Kiev struggles in broadcast war

Tensions rising in the region

AVDIYIVKA, Ukraine/KIEV: For Ukrainian pensioner Olga Shazhkova, channel-surfing in the front line town of Avdiyivka is a monotonous business.

With the face of Vladimir Putin looming large on her TV screen, she flicks over to the next station with a sigh, only to land on the Russian army’s official channel.

Ukrainian government forces control the ground in Avdiyivka, but pro-Moscow rebels just across the front line of a two-year separatist conflict dominate the airways, along with stations beamed in from Russia to the east.

The result is that people on the Kiev-controlled side can end up flooded - whether they like it or not - by news telling Russia’s side of the story, through TV channels that demonise the Ukrainian government and its cause.

"Before the war started, we had all the channels," Shazhkova said in her living room, which she is scared to leave after 5 pm because of daily shelling in the late afternoon and evening.

"Now it’s just Russian and separatist ones," said Shazhkova, who remains sympathetic to the Kiev cause.

"If you’re called a pig for ten years, you begin to believe it, so we need some (other) information.

"Avdiyivka lies at the heart of the conflict in eastern Ukraine which has killed over 9,500 people since early 2014, and just 15 km (nine miles) north of the rebels’ stronghold in the city of Donetsk.

Much of eastern Ukraine’s broadcasting infrastructure is controlled by the rebels or has been destroyed by the fighting.

This has left Ukraine, whose own media typically characterises separatists as ‘Russia-sponsored terrorists’, outgunned in an information war that has played a central role in the crisis.

In its fight for hearts and minds, Kiev is redoubling efforts to improve access to Ukrainian television and radio for the majority in the region who rely on roof-top aerials.

It is a particularly important weapon at a time when a much-violated ceasefire deal is under threat after the deadliest fighting in a year and a fresh political spat between Ukraine and Russia.

Shazhkova said she goes to her neighbour’s house to watch Ukrainian news via satellite, where the signal is uninterrupted but which remains a luxury that few can afford.

The power of TV to sway opinion - and Kiev’s struggle to win favour in separatist areas - was illustrated by a 2015 Ukrainian opinion poll partly funded by the British embassy in Kiev.

It showed 89 percent of respondents said they relied on television for their news.

Over 52 percent in Kiev-held areas of eastern Ukraine were found to believe partly or entirely what the survey called ‘Russian propaganda’.

Such views might help to explain instances when Ukrainians living on the Kiev-controlled side have proved unsympathetic to the Ukrainian cause.

In July, for example, around 100 residents of the Kiev-held town of Toretsk blocked a road to prevent the Ukrainian army from moving equipment, according to local police.