On 11 November the publishing house “Donetchina” refused to print the weekly “Ostrov”
The reasons of the refusal were not explained, but it is obvious that the one-sided breach of the contract on printing of the newspaper was caused by the independent position of the weekly, which had protested against the arbitrary actions of local authorities. Besides, in every issue the newspaper publishes the materials of journalist’s investigation concerning the corruption in the prosecutor’s organs. The main personage of this “epos” is Gennadiy Vasylyev, a former prosecutor of the Donetsk oblast, the first vice-speaker of the Supreme Rada and a candidate to the post of the General Prosecutor of Ukraine. The first hint at the breach of the contract was made on 10 November, when Volodymir Diatlovskiy, the main technologist of the publishing house, in a private talk with Evhen Talyshev, the editor-in-chief of “Ostrov”, said: “We have no complaints against your edition, but we cannot print the newspaper any more”. At that Diatlovskiy assured that the next issue of the newspaper (No. 45) would be published. Yet, the publishing house did not keep this promise too. In the morning of 12 November, when the issue of “Ostrov” with the final part of the journalist’s investigation of Vladimir Boyko was made up, printed on the typographical film, and the driver of the editorial car was already trasporting these materials to the publishing house, the editorial board was informed by phone that “Donetchina” would not print “Ostrov”. Some time later V. Diatlovskiy told that the order about the refusal to print the newspaper had been obtained from Vasyl Kovaliov, the head of the board of the publishing house. The attempts of the editorial board to contact the head of the enterprise were unsuccessful: Kovaliov was absent. Yet, he confirmed the categorical refusal to print the newspaper by cell phone, but did not give any explanations. By the way, in the same morning, on 12 November, several young men with criminal appearance came to the building, where the office of the newspaper had been situated earlier, and told that they wanted to meet editor-in-chief Evhen Talyshev. When the visitors learned that the editorial board had moved to another place, they went away. Vladimir Boyko, a permanent author of “Ostrov”, who is known well to the readers of the Ukrainian political Internet for his revelatory articles about the corruption in law-enforcing organs, is sure that the refusal of the publishing house “Donetchina” to print the independent newspaper is caused by the publication in “Ostrov” of his “serial” investigation of the church-prosecutor’s business of Gennadiy Vasylyev. His articles on this topic are the bestsellers in the Internet, but only “Ostrov” dares to publish them.
Yet, there is another version. The fact is that “Ostrov” is the only printed edition in the Donetsk oblast, which did not hush up the shameful events in Donetsk on 31 October. The newspaper elucidated these events in the 44th special issue under the title: “Criminal putsch in Donetsk”. The first page of the special issue contained the photograph made by a correspondent of the newspaper at the instant, when leader of “Our Ukraine” Viktor Yushchenko pointed at the organizers of the Sunday “show” and called them by their proper name: “Toadies!”
(«Nasha Ukraina», 14 November 2003, www.razom.org.uа)
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The Institute of mass information:
The issue of the Donetsk newspaper “Ostrov” of 13 November was published in spite of all obstacles. The edition fulfilled its promise and published the end of the trilogy by Vladimir Boyko on the corruption in the prosecutor’s organs. This material tells about the connection of Gennadiy Vasylyev, the first vice-speaker of the Supreme Rada and a candidate to the post of the General Prosecutor of Ukraine, with criminal circles of Donetsk. When the administration of the publishing house “Donetchina” learned what material “Ostov” was going to publish, they refused to print the issue until Boyko’s article would be removed from it. The issue was printed by another publishing house.
Meanwhile, the conflict between the publishing house “Donetchina” and the newspaper “Ostrov” is an insignificant part of the iceberg…
(“Telekritika”, 13 November 2003, 17:03)