
political prisoner. Besides, such
stamps could be stuck to all the envelopes
with letters sent to Russia
so that Russian citizens could also
know by sight those whom the
Kremlin kidnapped and is trying to
kill slowly,” Kurkov wrote.
Interestingly, Ukrposhta immediately
responded to this call. The
company Kurkov also referred to on
his Facebook page answered that the
current Ukrainian law does not allow
issuing this kind of stamps, for they
carry an additional tariff. However,
the answer says Ukrposhta has long
been toying with this idea and, hopefully,
the Provision on Postage
Stamps will be updated this very
year, which will make it possible to
issue charitable stamps.
● “EVERY UKRAINIAN MUST
RISE”
It is for about a month now that
filmmakers have been carrying out
the project “Reading Oleh Sentsov’s
Stories Out Loud.” Everybody videorecord
an excerpt from Sentsov’s
book Short Stories and then make a
big video out of these clips. Quality is
not the object – you can simply put a
phone with a switched-on camera in
front of you and make a recording.
The video is to be sent to the email address
storiessentsov@gmail.com.
Well-known Ukrainian, Polish, and
British actors and directors are taking
part in this project. Incidentally,
girl students of the newspaper Den’s
Summer School of Journalism also
made this kind of video in July.
“The main thing is that people
now show interest in Oleh as not a
person on a hunger strike but an
artistic personality who must be
freed from prison and continue his
pursuit of art,” film producer Anna
PALENCHUK says about the “Out
Loud” project. “I hope Oleh will be
released tomorrow and we will no
longer gather here. We’ve been always
expecting him to be freed very
soon. Naturally, we will be making
the final video, and not only the
video, in order to constantly speak
about Oleh and draw the attention
of both the authorities and the public.”
Incidentally, Anna, who knew
Sentsov even before his imprisonment,
is working together with director
Tamara Trunova on staging
his play Numbers. The premiere is
scheduled for November.
Anna says Oleh is very principled
and believes firmly in certain ideals.
“And it is not about his persuasions – it
is about our common values. It is the
values of freedom, the values of this
country, it is about the fact that Crimea,
Oleh’s homeland, is occupied,” the film
producer continues. “I think that, from
this angle, Sentsov is each of us. And
when we all come to understand this, we
will free him. There must be much
more of us. Every Ukrainian must rise
to free our citizens.”
It will be recalled that, according to
human rights activists, at least 70 citizens
of Ukraine are being held in Russia
and the occupied Crimea on politically
motivated charges. Out of them,
Volodymyr Balukh and Stanislav Klykh
have been on a hunger strike for over
140 days and over two months, respectively.

4
No.41 AUGUST 9, 2018
CLOSE UP
WWW.DAY.KIEV.UA
By Mariia PROKOPENKO, The Day
some reason, when
contemporary sci-fi writers
send people to Mars or the
Moon, they focus on human
“For
relationships, while Mars
or the Moon itself is no longer a matter
of science fiction for them. They
consider a flight to the nearest star to be
the most groundbreaking project. But,
in my opinion, it is fantasy pure and
simple,” planetary scientist Anatolii
Vidmachenko says when I ask him
which of the science fiction may soon
become a science fact. Mr. Vidmachenko
reads a lot, particularly the
books of this genre, but he cannot
single out one that especially impressed
him in the last while.
Mr. Vidmachenko, a professor and a
doctor of sciences (physics and mathematics),
works as chief research associate
at the department of the physics of substellar
and planetary systems of the Main
Astronomical Observatory of Ukraine’s
National Academy of Sciences. We talked
about real, albeit remote, scenarios of the
human colonization of such celestial bodies
as Mars, the Moon, and Europa (natural
satellite of Jupiter), as well as about
the “asteroid taxi.”
We spoke on the eve of Mars’ perihelic
opposition on July 27. There is nothing
bellicose in the name – at this period
the Sun, Earth, and the “red planet” form
a straight line during the course of their
orbits, and the distance between Earth
and Mars becomes minimal. This occurs
once in 15 years on the average. It is the
most convenient time to launch space
missions to Mars, for this will reduce the
spacecraft’s flight path by several dozens
of millions of kilometers. This May, too,
NASA launched the InSight landing
module accompanied by CubeSat
nanosatellites MarCO-A and MarCO-B
(“Purely Ukrainian names!” Mr. Vidmachenko
jokes) which will explore the
ground and seismic activity on that
planet. The module is expected to land on
Mars on November 26, 2018, and the accompanying
satellites will fly on. There
are a lot of things to explore. The only
problem is that Ukraine may end up
short of planetary scientists due to the
scanty funding of research. The following
interview with Anatolii Vidmachenko
is about this and other, more space-related,
things.
● “VOLCANOES ON MARS
MAY BEGIN TO ERUPT
IN THE NEAR FUTURE”
The CubeSat nanosatellites, now flying
to Mars, will explore its soil and seismic
activity. What arouses the greatest interest
of scientists in this matter?
“There are about two and a half dozen
volcanoes on Mars – the ones we are accustomed
to, cone-shaped, where something
erupts on top and lava flows down. It
was believed previously that they are very
old. But it turned out that the age of the
rock on the slopes of the four highest of
them, which was supposed to be billions of
years, was in fact not more than a billion.
This means that, in geological terms, a huge
high-temperature mass flowed from there
very recently. And this aroused interest in
studying the planet’s seismicity – for if
there are seismic tremors, these volcanoes
can still erupt. One of the models shows that
these volcanoes ‘slept’ for several hundred
million years, then they ‘were fed up’
with this and decided to get up. And they
may begin to erupt again in the near future
– at least some of these two and a half
dozen. These eruptions are preceded by seismic
activity – Mars-quakes. Therefore,
one of the main objectives is to see whether
or not Mars is seismically active.
“Before this there was only a small instrument
on one spacecraft, which allowed
finding out whether there were any
Mars-quakes.”
Speaking of the colonization of Mars,
can seismic activity be a complicating
factor?
“To prevent it from being a complicating
factor, one should not land on these
volcanoes. There are two and a half dozen
of them, but there is also the remaining territory.
The diameter of Mars is only half
that of Earth, so you can find a place to live.
The only trouble is rather a high radiation –
it is almost twice as high as in the orbits of
manned stations. Besides, the astronauts
who orbit Earth are also protected by our
planet’s magnetic field. There is no protection
at all on Mars, for it has almost no
magnetic field.
“An astronaut can be exposed to a
lethal dose of radiation in the seven or eight
months of flying to Mars, when the probability
of his survival is 50 to 50 even if solar
activity is as low as it is now and there
are practically no ejections on the Sun. And
if some people have landed on the planet,
they must immediately dig into the ground
or hide in a cave. The flight to Mars is
planned for 2022 [Mars One project. – Author],
when solar activity will be at its highest.
In such periods, astronauts tend to refrain
even from flying around Earth. So it
is better to do this either before 2022 or after
2025.”
● HOW MICROORGANISMS
CAN “TAME” MARS
Jupiter’s moon Europa: a place to live in tomorrow?
Professor Anatolii Vidmachenko on the likelihood
of colonizing Mars, the Moon, and other celestial bodies
PLANETARY SCIENTIST ANATOLII VIDMACHENKO STANDS NEXT TO THE PAVILION FOR THE CELESTRON-40
TELESCOPE AT THE MAIN ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF UKRAINE.
CELESTRON-40 IS USED FOR WATCHING STARS WITH EXOPLANETS, ECLIPSING BINARY STARS, AND DISC STARS
els were fitted with three or two only. Incidentally,
some of these vehicles have
been working on Mars for about ten years.”
Speaking with journalists about the
colonization of Mars, you once said favorable
conditions could be created there by
way of terraformation, “Earth-shaping.”
How can it look like? How long will it last?
“We must wait for two hundred thousand
years or so (laughs). Indeed, it is quite
a long process. Our team is now toying with
the idea of disseminating microorganisms
in Mars’ atmosphere, which could feed on
carbon dioxide and discharge as much
oxygen as possible. We believe that several
dozens or hundreds of nanosatellites
filled with special biomaterial, i.e. microorganisms
that consume carbon dioxide,
can work there for several dozens or hundreds
of years, and, as a result, it will become
warmer on Mars, water will begin to
flood over some bottom lands, and atmospheric
pressure will go up. For in the first
several hundred million years the pressure
on Mars was 0.4 bars, whereas it was 1 bar
on Earth [now the pressure near Mars’ surface
is 160 times lower than on Earth. – Author].
This means it is possible to try to
raise it again.
“Viking spacecrafts searched for life on
Mars’ surface from the mid-1970s onwards.
We wished they would at least dig
Photo from the website NASA.GOV
MARS, AUGUST 5, 2015, ON THE EARTH CALENDAR. NASA’S CURIOSITY MARS
ROVER IS TAKING A SELFIE IN THE BUCKSKIN AREA. IN MARCH 2018, THIS
MARTIAN LABORATORY “MARKED” 2,000 SOLAR DAYS OF WORKING ON THE
“RED PLANET.” CURIOSITY’S NUMEROUS SELFIES, WHICH HAVE HIT THE
HEADLINES ALL OVER THE WORLD, HELP SCIENTISTS WATCH THE ROVER’S
CONDITION
Photo by Artem SLIPACHUK, The Day
You once said in an interview that
Mars is covered with very harmful and
very powdery dust…
“It is the so-called perchlorates. These
chloric compounds are really very dangerous
for breathing and very small-sized.
While our dust, say, on the table is hundreds
of microns, and some particles can
even be a millimeter in size, the size of perchlotates
is less than a micron, i.e., a
thousandth part of a millimeter. Accordingly,
they penetrate into all cracks and
clog all kinds of filters. Only completely airtight
stations can work on Mars. If a station
has wheels, the latter usually have
some fissures which these perchlorates
will fill up. And while some of the Mars
rovers initially had six wheels, later moddeep
enough to reach ice. As it turned out
later, they were very close to this. Their
scoops could dig five to seven centimeters
deep, while, as it is known now, frozen water
lies at a depth of more than 15-20 centimeters.
If they had reached water, the
strategy of future explorations could have
been essentially changed at that very time.
Instead, everybody searched for water there
from the late 1970s until the early 2000s.
Now that water has been found, it is necessary
again to search for life [incidentally,
there is ice at Martian poles, and it became
known in late July that there are under-ice
lakes with liquid water on the planet. – Author].
In 2009 or so, designers began to develop
spacecrafts that can search for any
kind of life, at least microbes.”
● THE MOON’S VOLCANOES
AND MINERAL RESOURCES
I read that Ukrainian scientists are
taking part in international Moon exploration
projects which can be a steppingstone
for more advanced explorations on
Mars.
“What is interesting in this case is the
work of China. They decided: yes, Mars is
good, but one must learn just to survive in
conditions other than those on Earth. So
they showed a very nice residential and research
complex in Antarctica and said
they would first test this kind of system on
the Moon and then would take it to Mars.
In other words, they are willing to participate
in Mars-related projects, launch
spacecrafts to and explore the planet at a
short distance, but they postpone colonization
for a later time.
“A number of scientists have examined
ongoing changes on the lunar surface at the
Main Astronomical Observatory and the
National Karazin University of Kharkiv.
Those who worked at Karazin University’s
Astronomy Research Institute mostly applied
spectrophotometric and spectropolarimetric
methods. And, for example,
Vitalii Kysliuk explored the Moon’s figure
at our observatory.
“Besides, we have made several suggestions
on how to watch the Moon change
the tilt of its rotation axis by astronomical
methods, installing a telescope in circumpolar
areas or near the equator. We repeated
the work of the 1960s, employing a
new method, and showed that what used to
take dozens of years to research something
can only take a year now.
“In addition, resources on the surface
of Earth are running out, but they are
available in outer space. The first source is
the Moon. There are also a few asteroids flying
not so far from Earth, and they can also
be used to good advantage. Moreover, in
some of them the deposits of metals –
iron and nickel – exceed those in the half
of Earth’s mines. And these asteroids are
not so big. You can pull and work with them
here. But it is also possible, instead of
pulling over the whole rock, to fly there, extract
what you want, and get the readymade
material right on the spot. For example,
you can make there and bring home
several container-loads of microchips.”
Can there still be any seismic activity
on the Moon?
“There is some volcanic activity there.
When Apollo spaceships were flying to
the Moon [there were six missions from
1968 until 1975. – Author], they left some
seismometers there. These devices recorded
that, in addition to the usual volcanic activity,
when the crust quakes, there is also
the so-called impact activity – a space
meteoroid hits the surface with a bang. Incidentally,
seismic activity on the Moon’s
far side, which we can’t see, is several times
higher than on the side we can see.
“In most of the lunar volcanoes lava
flowed out into crust cracks and spread
about, hardening on the surface. In 1999,
a volcano was found on our satellite, which
is a cone about six kilometers high with the
Compton-Belkovich Crater. Lava could
flow out of it about 800 million years ago,
i.e. very recently in geological terms. Interestingly,
what flowed out contained radioactive
element thorium – a huge quantity
of it was found on this volcano’s slopes.”
● IN SEARCH OF LIFE
ON EUROPA
You and a colleague of yours spoke at
the international scientific conference
“Astronomical School of Young Scientists”
in May about the possibility of colonizing
Jupiter’s moon Europa. One of the
advantages is water under a thick layer of
ice. At the same time, it is difficult to reach
Europa. Could you say more in detail
about the advantages of this celestial
body for colonization? What explorations
of it are being carried out now?
“It was known long ago that there is a
10 to 12 kilometers deep ice layer on Europa
and still deeper, from a few dozen to,
maybe, hundreds of kilometers, there is water.
However, ice may thaw in some places,
which forms a small-size lens with water at
a certain depth. As salt freezes in ice,
melt water will be unsalted and practically
potable. Therefore, it is possible to drill
just in this place and get water. Gravitation
is there in fact the same as on the Moon –
one sixth of that on Earth. Hence, a float-

WWW.DAY.KIEV.UA
CULT URE No.41 AUGUST 9, 2018 5
ing island can theoretically be made in this
water lens. You can extract some oxygen
and nitrogen out of it, while ammonia is already
available there, – so you can live.
Jupiter shines above you through the ice,
and the Sun glows far away.
“And it turned out in 2012 that Europa
has not only water, but also fissures
through which it is ejected into the surrounding
space – geysers. This means water
is in fact on the surface. If you search
for life at 12-kilometer intervals, you’ll
have to drill very much. But if there are
such geysers, you just fly by, quickly grab
a few kilograms of this water, pack it into
a container, and examine whether there
is life on Europa.”
● “LYING LOW” ON MERCURY
If people wished to live somewhere
else, which celestial body should they begin
with?
“Three colleagues of mine and I spoke
at the ‘Astronomical School of Young Scientists’
about where to search for life and
which territories to choose for living in.
The first conclusion is: man must not be exposed
to asteroid-related danger and must
live on Earth only. It is necessary to carry
out the so-called repopulation. For example,
we choose a few asteroids. There are
about 5,000 asteroids now, which periodically
come close to Earth. We have selected
several dozen asteroids two to three kilometers
in diameter, which have water,
iron, silicon, and other mineral resources.
Some of them fly circles and others have
elongated orbits and periodically fly near
Earth or near the chosen asteroids that fly
circles. Accordingly, we land on such an asteroid,
bury ourselves under its surface,
disengage oxygen from water, and colonize
this celestial body. When we launch a couple
of dozen of such stations, we will have
dozens of what may be called fixed-route
taxis for communication with Earth.
“We believe it is possible to ‘get on’
some asteroid that is flying into the direction
we need, fly up to another one and
land on it. You don’t have to fly millions
of kilometers – instead, you calculate a moment
to fly up to your final destination on
an ‘asteroid taxi’ and then you transfer, so
to speak, from one asteroid to another in
just a few days on a small spacecraft.
“For a longtime colonization, it’s necessary
to choose asteroids that have nickel-iron
ore, extractable water, and rare
chemical elements. There is even gold and
platinum on some. In this case you can easily
live and work in their caves, extract mineral
resources, and produce the goods humankind
needs. ‘Taxi managers,’ life support
personnel, etc., will stay there permanently,
while narrow specialists needed
for a given asteroid factory may well work
on a rotational basis. Naturally, there
should be permanent communication between
stations. Two or three dozens of
such space ‘fixed-route taxis’ will be enough
to colonize the space from Earth, through
the asteroid belt, up to Jupiter. And after
living there for several years, people get
back to Earth, and we examine changes in
their organism and decide whether or not
we can move there for good.
“The second place is the abovementioned
Europa and a few more moons of
Jupiter and Saturn. Europa is very close to
Jupiter. Its magnetic field is too strong for
us, and we may be exposed to excessive radiation.
So we should reach Europa and immediately
get under the ice, where there is
good water – please swim and bathe
(laughs). There is also Ganymede, an icy
moon of Jupiter, which is farther away
from that planet. There’s less radiation
there and enough water. There are three or
four objects around Saturn, which can also
be colonized. And, quite unexpectedly,
it is Venus.”
It is sultry there – more than 400 degrees
Celsius on the surface…
“Yes, but temperature varies from
zero to +30 Celsius at the altitude of 50-60
kilometers. The pressure is one atmosphere.
But atmosphere consists of carbon
dioxide. On the other hand, this gas includes
oxygen – so take it, break down, and
isolate oxygen. Moreover, there’s also a lot
of water vapor, and it’s possible to extract
nitrogen. Now let us imagine: if you make
a ball one kilometer in diameter, fill it with
a mixture of nitrogen and oxygen or, as the
Americans do in their spacecraft, helium
and oxygen, the inner and outer pressure
will be the same – one atmosphere. Yet the
Earth-type atmosphere will be slightly
lighter than the outer one. Besides, our ball
has certain buoyancy. About a hundred
thousand people can settle there in several
tiers. Gravitational acceleration, which
is 9.8 meters per second on Earth, is 8.9
there – very close. Your bones will be intact,
no osteochondrosis at all (laughs). So
this is an interesting object of colonization.
“And here is one more option. Scientist
Oleksii Steklov has calculated depth-related
temperature changes on various bodies. For
example, it is quite hot on Mercury [340
Kelvin degrees. – Author]. But Mercury’s
axis has no tilt and does not vary
with rotation. There are a lot of craters at
the poles, where the Sun never shines, and
the temperature there is 90 K or much less.
There is even water there, for comet nuclei,
which almost completely consist of ice, used
to fall in those areas. It is estimated that
frozen water will suffice for millions of
years there. And temperature is always
from zero to +20 degrees at the depth of only
three to thirty meters. So it is always
warm in the polar regions – from the latitude
of 70 degrees up to the poles. There’s
water next to you. So you’re welcome to
hide at a low depth, live, watch the Sun, and
warn terrestrials if there’s been a major
flare on it.”
● LIGHTNING AND CHANGE
OF SEASONS ON JUPITER
You have explored Jupiter and Saturn
very much. Lightning occurs in Jupiter’s
atmosphere much more often than on
Earth. To what extent does it resemble
ours?
“Lightning on Jupiter somewhat resembles
the one I saw in Kyiv the other day.
We have seen nothing of the sort for a long
time. The Dnieper flows six kilometers or
so from the observatory, and the sky is
clouded there, but here something seems to
be roaring in the sky all the time. This has
been happening continuously. Usually,
thunder booms, lightning strikes, and
that’s all. But here it was roaring for almost
an hour. Almost the same occurs on
Jupiter – multiple-discharge lightning
can ‘roar’ for 40-50 hours in a row. There
are also the so-called continuous flashes.
For example, the Galileo spacecraft recorded
that something like lightning shone all
the time at a 1,000 by 300 kilometers
place, and this lasted for years.”
You were the first to record natural oscillations
in the atmospheres of Jupiter
and Saturn, and then you and your colleagues
found seasonal changes in the atmospheres
of those planets. Can these
seasonal changes be compared with those
on Earth?
“There are seasons on Earth owing to
the tilt of the terrestrial axis – 23.44 degrees.
The axis of Saturn is tilted by
26.7 degrees. There are seasonal changes
there as well, but you must watch them
very long because the period of this planet’s
revolution around the Sun is 29 something
years [29.46 years. – Author]. We discovered
and registered them. Jupiter’s
period of revolution is 11.86 years. It
took us seven years to see that there can be
seasonal changes there, and we recorded a
difference between summers in the southern
and northern hemispheres. But the tilt
of Jupiter’s axis is three degrees only.
Whence is the change of seasons? We
found that the magnetic and the geographic
axes form an angle of 12 something
degrees. For this reason, if you add these 12
to the three-degree tilt, you will have 15.
And the situation will be just the reverse
six terrestrial years, or Jupiter’s six
months, later. This means that the geographic
and the magnetic poles have the
same impact as geographic inclination
alone has in our case.
“As we examined the upper layers of
Jupiter’s atmosphere, it turned out that
3 plus 12 degrees of tilt are enough to bring
about seasonal changes. Besides, the orbit
is more elongated that that of Earth.
When Jupiter’s northern hemisphere is
closest to the Sun, it receives 40 percent
more heat than it will do six years later,
when the southern hemisphere is exposed
to solar rays. This alone is supposed to trigger
changes in the atmosphere, and we
recorded them.”
Read more on our website
THAT’S HOW THE ZVENYHOROD PARK IS GOING TO LOOK LIKE
Princely Zvenyhorod to be revived
Scholars are launching
a historical-cultural park in Lviv region
By Oksana HRUBA, Lviv
Photos by Vitalii HRABAR
Ukraine’s first historicalcultural
park “Ancient
Zvenyhorod” will be launched
in autumn not far from
Lviv, based on a nationwide
archeological site. It will cover an
area of approximately 38 hectares. The
project is a brainchild of the
Department of Architecture and
Urban Development at Lviv Oblast
State Administration. The project
won in the competition of the regional
development initiatives. Approximately
12 million hryvnias will be
allotted for its implementation within
the EU sector budget support
program. The project envisages the
regularization of the site and the
central square of the village,
conservation of the sites of the
principality time with the aim to
preserve them for future research,
marking the most significant
buildings of the principality time with
the help of modern artistic and
technical means, laying out the roads
of the ancient settlement with the
purpose of outlining the late medieval
and early medieval fortifications, the
visual reconstruction of the unique
defense system of the 18th century,
creating the basic touristic
infrastructure around the historicalcultural
park “Ancient Zvenyhorod,”
tourist routes, etc.
Zvenyhorod was one of three
capitals of the principality, where
the Ukrainian statehood emerged in
11th and 12th centuries in the Transcarpathian
region. According to
archeologists, the research of
Zvenyhorod started back in the mid-
19th century and is still underway.
The largest excavations took place
in the 1950s-1990s. The impressive
collection of the archeological artifacts
that counts for tens thousands
of findings, shows Zvenyhorod as a
big economic, cultural, and spiritual
center.
THE ZVENYHOROD MUSEUM DISPLAYS OVER 300 ITEMS DATED 11th-12th CENTURIES
The co-author of the project, a
Zvenyhorod researcher, junior researcher
at the Archeological Rescuing
Service Nataliia VOITSE-
SHCHUK commented to The Day:
“The question of launching a preserve
in Zvenyhorod was raised after
the collapse of the Soviet Union. But
while the documents were drafted in
1995 Ihor Svieshnikov, who was the
mastermind and the moving force of
the process, died. In the 1990s the
preserves in Halych and Belz were
launched, however a different fate
awaited Zvenyhorod. But I think
history doesn’t like unfinished cycles,
and now the time has come for
me and our team with the support of
concerned citizens to create this
touristic-cultural and educational
center. We have already applied the
documents and are waiting for the
decision. Last year, not to waste our
time, we filed a project application
for the grant program for the adaptation
of the sites of cultural heritage
for tourist activity. And we decided
to create a preserve. But the
question is not about just launching
a preserve, but continuing to develop
it. Because we already have the
preserves that remain only as the
names on the administrative map.
We have no preserve yet, but we
have the opportunity to bring the
territory in order, so we have decided
to launch a park. This will be a
recreational area with tourism as its
main activity. The park will conserve
and preserve the site with minimum
intrusion into its historical
landscape, we are not planning any
construction, we will only renew the
external borders of the fortifications
that have been preserved.
While walking in the park, the person
will learn the interesting facts
from the history of the Zvenyhorod
Principality, and partially it will be
done through the game, because the
project is meant not only for adults,
but for children as well. We want to
create a competitive tourist project
in the Ukrainian market to fulfill
the main task, preserving the site
for the future generations,” Voitseshchuk
says.
“We’ve made a film about the
history of Zvenyhorod, from ancient
time till today. We’ve also launched
an exhibit at the Zvenyhorod Museum
to make people learn about our
town of the principality time, it’s
called ‘Ancient Zvenyhorod – coming
back from oblivion’ and showcases
over 300 items from the 11th-12th
centuries. It will be open till December
1. There are very few archeological
exhibits, as this is a very specific
sphere of museum activity, because
it’s not easy to display the archeological
items, moreover to add some informational
background. We display
the most interesting items from historical
viewpoint, which were found
in Zvenyhorod in the period between
the 19th century and 2010, when the
last excavations took place. Most of
the items were found during the significant
studies, which lasted in the
period between 1971 and 1986, the
boyar quarter which was excavated
to more than a half. Unique remains
of a wooden building, which had been
well preserved due to the qualities of
the peat soil as a conserver of organic
materials, were found there,” Nataliia
specifies.
Certainly, the touristic potential
and prospect of famous Zvenyhorod
are huge, but, most importantly, the
scholars must start
regularizing and
framing it on a serious
level. Voitseshchuk
states: “Unfortunately,
we have
no favorable conditions
to implement
cultural and historical
projects. Culture
is the last thing to be
cared about. We must
change the approach,
there must be an exploration
with the vision
of ourselves and
understanding why
we are doing this.
And there should be
the understanding
that either you make a
high-quality product
and compete or you
cease to exist. Actually,
there must be a
professional academic
management.”

6
No.41 AUGUST 9, 2018
CLOSE UP
WWW.DAY.KIEV.UA
By Khrystyna SAVCHUK,
Anastasiia KOROL, Den’s Summer
School of Journalism, 2018
The Ukrainian team which will
compete in the Invictus Games in
Sydney at the end of October
started its second training session
on August 7. Let us recall that our
team will participate for the second
time in this international competition for
wounded soldiers which was founded by
Prince Harry. Overall, various sports
events for veterans are held almost on a
weekly basis, because this is the best and
most accessible way of rehabilitating
wounded soldiers. Presidential
Commissioner for Rehabilitation of
Wounded Anti-Terrorist Operation
(ATO) Soldiers Vadym Svyrydenko
talked to Den/The Day about it before.
And recently, Svyrydenko joined his
assistant Kostiantyn Vinnichenko as
they became lecturers at Den’s Summer
School of Journalism.
This conversation was special in
that we heard many frank stories that
helped us understand how and why people
become soldiers, risk their lives in the
war, and how they then return to peaceful
life. Back during the meeting, an idea
emerged of creating – together with
students of the Summer School – a club
of sports journalists, dedicated to telling
about the veterans’ competitions. Indeed,
their victories inspire not only other
soldiers, but also ordinary people. So
watch out for this initiative developing.
In the meantime, read about the transfer
of experience between different generations
of soldiers, people finding their
vocations at the front, and why there is
always a place for the creation of new
things in war.
● “PEOPLE WHO HAVE BORNE
ARMS UNDERSTAND EACH
OTHER”
How to get out of the war’s grip
Vadym Svyrydenko and Kostiantyn Vinnichenko talked about
it using real-life examples at Den’s Summer School of Journalism
Olha KRYSA, Ivan Franko National
University of Lviv: “The membership
of the Ukrainian team, which is
to compete in the Invictus Games in Sydney
this fall, is already known. There is
a certain association in people’s minds
which sees men alone as participants of
such competitions. But they are not
alone in it, and the national team includes
women as well. Can you tell us
more about female participants in international
veteran competitions?”
Vadym SVYRYDENKO: “We even
ask women to apply for such competitions
as much as possible. Women can
take part in the Invictus Games as well.
Olha Benda was among them, having
served as a cook of the 72nd Separate
Mechanized Brigade and lost her leg. She
had a sports prosthetic leg made. She got
interested in participating in the selection,
but wanted to go back to the front
line again, so she did not even plan to go
to Australia at first.”
Anastasiia KOROL, Vasyl Stus
Donetsk National University: “Why is
it important for you to get Ukrainian
soldiers to participate more actively in
such competitions?”
Kostiantyn VINNICHENKO: “First
of all, this country had no experience of
military operations since independence.
The state should provide all the resources
so that a wounded soldier would
not only get adapted to peaceful life, but
could as much as possible take care of
themselves, be an equal member of society.
They did not pay attention to it in
the Soviet time. They created dedicated
residential facilities for people who became
disabled. It was only on May 9, the
Victory Day, that they spoke about the
veterans’ heroism. But international
experience has come to Ukraine thanks
to sports. This is the first such huge platform
providing our lads with a way to
understand each other, and this is not a
political system. Through sports, war
veterans can adapt quickly, get help
and understand that they can become
equal members of society within a short
period of time.
“Wounded lads do not just need
help. They need the opportunity to
choose any path they like, access any profession,
new knowledge. When they will
get it, we the public will get a new impetus.
Civilians also get certain signals
when they see the emotional experience
of lads who have been through tough
times. They team up around veterans,
and so changes may begin in Ukraine.”
Mariia PROKOPENKO: “By the
way, do the Afghan war veterans join
your initiatives?”
V.S.: “We do not draw any dividing
lines between people who have gained
combat experience. There are various
communities. Some of them are closed,
made of people who do not want to join.
A certain number of ATO veterans had
fought in Afghanistan as well. People
who have borne arms understand each
other. And when legislative changes are
made regarding war veterans, they affect
them all, both ATO and Afghan
war veterans. But everyone has their
own adaptation experience. The ATO
veterans are just acquiring it. And
sports offer the first strong opportunity
to become a full member of society
for any serviceperson returning to
peaceful life.
“In general, the Afghan war veterans
have contributed a lot to the ATO.
Soldiers of the volunteer battalions were
still young in the beginning, and the
Afghan war veterans were already battle-seasoned,
they taught younger lads,
and thanks to them, many people survived
the war. They taught them how to
behave during shelling, how to properly
hide. And when we got our first killed
in action, it was Afghan war veterans
who provided psychological help.
“When I had lost my limbs and was
still in intensive care, the first person to
come and tell me what I needed to eat and
how to do the first exercise was an
Afghan war veteran. Today we are best
friends, and it can be said that I covered
my first three kilometers with him.”
● “THE PRESENCE OF
DISABLED PEOPLE
IN THEATERS IS A GREAT
INDICATOR OF
ACCESSIBILITY”
Daria CHYZH, Borys Hrinchenko
University of Kyiv: “Can Ukraine provide
you with quality prosthetics? And
how do you evaluate the conditions in
this country for the people with special
needs?”
V.S.: “Domestic producers make
sport prosthetics both for running and
for crossfit exercises. We have a joint
project with a NATO trust fund which
pays for training our specialists. They
buy equipment, and our specialists learn
how to do it while practicing on our lads.
These are very positive and significant
steps forward. But, unfortunately, our
infrastructure is not yet ready for such
changes.
“I travel a lot in Ukraine, so I can
confidently say that Kharkiv is the most
advanced city regarding the situation of
the people with special needs. They install
many ramps and retrofit stairs
there. There is still a lot of work to do in
Kyiv. I do not know why it is so. It is difficult
to even compare it with foreign
countries, because these latter have elevators
in the subway even.
“For me, the presence of disabled
people in theaters is a great indicator of
accessibility. We come there, and four or
five people sit by themselves there, they
are not afraid of anything, they have
adapted cars and elevators, steps. One
would not even ask oneself how it is possible
to get there. As soon as they have
a desire, they go there. I think this is a
model for us. We must change not only
the city, but also the society.”
● “WE ARE PROUD TO BE
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH
DEN/THE DAY”
Yuliia DOVHAICHUK, Taras
Shevchenko National University of
Kyiv: “What practices do we need to borrow
from Western countries to increase
the level of rehabilitation assistance to
soldiers and enable Ukrainians to get rehabilitated
at home instead of having to
go abroad?”
K.V.: “This year, the National Council
for Sports Rehabilitation of Defenders
of Ukraine was launched. Commissioner
Svyrydenko heads this organization.
The special feature of this National
Council is that unlike other
Ukrainian projects that target soldiers,
its management is entirely made of
those who fought in the ATO, got wounded
there, and understand the topic well.
“Our goal is to create opportunities
for training of specialists and trainers,
create clubs of any sport recognized in
Ukraine. Moreover, we want to see emergence
of sports management, marketing,
administration bodies. So, if some lads
want to create a club in a small town,
they get a complete package of necessary
assistance from the National Council.
NATO also provides educational support.
“Our goal is to provide opportunities
for creating sports businesses. This
practice is widespread abroad, where it
involves various partners and sponsors
who want to provide dedicated support
in this field. When lads get wounded,
they do not want to go beyond the limits
of the veteran milieu, but such businesses
offer opportunities to get a job,
earn money, and stay fully involved in
the community, be useful.
“Den/The Day newspaper is a partner
of ours, and we are very proud that
we can support each other. Our meeting
is a great opportunity to create a student
sports journalism club. You represent
different cities and colleges. So, you have
the opportunity to talk about all these
programs in your regions, talk to students,
veterans, to your organizations.
Photo by Ruslan KANIUKA, The Day
There are civilians who seek to help the
wounded, and they also need information
that you can convey as well.”
● “I ALWAYS WANTED TO JOIN
THE MILITARY, EVEN WHEN
STILL A SCHOOLCHILD”
Sofiia POSTOLATII, Sumy State
University: “In June, President of
Ukraine Petro Poroshenko signed into
law a bill amending the military service
regulations. You went to serve as a mobilized
soldier yourself. How, according
to your observations, is the military
service in Ukraine changing?”
V.S.: “The military is changing. I
joined the military when I was 20 years
old, served in the border guard troops
and qualified as combat medic. When the
war began, I clearly knew that I would be
there, because I was a combat medic, a
border guard, and these are the first people
to be called up. When I got my callup
papers, it being as late as the third
wave of mobilization, I was not afraid.
I knew that I had to go and fight if I was
serious about taking such a responsibility.
Also, when you hear: ‘first soldiers
killed in action,’ ‘first soldiers wounded
in action,’ then you understand that
they need you there, that you may not
stay put. My friend Maksym was eager
to join the ATO, but they refused to recruit
him. And when I got my call-up papers,
he went to the military recruitment
office, sat there and said: ‘I will not leave
until you enlist me.’ So, he got into the
72nd Brigade.”
K.V.: “I know that some lads went
through almost the same situation. Indeed,
lads had died during the Maidan
protest, there were changes, and people
went to war. When I heard that the
first Russian troops entered our territory,
I ran to the military recruitment office
that same day. I was getting told:
‘wait, we will call you back,’ ‘you have
already been taken off the reserve roll,’
‘you are too old.’ And it went on for a
long time, I could not get recruited.
Then I heard that there were first volunteer
battalions being created. And I
thought, ‘I have a family, how can I tell
them?’ And then I got a 10-year US visa
and told the family that I would go
there to earn some money. I did not go
west, though, but east instead, and was
assigned to the 1st Battalion of the National
Guard, which is known as the General
Kulchytskyi Battalion now. My
family did not know, nobody knew it.
And it so happened that my aunt was at
her country home, bad people called her
and said, imitating my voice, that I was
gravely wounded and needed money for
treatment. She did not understand what
it all was about, since she thought I was
earning money in America. There were
a lot of TV reports about soldiers then.
My family members saw personal details
of Halyna Almazova, a volunteer who often
traveled to eastern Ukraine, and
called her. She said: ‘I saw him three days
ago. He is alright. If you get any such
calls again, make sure you do not trust
them and do not keep in touch with
these people.’
“This is one story among many thousands
like it. It was 2014, and everyone
seemed to have come to understand that
the country was in danger. And when the
time comes that something depends on
you, when you defend your family, you
feel yourself needed. It was a great discovery
for me that very different people
came to fight in the war, as they differed
in their careers, social status, education,
age, and experience.
“From the very beginning of the
war, I kept a diary, recorded things, photographed
them, filmed videos. Lads
from the Kyivan Rus’ Battalion thought
that I was writing something about
someone, so they treated it with caution.
Then one of my friends wanted to read
what I had written there. He was older
than me, and having read it, he asked
himself why he himself was not writing
anything, as he was a professional historian.
It was even difficult to understand
why he went to war at all: he had
bad vision, he did not even hit the target,
and got lost easily. And it provided him
with an understanding why he was
there. He began to tell other lads why
they were there, why Russia was fighting
us. It involved regular lectures,
psychological support, and a personal diary,
he delivered these materials through
volunteers. That man launched his own
mechanism. When you return from the
war, you realize that each person is
unique, they carry something that can
make each of us happier.”
V.S.: “In fact, everyone has their own
path, everyone chooses who they are going
to be. Much depends on upbringing,
on family priorities. My parents were always
Ukrainian-speaking, I always defended
girls. We have to go there, the
front needs men. I am all for gender
equality, but we need men in the war.
“I always wanted to join the military,
even when still a schoolchild, but when
I came of age, the Soviet Union collapsed.
I watched my elder brothers go
to serve at first, saw them graduating
from a military school, and I decided that
I did not want to go there after all, but
the dream of being a soldier still remained.
I am convinced that many lads
are such confident and focused young
men now. The military profession, in my
opinion, is for males. Also, the government
must promote patriotism, get people
to speak Ukrainian after all. I wish
greatly that in the future, when a wounded
soldier would walk down a street, nobody
would ask him: ‘Are you an ATO
veteran?’ and then say that he had it
coming as he walks away.
“I had an interesting case in America.
I walked across a park, and they raise
the flag and play the US anthem there at
8 a.m. A lad, a soldier, stood to attention
even though he saw no one around. That
is, he is a patriot, he honors his nation and
memory of the fallen. It would be very
good to see such a patriotic upbringing
taking place in this country as well, so
that people simply love their country.”
● “PEOPLE’S FIRST
PSYCHOLOGISTS ARE THEIR
WIVES, MOTHERS, SISTERS”
Evelina KOTLIAROVA, Taras
Shevchenko National University of
Kyiv: “New rehabilitation centers are
being created in Ukraine. However,
how far are soldiers open to cooperating
with specialists? And how to convey to
fighters the idea that seeking help is an
acceptable and correct decision?”
V.S.: “We organize veteran meetings.
People come to us, we try to leave
our friends among veterans. When we
know that people have had very strong
injuries, contusions, then we involve psychologists.
“We have centers for neurological
rehabilitation. We work in this direction
with hospitals in Lviv, Irpin, and
Kyiv. The NATO trust fund allocates
funds for this. We talk about our
wounds and the positive effect of rehabilitation
centers. It does not take

WWW.DAY.KIEV.UA
much motivation here, we need just
to talk to veterans.”
Viktoriia HONCHARENKO,
Dnipro Law School: “How have your
life values changed after your injury
and rehabilitation period?”
V.S.: “My principal value is life.
No one has the right to deprive anyone
of it. My values have not
changed, I have just grown to feel
stronger about them. Many soldiers
face issues after getting wounded, so
I meet with their families and ask
them to help them undergo rehabilitation.
Subsequently, after they get
whole again, the soldier will consider
his family to be his everything. It
is for the family that the soldier will
turn the world upside down. Therefore,
the key values for me are the
family and our homeland.”
K.V.: “The first victory of any veteran
is the victory in the family, because
when lads go to war, the whole
burden of family support gets to rest
on women’s shoulders. And then lads
return home with the idea that they
are masters of their homes. It is very
important for wives to be psychologically
ready to accept the fact that
their husbands return as changed
men. Lads themselves must also understand
that not only they, but the
entire families, who lived without
them for a certain time, got changed.
“It is often said that there is no
family rehabilitation in Ukraine.
But this is very important. People’s
first psychologists are their wives,
mothers, sisters who meet returning
soldiers.”
V.S.: “I even believe that the
medals we receive are not ours but our
wives’.”
● “CREATIVITY AND WAR
GO TOGETHER”
Solomiia NYKOLAIEVYCH,
Lesia Ukrainka Eastern European
National University: “Mr. Svyrydenko,
you worked for a newspaper
for 10 years, engaged in its
promotion. Do you plan to return
to this line of work in the future?”
V.S.: “When I went to war, I
had my job protected, and after being
wounded, I was invited to return
to that job as well. But at the
same time, I was asked to work
where I really could be useful, especially
for our veterans. When I
returned from the Marine Corps
Marathon in Washington, DC, I
met with the president of Ukraine,
and it was then that I realized that
I had to help others get rehabilitated.
There are many such organizations
today, so there is strength in
unity, as they say. We solve complex
issues together.”
Mariia PROKOPENKO: “In a
conversation within the framework
of the Wounds Project,
Mr. Svyrydenko shared his opinion
that there is more to the war than
killing, as one can create new
things there as well. How exactly
do you understand these words?”
K.V.: “I will try to answer. I
know about some lads setting up
their own radio station at the
front. There are also those who
write poetry, draw things on empty
ammunition boxes. Creativity and
war go together. On their return,
lads look for ways to realize their
creativity. My friend Yurii
Neroslik draws military posters,
and we have held exhibitions together
at Kyiv City Hall and the
Ukrainian House exhibition center.
A lot of his images have spread
over the internet, and not all users
know that he is their author. We
must not forget those who have not
returned. All of them also dreamed
about something.”
The Summer School of
Journalism is supported
by the NATO Information
and Documentation Centre
in Ukraine
By Igor YAKOVENKO,
Moscow, special to The Day
The obvious things include the
very fact of the killing, its
timing and location. Also,
numerous witnesses have
corroborated the purpose of the
crew’s trip to the Central African
Republic (CAR), it being making an
investigative film dealing with the
activities of Wagner’s private
military company (PMC). It is the
main thing that is unclear: who killed
them and why.
The Russian official line has it all
backwards. The Ministry of Foreign
Affairs (MFA)’s spokesperson Maria
Zakharova posted on Facebook: “I am
hearing and reading this nonsense
about some ‘investigations’
concerning PMCs
in the CAR.” What exactly
Zakharova regards as
“nonsense” is not entirely
clear: the statement that
the journalists killed
were conducting an investigation,
or one about
Wagner’s PMC being active
in Central Africa?
“There is nothing sensational
about the presence
of Russian instructors in
the CAR, nobody has been
hiding anything,” Zakharova
asserted, and advised
people to consult
the MFA’s website. Following
her advice, let us
consult it. The MFA of
the Russian Federation
reported back in March
2018 that at the request
of the president of the
CAR, military and civilian
instructors had been
sent to that country. It
has not a single word to
say about Wagner’s PMC,
which is just a common
gang according to Russian law, since
there is no law providing for PMCs in
Russia, and therefore, any armed formation
that operates outside the
Russian uniformed services is just a
gang and nothing else.
“What were they really doing in
the CAR, what were their objective
and tasks – these questions are still
unanswered,” spokesperson of the
Russian Federation’s MFA Zakharova
continued her mendacious message,
despite being undoubtedly well aware
of the killed journalists’ objective
which brought them to the CAR. In
fact, she confirmed it, when recalling
the “nonsensical” investigation of the
PMC activities.
TOPIC OF THE DAY No.41 AUGUST 9, 2018 7
Dancing on journalists’ bones
Concerning the tragedy that befell the film crew of journalists Orhan Dzhemal, Kirill
Radchenko, and Alexander Rastorguev, who were killed in the Central African Republic
on July 31, 2018, some things are obvious and proven, while others are still unclear
The day after the journalists’
killing, TV channel Russia 1 broadcast
its 60 Minutes program, which featured
a merry dance on the bones of
the dead. Of course, the leader of the
Liberal Democratic Party was invited
as the principal dancer. I have long
stopped asking questions of media
troops soldiers. These are people of a
different profession that has nothing
to do with journalism. However, they
call themselves journalists and sometimes
try to pretend they are. In this
case, I became interested in how Olga
Skabeeva and Evgeny Popov would explain
the presence of Mr. Zh. (Vladimir
Zhirinovsky) in a program discussing
a killing of journalists. Is
Zh. a journalist? Or is he a specialist
in journalistic investigations? That
man is known for his fierce hatred of
journalists, cases of direct violence
against them, and urging his guard
live on the air to rape a journalist.
Inviting Zh. to that program was a
provocation as vile as, for example,
inviting an open and known anti-
Semite to the funeral of a rabbi.
And Zh. fully justified the confidence
of Skabeeva and Popov.
“There is no need to go anywhere!”
Zh. screamed as soon as he was asked
to speak. “Mikhail Khodorkovsky is
an enemy of Russia, and we should
not help his hirelings!” Zh. stated
when responding to Zakharova’s
Next, Khodorkovsky explained
the reasons and extent of his involvestatement
that the MFA had stood
ready to assist the journalists. After
that, Zh. was flinging dirt at the
dead for quite a long time: “Thrill
addicts!”, “They were involved in illegal
business! These were illegal
diggers!”, “They went there to engage
in illegal pursuits, and now the
public has to pay for them?” Skabeeva
tried in every way to show that
she did not share Zh.’s stance. It
looked as if Zh. was invited to her
program by some strangers, completely
unknown people, and she had
nothing to do with it.
Zakharova emerged as a pure
source of the most reliable information
on the big screen in the studio,
and reported the following. Firstly,
“the official stated purpose of this
group’s trip was tourism.” Secondly,
“they carried expired journalistic certificates.”
Thirdly, “they never contacted
the MFA.” And fourthly, “had
they declared their true purpose,
everything could have been different.”
“An exhaustive presentation!”
was Skabeeva’s enthusiastic response.
And she added: “We must understand
who will be held responsible for it.”
Actually, the respondent defendant
was already known. “Political
scientist” Dmitry Abzalov said that
“the problem is in the very ap-
proach” and asked indignantly:
“Why was there no accreditation?”
Following that, he pronounced the
verdict: “People were thrown into
this system!” Employee of Komsomolskaya
Pravda Alexander Kots
was more specific: “They had with
them over 8,000 dollars. Security
personnel can be hired for 300 dollars
there.” Skabeeva immediately
and understandingly exclaimed:
“They economized on that business
trip!” Employee of the VGTRK
broadcaster Sergey Pashkov and employee
of the Kommersant newspaper
Maksim Yudin said, both claiming
experience in the field, that the
killed men’s failure to inform the
Russian embassy in the CAR of their
arrival was a fatal mistake.
I have no doubt that all the participants
of the 60 Minutes program
only pretended to be idiots when
claiming to not understand the reasons
why Dzhemal, Rastorguev, and
Radchenko had preferred not to deal
with representatives of Russia and
minimize contacts with local authorities.
It would be weird to go to investigate
the activities of a gang which is
closely connected with the Russian
and local authorities, and ask for
their approval regarding the purpose
of the business trip at the same time.
This is stated in some detail in the report
of the Investigation Control Centre
(ICC) on Khodorkovsky’s Facebook
page: “Orhan Dzhemal, Alexander
Rastorguev, and Kirill Radchenko
came to the CAR on tourist
visas and were not accredited with the
Russian embassy and consulate. This
was due to the object of the investigation
being Wagner’s PMC. If the hypothesis
of the investigation team
was correct and Wagner’s PMC acted
in the CAR as a mercenary combat
force with the unofficial support of
the Russian authorities, contacting
the Russian diplomatic bodies would
have made the investigation meaningless.”
End quote.
I would like to deal separately
with no less idiotic advice to hire local
guards. What guards? Local gangsters?
Or members of the local security
forces, who are likely to be connected
with Wagner’s PMC? Or should the
journalists have brought with them a
platoon of armed fighters from Russia?
Khodorkovsky answered in his
blog those who directly or indirectly
blame him for the deaths of the journalists:
“As for security, it would
have been strange, on my part, to impose
my solution of this problem on
professional war reporters with a
great deal of experience. They were
among the best specialists in Russia.
All they needed was discussed directly
with the editor-in-chief, and the resources
needed were provided.”
ment in the investigation during
which the journalists were killed. “My
personal involvement in the Russian
Mercenaries project was limited to
funding it. The project was developed
by a group of professional investigative
journalists and presented to me by
the editor-in-chief of the ICC. I consider
it important, because in this
country, the government often likes to
conceal its illicit affairs by referring to
‘private individuals.’ In Russia, mercenary
activity is not regulated by law
and non-transparent, and it is a criminal
offense as well. However, top leaders
of the state are not ashamed to
speak approvingly about this practice,
which makes the situation particularly
dangerous. From now on, my involvement
in the investigation will be
much deeper.” End quote.
“Those who are born to crawl cannot
fly.” People who have served the
regime and lied all their lives cannot
understand those who seek the truth.
In particular, the truth about the
regime’s crimes. I have no questions
to ask of the employees of the VGTRK,
Russia 1 TV channel, NTV, Komsomolskaya
Pravda, and other Putinist
media. I have one wish to convey to
them, though: do not call Dzhemal,
Radchenko, and Rastorguev your colleagues.
It is very disgusting to hear.

8
No.41 AUGUST 9, 2018
TIMEO U T
WWW.DAY.KIEV.UA
By Dmytro DESIATERYK, The Day, Odesa – Kyiv
“Where disinformation is named, it does not exist.
Where it exists, it is not named.”
This statement of French culturologist and
philosopher Guy Debord could be used as epigraph to
Serhii Loznytsia’s new film Donbas.
Only one of this picture’s 13 novellas is not set in
the occupied territories. The rest portray the bloody
humdrum routine of “Novorossiya” (“New Russia”) in
a fictional eastern Ukrainian town (the film was shot
in Kryvyi Rih). Yet the film is not so much about the
“Russian World” itself as about its main weapon –
propaganda, whose mechanisms Loznytsia analyzes
with characteristic mercilessness.
● MANIPULATIONS
This begins with the first scene. A
burly talkative woman (Tamara Yatsenko)
argues the makeup artist in
the film crew van. In the next scene,
she and actors, disguised as
chance passers-by on the
street, will have to pose as
“eyewitnesses” of enemy shelling
against the background of the previously
blown-up trolleybus and car.
There is a now popular term – posttruth
– to describe what “Novorossiya” propagandists
do. Although it appeared as far back
as 1992, it became particularly topical in 2016 during
Donald Trump’s election campaign and the UK
Brexit referendum. At that very time, Oxford Dictionary
named post-truth as word of the year, defining
it as follows: “Relating to or denoting circumstances
in which objective facts are less influential in
shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal
belief.”
Post-truth is being spread by the mass media and
Internet social networking sites, and it is filled with
the last century’s major mythologemes. Trump has
“Make America Great Again,” in the case of Russia and
the Donbas it is the cult of victory (“victory hystreria”),
the great USSR, Orthodoxy, struggle against “fascism”
(when ethnic origin alone is enough for one to be branded
as fascist), and political paranoia (enemies are all
around). Reality is twisted in slogans. Time and
space lose integrity in this warped reference frame, human
lives serve as consumables, and a leader or a boss
substitutes the hero. For this reason none of the stories
can finish and, accordingly, Donbas is structured
fragmentarily.
In each new scene, manipulation becomes more
brazen and masterly. At the maternity home, blabbermouth
Mykhalych (Borys Kamorzin) makes a show
for white-smocked women extras, demonstrating the
foodstuffs and medicines hidden in the office room of
a thievish director – the latter is sitting quietly in the
room next door and will then return the showman’s favor
in the shape of rather a thick envelope. A group of
Mongoloid-faced military keep telling a German journalist
that they are “locals,” but they cannot recall their
village’s name. A Ukrainian prisoner with a nameplate
reading “punishment” is being tied to the post near a
bus stop for a mob trial. A taxi minibus is cut to pieces
by Russian Grad rockets, after which an ambushed hit
squad guns down the separatists’ accompanying vehicle
on a nighttime highway. The prologue troupe is really
killed for the sake of another spot report, as the concluding
credits appear in a static long shot – lies bite
themselves on the tail.
● LITERATURE
Post-truth is literary owing to continuous propagandistic
agitation: footage produces a greater effect
if there is a necessary comment. The three scenes
about “Novorossiya’s” ruling castes show literariness
one way or another.
Visitors, who have brought miracle-working
icons of Churilas Plenkovich and relics of Theodosis
of Kherson, approach the boss, a serious-looking
man with conspicuous tough-guy manners and a virago
secretary. These saints are the film director’s invention
that resembles the Gogolian motif of outlandish
names, which produces almost full namesakes of
Nikolai Gogol’s comedy Marriage in one of the following
scenes of separatists’ wedding ceremony: Ivan
Pavlovich Yaichnitsa (“fried eggs”) and Anzhela
Tikhonovna Kuperdiagina form “the Yaichnitsa couple,”
while Novorossiya MP Oksana Potsyk welcomes
the newlyweds.
The satire with religious travelers, quite in the
spirit of The Government Inspector, gives way to the
flogging of a “Cossack” marauder by his comrades, as
church bells are ringing. It is a clear allusion to Leo Tolstoy’s
short story After the Ball, where a soldier is punished
with the running of a gauntlet on Forgiveness
Anatomy
of post-truth
in Serhii Loznytsia’s
Donbas
The chronicle
of a world
turned inside out
Sunday. But, in contrast to the original
source, there is no reflecting narrator
here because is nobody to sympathize
with. A gloomy irony: butchers scourge
themselves.
All the “new Russian” things are both literary
and ritual: adoration of relics, passage between two
rows of men, and wedding. Bringing life into line with
a prearranged plot and protocol is an integral part of
dictatorship – individuality is not essential, there are
no irreplaceable people, and you can fall victim on the
boss’s whim. This is why those who contrast with the
authorities’ arbitrary rule are not fighters or at least
jesters but sufferers.
They are town residents who hide from shelling
in a damp, dark, and musty basement, and passengers
of the bus separatists stopped at the checkpoint, the
simple-hearted businessman Senia who came to collect
his stolen car from the militants, an old woman who,
instead of laying into the captured Ukrainian “punisher,”
meekly inquires when the bus is coming because
she must go to see her daughter.
Almost everybody has their fair share of humiliations.
An aggressive blonde, the secretary in the scene
with the relics, bursts into the basement to take her
mother to a comfortable house the bandits gave her.
She showers the underground dwellers with brutal obscenities.
Some men are taken from the bus, frisked,
and forced to undress under supervision of the wicked
female commander who spurts out a stream of consciousness
about a “fatherland in danger.” The militants
rob Senia of his car for good and exact a 150,000-
dollar tribute from him.
In every case, people neither keep silent nor resist.
Restrained reactions are in sharp contrast with
theatrical lamentations at the pace of staged attacks,
as well as with the revelry of the “new Russian” crowd
in the scene of the wedding and the hysterical guffaw
in the scene with prisoners of war. However, the literary
motif in the film develops sequentially – to the
proverbial and logical, almost like in The Overcoat,
sympathy with little people. But, in the last analysis,
it is not they but those who rule them who will turn out
to be ghosts.
OlenaStarikova’ssilvermedal
PHOTO FACT
Photo courtesy of the Odesa International Film Festival
● OPTICS
Internet video footage provided material for the
Donbas script. Candid photography in the Internet is
a matter of information, not film making. Accordingly,
Oleh Mutu, who worked in all of Loznytsia’s feature
films, subjects his individuality of a cameraman to
dramaturgy. He is reincarnated as a bouncing TV camera
in the bomb shelter, as a phone in the hands of a
light-minded woman car driver on the road under
shelling, as a motionless observer in very long shots.
This kind of dissociation does not rule out the author’s
ethically clear position – this is the only way to testify
to what eschews testimony and to make real the factory
of unreality.
It is not a document, not a drama, but quite a wide
anatomical table – there can be perhaps no other optics
for the hell of post-truth.
No one has ever suggested this view before.
After the Donbas premiere at the Odesa Festival,
Serhii Loznytsia met Den/The Day’s correspondent.
● “I TRIED TO SHOW VARIOUS ASPECTS
OF THIS OUTRAGE”
How was the film born? Was there any concrete
nuance?
“It is difficult to say how and when ideas emerge,
but do you remember what was going on in this country
four years ago? I closely watched the events and
looked for information in the Internet. Some videos really
struck me. I suddenly wished to work with this material
because it seemed to me that it contained some
very important things that influence our existence. In
peacetime, you live in a routine, no events occur, and
you don’t know the consciousness and subconsciousness
of people next to you and in the neighboring region.
And suddenly these ‘flowers’ blossomed there,
and you get it in this form.”
What exactly was interesting there for you?
“It is the combination of things that usually do not
combine in our mind, when the tragic and the funny,
even the grotesque, simultaneously come side by
REUTERS photo
side. So, it seemed interesting to me to work with this
tragifarce.”
Speaking of grotesqueness, the ironical interpretation
of Donbas is quite a new method for you.
“Yes, it is new. Obviously, I haven’t tackled this
kind of topic or taken on this pattern before. (With a
smile) I may be developing, though.”
What caused a fragmentary structure, without
a recurring character?
“The idea. I strove to describe this space and show
various aspects and manifestations of this outrage, this
feast of disobedience, these Saturnalia, this hell. A recurring
character, a single conflict would only hinder
me. I thought up nothing new. There are similar in cinema.
Luis Bunuel’s Phantom of Liberty and Sergey
Eisenstein’s Strike are illustrative examples. As for
documentaries, I have long been making films where
there is no protagonist but there are masses. It was interesting
to try this form in fictional films. I gathered
13 novellas and managed to combine them with each
other. As it is in Bunuel’s film, a character passes to
an episode, this episode unfolds, then another hero
moves into the next episode – the only thing is that the
audience should not get lost. I’ve already had an almost
similar script of Babyn Yar. I failed to film that script,
but I’ve made Donbas. This structure suggests a
broad view – I get an opportunity to look at society as
a whole and get a general picture.”
It seems to me this form quite fits in with this very
type of events.
“Of course it does.”
What was the most difficult thing in this work?
For you can’t see the documentary footage on which
your script is based without a veil over your eyes – it
draws a too strong emotional response…
“If had a veil over my eyes in the course of work,
I would perhaps have to change profession. But I keep
a certain distance from these events. A few steps aside.
If there is no distance, you will be so much biased that
you won’t be able to say a word. For this reason, I can
watch these clips, they have an impact, of course, but
I cut off my emotional links – it is perhaps just a professional
quality.
“The point is different: as we filmed in Ukraine,
it was difficult to organize the process. I invited department
heads, a cameramen, a sound engineer, an
editor, a line producer from various countries, where
the film industry in very well developed. The director’s
first assistant is a profession that I think does not exist
in Ukraine. Local specialists had to learn administering
and other things on the job. Unfortunately,
there are so far no skills in ethics, working relations,
and decision-making. So, it was not so easy to launch
this process so that the film crew worked like clockwork.
And don’t forget that this crew consists of more
than 100 people. Yet we managed to do so.”
How long did the whole process last?
“We shot this difficult film in 31 days. We had
no funds for a longer time, and I think what we had was
enough. It took us about 3.5 months to prepare for
work. I came to Ukraine on November 2 and left on
March 31. I stayed here on location in Kryvyi Rih except
for New Year’s Day. Otherwise, it was easy. If you
know what you want, work with splendid actors,
know how to work with non-professionals, can find
beautiful places and talented people, the rest is a technical
matter. So, six months were enough for us to complete
the whole cycle.”
Read more on our website
The Ukrainian cyclist has already won a second medal at the summer sports European Championships
The European Championships continue in the
Scottish city of Glasgow. In the track cycling program,
Ukrainian cyclist Olena Starikova won a
silver medal in the 500 meters time trial (an individual
timed race), www.sportonline.ua reports.
This is Starikova’s second silver in these
European Championships.
Earlier, she won silver in the team sprint
event while paired with Liubov Basova. Thus,
the medal count of Ukraine’s team as of the
morning of August 7 included 13 medals, with
4 golds (1 in swimming, 1 in synchronized
swimming, 1 in cycling, and 1 in diving), 8 silvers
(2 in cycling, 1 in rowing, 4 in synchronized
swimming, and 1 in swimming), and
1 bronze (in rowing).
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