14 June 2004 18:49
Ukrainian pundit, Russian allegedly behind secret media instructions
Political scientist Mykhaylo Pohrebynskyy is the man behind the secret instructions on media coverage emanating from
the presidential administration, an opposition web site has said. Equally involved is Russian spin doctor Igor Shuvalov,
officially collaborating with the Ukrainian social democrats, but unofficially employed in the presidential
administration, the web site alleged. The following is an excerpt from the article by Nestor Syeverov, entitled
"Temnyky factory", published on the Ukrayinska Pravda web site on 3 June; subheadings have been inserted
editorially:
The new form of political censorship flourishing in the Ukrainian media has imperceptibly become the same sort of
visiting card of the country as Chernobyl, corruption and Dynamo Kiev. The word "temnyk" [secret instructions
from the presidential administration to the Ukrainian media on news coverage] cannot be translated into foreign
languages [the word implies something murky, dark and suspicious], and now the national disgrace cannot be hidden behind
a fig leaf of arguments about the absence of "censors" and the specific features of "editorial
policy".
Having studied a mass of temnyky passed on to us by an authoritative source, we can surmise that this disgrace is
daily generated with the assistance and participation of one well-known Ukrainian political scientist. Among the basic
temnyky creators, there is a Russian citizen, who serves the presidential administration of an allegedly independent
Ukraine.
[Passage omitted: temnyky have come to have more restricted circulation]
Having armed ourselves with the principles "Kiev is a big village" and "the Internet is a global
village", we carried out some research, which, we hope, will help shed light on some mechanisms of the information
processes in our country and the role that is played in their implementation by various sorts of "analysts"
(the same people who "surmise").
Ukrainian political scientist allegedly involved
Not many people know about the existence of the virtually 100 per cent namesake of the famous [Russian political
image-maker] Gleb Pavlovskiy Fund in Ukraine. The signature of the "Centre of Effective Policy " [CEP]
(without feedback) can be found among the developers of the president's Internet representation, renewed in 2002,
and also the analitik.org.ua site, which is, so to speak, the Internet representation of the well-known political
scientist Mykhaylo Pohrebynskyy and his Kiev centre of political science and conflict studies.
Apart from that, in the heat of the 2001-02 election campaign, articles by a CEP expert, one Maksym Khylko, were
published several times in Den and the USDPU [United Social Democratic Party of Ukraine] party mouthpiece, Nasha
Gazeta+.
We managed to find another neutral mention of the centre's activity in Lvivska Hazeta in an article devoted to
"twists" in the nationwide discussion of constitutional reform last year.
In unofficial conversation one can also hear that it is precisely the CEP that is "bringing together"
Russian spin doctors and the USDPU top dogs. Thus the context of mentions of the centre, as is evident, directly
indicates its closeness to the social democrats.
It is known that Pohrebynskyy heads the CEP. "The Centre of Effective Policy is a commercial structure, a
private firm that I own," the political scientist told Ukrayinska Pravda in February this year. "The CEP deals
in political consulting." Earlier Pohrebynskyy stressed that the CEP was not a structure connected with the Moscow
EPF [Gleb Pavlovskiy's Effective Policy Foundation].
Unlike the public and non-commercial Kiev centre of political research and conflict studies, the CEP's activity
is not advertised. Only one major CEP project is known - the reconstruction of the presidential site for 25,000 hryvnyas
in 2002.
Conjectures surfaced some time ago that it was precisely this "shadow" structure of Pohrebynskyy that was
supplying the intellectual accompaniment and distribution of temnyky. Is that so, and can it be verified at an official
level?
We went to the horse's mouth. In a comment for Ukrayinska Pravda, Mykhaylo Pohrebynskyy stated: "The CEP
does not provide interpretations of current events that could be interpreted as temnyky." Convincing? In order to
make sure and remove all doubts, we decided to check the "digital clue".
Ukrayinska Pravda has a fairly large number of temnyky at its disposal, passed to us at various times by
representatives of various media, people whom we trust. The temnyky, we remind you, are Word files in Russian or
Ukrainian. Normally they are kept in rtf format - this method guarantees legibility of the document in virtually any
versions of the Word programme.
The documents that are regarded as temnyky normally are of several types: for example, they can be called
"analytical notes" or look like "flashes" (starting with the word "ATTENTON!"). Sometimes
in addition they have background material attached on some topical issue or articles recommended for
reading/reflection.
Any Word file saves within itself the history of corrections and also information about the computer name
("author") on which it was created. We remind you that any modern computer usually has at least some
"name", if only in the form of a meaningless string of symbols. As a rule, such names are ascribed to
computers according to the name of the user who most often works on it.
Besides that, serious structures normally indicate not only the user name, but also the name of the organization. It
is a sort of visiting card or mark of all outgoing documents. One can find out that information by going to the
properties option in the Word file sub-menu.
What additional information do files with temnyky carry? It turned out - extremely curious: it seems that these
documents are created on several machines and are often written over previous analytical notes.
In most cases, the files are anonymous to the maximum extent: the author and company names are coded as "-"
and "=". However, a persistent re-selection of the files rewarded our efforts - in some of them the author
figures as one "Olexandr" and the company - "CEP.UA".
Presidential administration allegedly involved
The second clue was actually discovered in an electronic address that was used to send out temnyky. The sender -
Olena Mostytska - does not use any domestic or foreign freemail at all. Her address ends with something meaningless for
the uninitiated, @cep.org.ua.
We were able to make sure that the address and person were not invented thanks to the presidential administration:
Olena Mostytska, along with heads of world and Ukrainian news agencies and a number of Internet publications, is a
recipient of news from the "Reception of [head of the president's press service] Olena Hromnytska", i.e.
reports from the president's press service.
And so we have a mysterious organization called CEP. Of course, such an abbreviation suspiciously recalls the Latin
version of CEP, but that is not really an argument, is it? The cep.org.ua site does not exist, and so we had to go
further.
In order to clarify what CEP is, we turned for help to another authoritative source - the open data store of all
domain names registered in the .ua Internet zone (i.e. in Ukraine). It is of no real consequence whether there is a web
page with such a name or whether it is used only for mailing needs: information about who registered it (in effect the
legal owner) will be open to anyone who wants to know.
Whois.com.ua replied that the domain name cep.org.ua belongs to the Centre of Effective Policy, an organization
located in Kiev at an absolutely specific address with an absolutely specific telephone. What is going on? Is
Pohrebynskyy not aware of what his office is doing, or is it a completely different Centre? Or perhaps the esteemed
author of the "Accent" programme [Pohrebynskyy] is indeed engaged in producing the national disgrace?
The president [Leonid Kuchma] once again helped us to make sure that it really was the same CEP. Having entered his
official representation through Whois.com.ua, we learned:
Helena Markosyan is listed as the site administrator. That is not really news. Everyone could get to know this lady,
who is in charge of the president's site, during Kuchma's Internet conference a couple of years ago.
A special SBU [Security Service of Ukraine] sub-unit looks after the technical side of things (it protects the
president's site from attacks by the curious - we were unable to "ping" the representation... [ellipsis
as published]). This is also understandable, because after all this is the president's site, and must be protected
against some young hacker who takes it into his head to break into it.
One Tatyana Klimenko with the same address, @cep.org.ua, also looks after the technical support for the site. It
hardly makes sense to hypothesize that two Centres for Effective Policy are involved in the presidential site at one and
the same time.
Apart from that, a cursory glance at the site's data - a visual double of "the president's
representation" - reforma.org.ua (on which constitutional reform is still being stormily discussed) showed that
this resource was fully in the zone of CEP.
And so the CEP that figures in the "properties" of temnyky turned out to be the same CEP. Does this mean
that Pohrebynskyy nevertheless does not know what his firm is getting up to? Or is the well-known political scientist
being sly? And how then should one relate to his other statements about CEP activity?
We will come back to this somewhat later, but now some comments regarding the activity of Pohrebynskyy's public
office - the Kiev centre of political science and conflict studies. Its chief says that the centre prepares
"interpretation of current affairs that we put on the site". Apart from that, the political scientist admitted
that "we also prepare interpretations that we do not put on the site". Pohrebynskyy declined to name the
clients for the interpretations.
Where do the results of the public centre's work go? Of course, without the consent of the client, no serious
office would release his name. We can only surmise.
For example, proceeding from the fact that both Pohrebynskyy's site and the odious "Temnyk"
("Tyzhden") site have an identical IP address (213.186.192.167). This means that they are physically located
on the same server. An interesting proximity, is it not?
Considering the fact that articles from "Temnyk" surface from time to time as material for use in real
temnyky. It is not worth talking about the president's love for this publication. The same IP address houses the
"Soroka" site, little publicized, but similar in content, which clearly reflects exclusively social democrat
values.
Here they are, the basic pillars of the social democrat [allusion to the USDPU] information space.
Russian spin doctor allegedly having a hand
And although it is believed that temnyky were brought into Ukraine by the not unknown modern art lover [and Russian
spin doctor] Marat Gelman (he now makes no special efforts to deny his own familiarity with this technology), opinions
have recently been growing that the dawn of temnyky creation is connected with the name of another Russian technologist,
who has been working in Ukraine, incidentally, for several years, named Igor Shuvalov. Behind the scenes it is precisely
he who is credited with overseeing this branch of information policy, although, obviously, temnyky are far from the only
thing.
There is very little official information about what Russian citizen Igor Yuryevich Shuvalov is doing in Ukraine. For
example a certain Igor Shuvalov figures in releases from the "Reception of Olena Hromnytska" with an E-mail
address at the same @cep.org.ua that belongs to Pohrebynskyy.
During his unexpected appearance on Hromadske Radio, Shuvalov openly admitted that he was collaborating with the
USDPU (although naturally he does not consider himself a "political technologist". Perhaps he is a
"political artist"?).
In a post-broadcast comment for Ukrayinska Pravda, Shuvalov said that he was not on the staff of CEP (which is also
confirmed by Pohrebynskyy: "Igor Shuvalov does not work at the CEP." But should this be believed, given
everything set out above?).
Regarding his own E-mail address on the CEP server, Shuvalov said a very original sentence to Ukrayinska Pravda:
"Are there so few Igor Shuvalovs? Yes, some of my correspondence comes to my acquaintances and friends, for which I
am grateful to them. I often visit Ukraine... [ellipsis as published] in general my personal mail box is at
narod.ru."
Does he have anything to do with temnyky? Shuvalov himself, talking about his involvement with them, prefers to
engage in the verbal equivocations habitual for Russian technologists: he moves off into discussions about
"editorial policy" or throws in apparent aphorisms - "I am not in temnyky".
Should it be understood, proceeding from Shuvalov's verbal peculiarities that if he is not "in"
temnyky, then he actually is "around" temnyky? In a comment for Ukrayinska Pravda, Mykhaylo Pohrebynskyy was
also unable to bring clarity into the question: "Does he (Shuvalov) write temnyky - I don't know."
Conjectures about Shuvalov's involvement in temnyky were carried in printed form on the pages of Telekrytyka
[Ukrainian web site] (analytical information about the social democrats information space compiled by Serhiy
Chernenko).
Besides that, in a November issue of Zerkalo Nedeli, in a piece by Yehor Sobolyev devoted to the all-round
"offensive" of the social democrats, Shuvalov is mentioned as a Russian specialist in not entirely clean
tricks, working in the entourage of [presidential administration chief and USDPU leader Viktor] Medvedchuk, and causing
displeasure in a number of party members by his working methods.
Shuvalov was first mentioned on the Ukrayinska Pravda site in connection with the hooligan attack on the premises of
the Russkaya Kniga [Russian Book] shop in Lviv in autumn last year: it is surmised that Shuvalov actually owns a number
of shops in the chain.
We managed to find several reports in the Russian media making it possible to fill in the details of what Mr Shuvalov
is doing in Ukraine. Thus, according to reports in the Russian MediaSoyuz, which combines a number of leading (state and
neo-state) Russian media (ORT, Russia TV channel and so on), in 2003 Shuvalov was the official supervisor of the
"Golden Verb" competition in Ukraine. The aim of the competition was to stimulate and award foreign
journalists who write well about Russia.
This year the Russian network political publication Polit.Ru carried a comment by that person about the reaction of
the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to constitutional processes in Ukraine.
Shuvalov himself was described as "a Russian expert in the Ukrainian presidential administration". This is
already interesting, is it not? The name of Shuvalov does not appear on the list of presidential administration staff on
the president's site. And it seems that nobody heard about a competition to fill a vacancy of expert at Bankova
[Street where presidential administration is located] that this specialist won.
To all appearances, the Russian publication is right: it may be that de jure Shuvalov is somehow officially (on
paper) collaborating with the USDPU and de facto the Russian expert is actually working for Bankova, which, it seems,
has long ago stopped differentiating between the interests of the party and the state. It is being said that even
territorially speaking the work place of the Russian Viking [Shuvalov] is now in the presidential administration or in a
neighbouring building. On the other hand, such closeness to the summit of Ukrainian power is nothing new for
Shuvalov.
It would seem that the spin doctor is his own spin doctor - have there been few of them recently arrived in Ukraine?
It is known at an official level alone that teams of Russians were working on the "Kuchma-99" [presidential
election] project, the social democrats and the Winter Generation Team in 2002 [parliamentary elections]. The effect is
known: had there been a legitimate vote count, Mr Kuchma would hardly have been in his present place. The correlation
between expenditure and electoral effect in 2002 is also rather depressing.
Russian interests behind spin doctor's activity
However, bearing in mind the sharpened interest of the public in foreign influence on the election campaign in the
country, we should clearly not only refer to the West. Who is this Russian citizen working for the presidential
administration? And what are his real interests in this presidential campaign?
One broadcast alone on Hromadske Radio was sufficient to hear (without getting bogged down in the flowery language)
that Russian spin doctors fear the coming to power of [opposition Our Ukraine bloc leader Viktor] Yushchenko, because
relations between Russia and Ukraine will go "in the wrong direction". Is this not a question now of the
country's national security and state interests?
People who know Shuvalov now and previously are unwilling to talk about our hero. It must be admitted that some
people whom we asked suddenly fell silent and stopped getting in contact. We hope that this unsociability is connected
only with a simple unwillingness to talk about it and does not at all assume that a possible disclosure of information
about this gentleman would have negative consequences for them.
And so, to what we managed to learn from unofficial channels. The information is rather fragmentary and inconsistent,
but even this helps to build a certain picture. In his youth, Igor Shuvalov, it is said, worked at the Mosfilm cinema
studio as a scriptwriter.
Towards the end of the nineties, he joined election campaigns. It is not exactly known whether he worked with the
team of spin doctors that accompanied the election of a number of people's deputies in 1998 (for example
[Kuchma's son-in-law] Viktor Pinchuk). In 1999 Shuvalov worked in the headquarters of the presidential campaign, to
be exact in the headquarters organized by Pinchuk.
The creative centre of the headquarters consisted of people from a methodological circle (students of the well-known
Moscow philosopher Georgiy Shchedrovitskiy). According to unconfirmed information, part of Shuvalov's work was
organizational and financial issues accompanying various projects and developments of that headquarters.
It is said that "Mosfilm directors" sent precisely by Shuvalov to regional headquarters with enviable
regularity "burned up" at work and flew out with scandals over unforeseen expenses.
At approximately the same time the first known contacts took place between Shuvalov and the social democrats. In the
spring of 1999, as is known, during the election campaign for the mayor of Kiev, Oleksandr Omelchenko was opposed by
Hryhoriy Surkis. In the last few weeks before the elections of the city head, several technological gimmicks from
Pinchuk's headquarters were put into action with the aim of running in and as help for Surkis (the result is known,
while Omelchenko for a long time came to hate "street television").
In 2001-02, sources say, Shuvalov collaborated with the Winter Crop Generation Team [the election bloc in the 2002
parliamentary polls led by former Economics Minister Valeriy Khoroshkovskyy, who is reputed as President Leonid
Kuchma's son-in-law Viktor Pinchuk's man] , whose campaign was organized by the same methodological forces,
although with a slightly different team - Shchedrovitskiy's son Petr and his colleagues. The effectiveness of the
strategy chosen by these spin doctors is also known - 2.02 per cent [of votes mustered by the Winter Crop Generation
Team]... [ellipsis as published]
But while Shchedrovitskiy junior left the country, Shuvalov stayed.
[Passage omitted: extract from Hromadske Radio discussion, covered by the Hromadske Radio web site on 19 May 04]
Between elections they say that Shuvalov had dealings with several ORT projects in Ukraine (not only "Golden
Verb"). He was seen, for example, at a presentation of "First Collection" (a joint Pinchuk-Gelman
artistic project). Now he is in the presidential administration. In private conversations they again say that Shuvalov
calls himself not a spin doctor but "a designer".
A designer of what? Of this country's future? Why precisely him? And indeed, will he be able? And does this
country need a future by Shuvalov? However, these are rhetorical questions. And it is not that important in this
situation with whom precisely Mr Shuvalov has signed a contract.
[Ukrayinska Pravda web site] |
RUSSIA IN FACTS
