The opinion of the head of the Main directorate of the informational policy of President’s Administration about the “specialists in smear”: “They turn our citizens to zombies giving them the distorted notion of our country… They do not understand what patriotism is…”

In the end of February the sitting of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe was hold in Strasbourg. Sergey Vasilyev, the head of the Main directorate of the informational policy of President’s Administration, Sergey Kichigin, the editor of the Ukrainian weekly “2000”, and Mikhail Pogrebinskiy, the manager of the Kyiv Center of political research and conflictology, were present at the sitting as Ukrainian experts on the freedom of speech.

From S. Vasilyev’s interview:

“… It should be good, if Ukrainian citizens did not believe the “crocodile tears” of the “victims of political censorship”, who live at the expense of the many-thousand foreign grants…

I heard that the foundation “Vidrodjennia” financed their visit to Strasbourg. And the principle of the choice of candidates was simple and approved: the delegation included only the specialists in smearing our country abroad. After the return from Strasbourg I classified them as “the trade union of independent nightmen”. They pump all mud and shit, which they can find in Europe and America, to the informational space of Ukraine. This is their main work. They, so to say, turn our citizens to zombies giving them the distorted notion of our country, which allegedly exists in the opinion of the whole world. This “trade union” is absolutely independent of any moral obligations to their motherland, their people, the principles of journalists’ ethics and common citizens’ ethics. They do not understand what patriotism is…

I asked my interlocutors from the Council of Europe: “Whether you really do not see that you are fooled, that they are earning money on you? They are misusing your lack of information. The group of dishonest journalists tries to snatch out a part of the budget, which you intended to spend for the good of Ukraine. Turn these impostors out! They do not represent anybody’s interests, except their own financial interests”.

… The Center of Razumkov… misleads the public opinion with the data of sociological polls, according to which the majority of common Ukrainian citizens are very worried with the existence of censorship in the country…”

 («Kievskie vedomosti», 5 March 2003)