Russian and American Press on Presidential Elections in Ukraine

In March 2014, when Yanukovych had already left the Ukraine because of threats to be killed, IMF announced an aid of 27 billion dollarsfor the Ukraine.

The major concern now is that since 2014 more than 13,000 people have been killed in the conflict and that military acts are ongoing. It is not clear whether Minsk protocol is an effective way to achieve the cessation of the use of weapons or ensuring the establishment of a security area on the UkrainianRussian State border. As for the legal status of Donbass, there are several propositions by the sides of the conflict which do not link up with each other.

First of all, such labels as “special status” or self-governance or independence for Donbass can be treated differently and remain to be more political than legislative. Even though Petro Poroshenko with Verkhovnaya Rada extended the special status for the Donetsk and Lugansk republics until 2019, it is obvious that the Ukrainian side would be against the upcoming municipal elections andwould continue to abide by the Minsk Agreement. This law looks as a half-measure, for it is put in work only under the condition of weapons withdrawal which is also rather unlikely in the region in the nearest future.

Ukrainian position seems to be largely dependent on those of the Western countries. In reply to the extension of special status, France called on Russia “to use its influence over the authorities to renounce the supposed elections scheduled for November 11”.

As Poroshenko commented on Twitter: "The extension of the law on the special order of local self-governance in the temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions is needed for the preservation of the international sanction pressure on the Russian Federation and creation of conditions for the deployment of UN peacekeeping mission".

Darka Olifer, the press-secretary of the former Ukrainian representative in Trilateral Contact Group Leonid Kuchma, said that “the so-called "early elections" in ORDLO [the occupied territories of Donbass] announced by the militants violated the obligations of the Russian Federation and jeopardized the Minsk process”.

TASS: Rodion Miroshnik, the Representative of the self-proclaimed Lugansk People's Republic (LPR) to the Contact Group on resolving the situation in eastern Ukraine, commented on the extension of the special status of Donbass by saying that "the implementation of the law has been blocked for the entire four years that have passed since the law was adopted." According to him, "the Rada has confirmed that it is controlled by Washington, as [US Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations Kurt] Volker expressed a wish that the law is extended and 245 independent members of the Rada voted for that." Miroshnik said that the move was part of a game Kiev was playing with the West and in fact had nothing to do with efforts to reach a compromise with the Donbass republics, only pretending to abide by the Minsk Agreements.

Soon the alternative peace-making initiative, which was prepared by Ukrainian politicians, will be discussed in the UN Security Council. Currently it is known that the Minister of Foreign Affairs Pavel Klimkin stated three steps for the mission: subsequent process of entering the occupied territory; police component which would work with internal security; international administration. Several days earlier the leader of the Civil Position party Anatoliy Hrytsenko suggested that Russia should close the borders with Ukraine to ensure that international militaries would agree to enter Donbass. These statements show that Ukrainian political position is active, but largely incompatible with the Russia's perspective.

ing of Poroshenko resulted in several structural economic measures that led to the dramatic decrease of the quality of life. Together with the nationalistic and military agenda, his role was to collect as many negative feedback as possible, so that a new turn could follow with the appearance of an unexpected figure in Ukrainian politics - Volodymyr Zelensky.



Empirical Study: Russian and American Press on the Presidential Elections in the Ukraine

Methodology

Selection of empirical materials was organised by using the Dow Jones Factiva database. The search started with a keyword “Zelensky”. As this name is new for politics, there have been only a few articles both in the U.S. and Russian press. The received timeframes were: November 2018 - April 2019 for the Russian press and March - April 2019 for the U.S. newspapers. Then the articles with a keyword “Poroshenko” were selected to cover a period from January 2019 to April 2019 in both countries' press.

The research questions are:

What kind of agenda for the Ukrainian elections did the Russian and American newspapers set?

How do newspapers differ in reporting on the same topics?

How do journalists use the reported speech in their coverage of elections?

As the research topic concerns the political agenda, the emphasis is made on the content of journalistic argument. The selected topics are examined in terms of the possible impact on the political situation. For comparative purposes, articles were grouped into topics where American and Russian press overlap. To systemise the material, the information from the publications has been grouped thematically: 1) first mentions of Zelensky in the Russian press; 2) background for the elections coverage; 3) decisions; 4) news stories about SBU; 5) characteristics of the candidates and expectations; a mini case-study of the WSJ report; 6) conclusion and analysis for the following course of events.

Before the analysis, several theoretical notions about journalism have been considered. First notion is that newspapers represent a vision of the so-called access groups. Journalists experience pressure from the most dominant ones. Starting from the political agents, who own the priority in coverage, journalists are aware of other influencers such as PR agencies, advertisers, corporate communication departments, media owners etc. This notion helps to address the journalistic writing in the research not as a conclusive opinion of a journalist, but a result of consensus between all of the access groups that have contributed into the reporting. Because of that consensus, the objectivity and independence of coverage can be limited and novelty of the received information can be reduced. This kind of agenda setting is known as “status-quo”. Status-quo is supposed to keep a current state of affairs unchanged and it particularly concerns how journalists tend to organise public sphere by expressing the opinions of their informants.

erstand the journalistic strategies of balance between access groups, the research focus is directed on thetextual diferences between a 3rdperson narration and reported speech. If a journalist uses external source and quotation, it becomes a point of observation for the research. Another methodological priority is to focus on the “hard news”. The typical features of hard news is a high proportion of empirical information (dates, places, times etc.), third-person narration, lack of modality, and declarative verbs indicating certainty.

The notion of “status-quo” has a very strong actuality for the case of the recent Ukrainian elections, because it constrained knowledge-making around the candidacy of Zelensky. No experts produced any far-going assumptions about his becoming a president on the pages of the press and many relevant ideas about him were given only in the form of gossip (his talks to Western diplomats) or impersonal reporting (biographic characteristics to construct a political image). On the one side, such approach supposed to create an intrigue around the outcomes and helped to attract people's interests to the electoral campaigns. On the other side, it is questionable whether journalists are able to and aimed at creating decisive and influential content for the political affairs. The overall impression from the starting analysis is that journalists are too closely tied to the agents of political power in the country of reporting. The strongest critical argument in this context is that the key decisive information in the coverage was the data from sociological research. The ratings precisely corresponded to the final results in the 1st and 2nd tours. Similarly, expert opinions simply corresponded to the suggested results and sociological data was never critically approached by the journalists.

It is difficult to check an assumption of the so-called “self-fulfilling prophecy” effect when the data from the sociological polls influences the preferences of voters. The role of sociological polls as a political technology can be studied in the further research.

First accounts about Zelensky in the Russian press

In the TV-programme Pozner on the 1st Channel, Ukrainian political consultant Pogrebinsky commented on the oligarchic influence in the country that it was the position of Rinat Akhmetov to bring forward a final decision regarding the organisation of political agenda for 2019. Pogrebinsky said that if Akhmetov did not participate, the two major candidates would have been Boyko and Zelensky, one of which is opposite to NATO (Boyko) and another one has no opinion on the matter, preferring to give a final word to the people. This idea seems reasonable, for the actual ratings of Poroshenko and Tymoshenko were too low to have a full-fledged democratic competition and Boyko as a pro-Russian candidate was incompatible with the European course of the Ukraine.

The similar understanding is expressed in the official Russian newspaper (Rossiyskaya Gazeta) by the head of the international affairs committee at the Federation Council Konstantin Kosachev. In the article “Who will head corruption” (02.04.19) he criticised previous Ukrainian elections in 2014 for the falsely pronounced promises about fighting corruption and called Zelensky an “against all” candidate. He suggested to see opposition “Poroshenko versus Tymoshenko” as “the U.S. versus the E.U”, assuming that Tymoshenko is unacceptable for the U.S. because she had a potential to agree with all sides of the conflict. Proposing that the elections are far from democratic, the author also commented that accusations of Russian interference into the Ukrainian elections are “rather ritualistic, because any European country that want to make election serious should say about the intrigues of the Kremlin”.

The first several mentions about Zelensky in the selected Russian newspapers were just his percentage of potential voters in the last two months of 2018. By November 22 (Kommersant), sociological group “Rating” in Kiev suggested following configuration: Tymoshenko (13%), Boyko (6,9%), Poroshenko (7%), Gritsenko (7%), Zelensky (7,6%). Remarkably, then Zelensky had not yet announced about his participation in the elections - it had been made on December 31 at the 1+1 channel just before Poroshenko congratulated Ukrainians with the New Year. In the article, the split of the Opposition Bloc initiated by Yuri Boiko and his partner Sergei Lyovochkin is explained for their motivation to unite with another political party, “For life” (Za Zhizn) led by Vadim Rabinovich and his pro-Russian ally Victor Medvedchuk. As Boyko left the Bloc without any other parliamentarians, his competitiveness on the following elections was evaluated as “almost unreal”. According to an anonymous source close to opposition, “Akhmetov did everything to prevent the opposition from suggesting a one candidate”.

RG (21.12.18) quoted Vladimir Putin at his press-conference answering the question about an incident in which Ukrainian sailors were attacked crossing the Ukrainian-Russian borders at the Kerch strait: “Was it [Ukrainian provocation] successful or not from the perspective of raising ratings - maybe. Because rating of Petro Alekseevych rose a little, now he shifted from the 5th position to 2nd or 3rd, there are fluctuations, I think, at around 12%. Yulia Vladimirovna, I think, has 20 and more, 20 with something, while Zelensky, Boyko and Poroshenko, they have around 12%”.

In Kommersant (30.01.19) Andrei Yermolaev from the Institute of Strategic research “New Ukraine” said that the main competition will be going between Poroshenko and Tymoshenko. The author suggested candidacy of Zelensky is beneficial for Poroshenko, because Zelensky is taking over the protest electorate from Tymoshenko.

Another Kommersant article (05.02.19) reports that Zelensky met with the EU diplomats in January and announced about his intention to speak to Putin about Donbass. Furthermore, Kommersant reports that “the majority of newspapers' contacts in Kiev” refuse to consider the possibility of his becoming a president despite his leading in polls: “Mr. Zelensky - an intermediate figure before the conclusive struggle of Poroshenko and Tymoshenko, and his success - is a political asset that will be converted into the new dividends by the main puppeteer of the Ukrainian politics Ihor Kolomoisky”.

In comparison to NG and Kommersant, Vedomosti did not characterise the candidate before March. There were only a short report on ratings (11.02.19) and an assumption (22.02.19) on the following elections that parliamentary configuration would be made up of the “old” political forces. For the first time, Vadim Karasev wrote in Vedomosti (12.03.19): “Zelensky is an alternative from the South and the East, it is a pro-Russian electorate that does not want to articulate it's moods. That is why Zelensky's votes are the votes of the hidden pro-Russian majority that cannot openly express their views in such a paranoia”.

The first appearance of Zelensky in the U.S. newspapers happened only in March (Washington Post 10.03.19 and Wall Street Journal 15.03.19), although several articles on the Ukrainian elections were published in January and February.

Background stories: Ukrainians on Trump' inauguration vs. Lutsenko' attack on Miloshevitch

Together with several Russian-language materials, the background section refers to the “earlier” attention of the U.S. press to the Ukraine. The articles reflect the informal side of the international relations which lacks objectivity and credibility. Although the style is often neutral, the content is speculative. This type of publishing fits the concept of the information war in which both sides of the conflict use the topic of Ukrainian elections to discredit each other.

One of the most illuminative examples is the NYT article of 11.01.19 “Curious Crash of Ukrainians at Inaugural”. This writing is an only piece of investigative genre on the Ukrainian affairs published this year. The authors (Kenneth P. Vogel, Scott Shane, Mark Mazzetti and Iuliia Mendel) represent the position of the U.S. officials about possible ties of Donald Trump to the Kremlin. The main information is that Trump's inauguration in 2016 was visited by the highest political officials from the Ukraine and Russia. Among the visitors of the privileged gathering at the Liberty Hall in Washington reportedly were a Ukrainian lawmaker Serhiy Kivalov, oligarch Serhiy Lyovochkin, a Ukrainian parliamentarian Andrii Artemenko and another Ukrainian lawmaker Borislav Bereza.

In the beginning, the NYT neutrally informs the audience on the very recent initiatives by prosecutor Mueller: “As recently as last month, prosecutors were asking witnesses about illegal foreign lobbying related to Ukraine”.

Among other accusations, the article reports on ties between Americans and Russians: (1) a Russian associate Konstantin Kilimnik's ties to the inauguration meeting via American consultant Sam Patten; (2) Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen and businessman Felix Sater discussion of the Trump Tower project in Moscow to be financed by VTB and Genbanks; (3) a Ukrainian-American developer Pavel Fuks and a pro-Russian parliamentarian Vitaly Khomutynnik contacted with Californian republicans Kevin McCarthy and Ed Royce.

The main exposition (a background topic) of the article is Russian interference in the American affairs:

“The investigations are playing out against growing indications that some of the Ukrainians who came to Washington for the inaugural, or their allies, were promoting grand bargains, or “peace” plans, that aligned with Russia's interests, including by lifting sanctions”.

“Some of the Ukrainians - their allies” is paralleled with “grand bargains - peace plans”, where the second position is corresponded to the Russian side. The word “peace” taken in quotes manipulatively signifies that there is a low reliability on behalf of the Russian side in intentions to stop the war in Eastern Ukraine.

The article can also be misleading in the lack of distinctions between the accusations and proven criminal deeds. Following the contents of investigation, journalists do not suggest any interpretations of the Mueller's activities. For example, the phrase about Paul Manafort does not distinguish between the journalistic interpretation or an original version of the prosecutors:

“[lawyers for Manafort] inadvertently revealed on Tuesday that he had communicated about a Ukraine-Russia peace plan with a business associate believed to have ties to Russian intelligence”.

The journalists stay generally impartial, but such words as “inadvertently” intensify sentences with abstract phrases to strengthen credibility.

This article is an example of information war between the two countries. Although no criminal activity on behalf of Russia and Ukraine has been directly revealed or discussed, a generalised conclusion is that the U.S. faces problems because of the foreign presence at the inauguration. Main weakness of the articles is that authors did not question a Mueller's central proposition of “illegal foreign lobbying”.

story about Russians and Ukrainians on the inauguration of Trump was ignored by the Russian press, including a later report by Kommersant on Mueller's investigation (19.04).

The agenda of the conflicting relations, therefore, has a split so that the audiences in both countries rely on different information. It is also difficult to understand whether all the reported interconnections of 2016 could have influence on the Ukrainian elections in 2019. In ideological terms, the article formulates an idea that the piece deal in the Ukraine is very likely to be organised with the losses of the American side, provided that president Trump is too often accused of his sympathies to Russia.

Informality of the political relations in the Ukraine was expressed in the Russian press by paying attention to a different subject.In the publication of RG on 22.03.19 a commentary attacks internal situation in the Ukraine and negatively frames a country as a completely dependent state on the U.S. The journalist maintains that being dependent on the U.S. is a negative thing for the state official. He is sarcastic on how Ukrainian General Prosecutor Yuri Lutsenko indirectly accuses American ambassador Mary Yovanovitch in stealing 4.4. million dollars from the Prosecution Office. Uninformative explanations of Lutsenko serve as an illustration of his inability to excuse for the U.S. influence on his institution.

The proposed idea is that Yovanovitch, earlier appointed by the president Barack Obama, became inconvenient for the republicans in the U.S and they decided to pressure her by scandal stories. Lutsenko told the American media HillTv that Yovanovitch had “gave him a list of untouchable people on the first meeting” so that he could not conduct investigations. This fact allowed the author to describe Lutsenko as a “puppet” actor controlled from the U.S.

The author also suggests that the ambassador might be involved in the Manafort's case, uncomfortable for Donald Trump: she might have passed to the U.S. officials the kompromat materials about finances of Manafort.

ournalist says that the story is unprecedented in terms of disintegration of the U.S. initiatives in the Ukraine. He criticises the double standards of the American foreign politics and characterises American diplomats to be “more and more often transformed into the CIA workers”. The opinion of the author is explicit and reminds a rhetoric of the Russian diplomatic representatives: “Department of State contested the message of Lutsenko, but, mildly speaking, it looks unconvincing”.

In contrast to the RG comment, the Washington Post article (31.03) describes Yovanovitch as an authority who “excoriated the Ukrainian leadership for failing to do enough to fight corruption”.

In comparison to the NYT report, this publication is supposed to represent information closely to the official position of Russia. Personal account is supplemented by expressive language, often with the usage of informal Russian.

The observed articles of the NYT and NG are similar in that journalists show how officials blame the activities of the Ukrainian politicians. If the U.S. connected the Ukraine with American internal affairs, Russia was bothered with the internal affairs of Ukraine.

Decision-making

The publications in this section were not directly connected to the electoral events. These texts belong to the category of “hard news”, but do assume the diverted assumptions on the subject of elections. Paradoxically, the most important information for the future relations of the countries - economic negotiations - did not overlap at all.

Remarkably, the first mention of Vladimir Zelensky in the selected American press happened in the article (15.03) by Wall Street Journal about the financial support from JPMorgan Chase & Co to the Ukrainian government. Without naming the participants of the deal, the author indicated that Ukrainian officials met with bond-fund managers to get “additional cash to cover short-term budget expenses”. While the Ukrainian officials from the ministry of finance “could not be reached to comment” on the deal, representatives of the bank said that the country would sell its outstanding bond of 350 million due in 2028. JPMorgan sold the bond to the investors, getting the profit of 5,7$ million.

The article also reminds about the previous year deals, when the Ukraine borrowed 2$ billion by selling public bonds and got a 3.9$ billion loan from the IMF.

Kommersant of 25.03 informs that Boyko and Medvedchuk had negotiations on a future gas deal with the Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev and the head of Gazprom Alexei Miller. The author juxtaposed the negotiations between the Russian government and Ukrainian opposition with the reaction from Poroshenko. The quotation goes earlier in the article than the discussion about the deal itself:

“When Putin says that he's ready to work with any candidate except for Poroshenko, it is a sign of quality for a Ukrainian commander-in-chief”.

Miller promised that in the new contract the price would be less by a quarter, although since 2014 he had said several times that had “no interest” to cooperate with Kiev. The event was mentioned in the American press only after the elections in WSJ (23.04.19)

Another important detail is said by the expert Konstantin Skorkin:

“Poroshenko gets a visible image of a “fifth column” to show to his electorate. On the other side, Medvedchuk has big plans for the parliamentary elections and this step could be useful then. The goal of Medvedchuk and Boyko - to reanimate the Party of Regions in a new fashion”.

An article by Kommersant (20.03) reports on the new sanction lists for the Russian companies. National Defence and Security Council earlier prohibited the activities of Oleg Deripaska (En+), Arkadiy Rotenberg (StroyGazMontage, Mostotrest), Gennadiy Timchenko (Transoil and StroiTransGaz). Among the business limitations, there are cultural ones: the Ukraine blocked all Russian book-publishing firms for future trade on the premises of “distribution of production with anti-Ukrainian content”. The law matches with the rhetoric of Poroshenko, a radical ideological proposition “Russian means anti-Ukrainian”.

WSJ (12.03) reported on the U.S. help for the Ukrainian army: two coastal radars are provided to strengthen the country at Black Sea and improve the capacity of reflecting Russian attacks.

Stories about SBU in the context of elections

In March, interest to the elections has been oriented on the political technologies used in the Ukraine. Both Russian and American journalists reported on the participation of the SBU in the elections but from different perspectives. The common features covered concerned usage of Facebook and possible interference of Russia in the Ukrainian elections. Another pattern is that the Ukrainian elections allowed journalists to portray the elections in an entertaining way, paying attention to peculiarities of the Ukrainian political technologies and PR. There were almost no significant differences in how the newspapers reported on the results of the first tour, while the expectations toward the second tour strongly differed.

The Russian informational agenda powerfully attacked the Ukrainian security service and Poroshenko on a special press-conference of the former SBU officer Vasiliy Prozorov. After Maidan started he continued to work in the SBU in the interests of Russia. His message was supposedly prepared with participation of the Russian politicians and ideologists, although there are no direct arguments in support of this. Just after the press-conference ended, SBU officially confirmed that Prozorov worked there. Prozorov told the journalists about the criminal activities of the Ukrainian agents in Mariupol and shared his assumptions about the crush of MH-17. His main message is that the Ukrainian security officers organised the murder of the LNR and DNR soldiers in Mariupol. Prozorov also said that the General of the SBU anti-terroristic centre Tsyganyuk ordered to start the operations in Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporozhe regions one week earlier than it was officially announced by Turchynov on 14 April 2014.

A legal case of Ukraine against Russia was covered by Vedomosti (07.02). The event covered is that European Court on Human Rights (ECHR) delayed the hearings of the Crimea case until an unknown date. Experts said that the decision could be either politically-motivated or caused by technical problems. Earlier, the Russian judge rejected to work on the case, and the Russian side asked for the recusation of the Ukrainian judge as well. The ECHR is considering the “supposedly illegal annexation of Crimea” with the violations of 12 articles including allegations in “automatic distribution of the Russian citizenship, illegal imprisonments, murders etc.

RG (26.03) published an article with the focus on the most emotional part of Prozorov's story. He told that the security officers initiated a prison in Mariupol where people were interrogated and tortured without investigation. The article titled “In library like in gestapo” uses metaphoric language of SBU storyteller. Prozorov told that secret prisoners were called “books” and the prison was called a “library”. He also said that Poroshenko would organise massive falsifications of the elections and would be able to win.

The Prozorov story would not be so indicative if Kommersant did not publish another article about the SBU the same day. The author Matvey Shimanov reported that SBU controlled by Poroshenko and MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs) controlled by Arsen Avakov are in conflict on the recent news from Kiev and Kharkov. According to the official version of SBU, a Russian citizen dead in Kiev when trying to craft a grenade. Another man was arrested with 600 grams of explosions and 15 thousand dollars that supposedly were payed to him by the Russian intelligence in Kharkov. One of the Ukrainian portals referred to the sources in MVD, saying that the attack in Kiev was planned by SBU as a provocation.

The journalist took up a neutral point of view by questioning the credibility of some Ukrainian media and emphasised that Avakov might have saved his ties to Tymoshenko since the times of being a Fartherland member.

NYT (29.03.19) reported that Russia might have organised a campaign on buying Ukrainian Facebook accounts to influence the elections. The story is based on a message from an SBU agent who supposedly received an order from “his Russian handlers” to search for accounts. Then the author parallels it with the previous cases of Russian possible interferences in the U.S. elections of 2016 and 2018, supporting the argument by referring to the Facebook officials.

an” in this case is tied to Kremlin, but not explicitly:

“The vote presents Facebook with what it has learnt and confront Russia over what the Kremlin considers its home turf”.

Thus, Russian digital threat is positioned as a challenge for Facebook. The phrase illustrates a widely-used method of switching the agency of action from abstract “Russia” to it's administrative leadership “Kremlin”. The linkup presupposes that in order to confront Kremlin, one (in this case, Facebook) should confront Russia as a whole.

The article is interesting because it gives a word to a range of informants. On the one hand, with the use of reported speech the author frames this story as a future trend of political competition in general, but on the other, the trend is characterised by special attention to the Russian interferences. The thesis plan of the accounts from the sources can illustrate how ideas are intertwined through the reporting of different point of views:

Table 1. Sequence of sources in NYT article “In Ukraine, Russia Tests a New Facebook Tactic in Election Tampering” (29.03.19)

Source	Quotation
The Russian S.B.U agentnot identified by name	(1) “As I learned, their goal was to use those accounts to publish political ads or to plant fake articles”
A global fellow at the Wilson's Centre Kennan Institute Nina Jankowicz:	(2) [about Russian disinformation] “What they have done so far amounts to a dereliction of duty”
l Fedorov, digital strategist of Zelensky	(3) “Facebook pages had been drowned out by fakes [of Zelensky's page] almost indistinguishable from the real site … But we created an anti-sabotage tool called a “mobile control group [to track the fakes]”
Serhii Demediuk, chief of Ukrainian cyber-police	(4) “Accounts that impersonate candidates provoke hostilities between Ukrainians in social networks <…> a significant number of those publications are originating from the territory of the Russian Federation”
Nathaniel Gleicher, head of cybersecurity in Facebook	(5) “No amount of security is 100 percent insurmountable, particularly against Russia, which has devoted enormous resources to its global disinformation efforts”
S.B.U agent (2nd quote)	(6) “The plan was for the culprit to manipulate the consciousness of the Ukrainian voters in the interest of Kremlin”
Facebook officials:	(7) “Disinformation will be spread not by foreign actors, but by citizens looking to sway the opinions of fellow citizens. Political parties will hire professional companies to spread false news about their opponents, using fake accounts and bots”
Aleksey Ryabchin, a member of Tymoshenko party	(8) “I am more concerned with the negative campaigning from another candidate [from Poroshenko] than from Russia”
Dmitry Polyanskiy, a Russian deputy in the UN	(9) “It's an open platform and we cannot be responsible for any publication of Facebook or on Twitter”

This strategy associates several ideas into one argument. The most explicit idea is that “the threat of interference is coming from Russia” - it is repeated twice in 1,6 and developed in 2, 4, 5, 8. The message about Zelensky's fakes on Facebook (3) has no indication about Russian participation, but in the context of the other sources it becomes an implied message of the article. The false conclusion that is followed: Russia tried to damage Zelensky's campaign by making fake pages on Facebook.

Despite an attempt to create a negative image of the Russian side, however, this selection of sources is one of the most balanced in all articles studied. Russian representative from the UN headquarters in this case stands up for the official position of Russia, using earlier argument of Vladimir Putin on the matter. It is also remarkable how Zelensky appeared to be able to answer the cyber-threats, getting credits for his ability to solve problems independently.

Several days earlier a journalist of RG criticised (19.03.) the investigation of Deursche Welle about the “popular Russian-language fakes pointing at Zelensky”. Among the main points was a negative reception of experts from the Atlantic Council and an indication that the internet-publishers of fakes sympathised to Poroshenko and therefore could not be organised by the Russian side.

Characteristics of candidates and expectations

The U.S. newspapers published several articles with a central focus on Zelensky in March-April and only one article about Poroshenko in February.

Remarkably, Russian newspapers did not select for the reporting a very indicative February trip of Poroshenko to the U.S. NYT (21.03) reported that Poroshenko met with a Ukrainian diaspora in New-Jersey whose vote is described in the publication as “pivotal to his victory as his popularity, dented by accusations of corruption, has dipped at home”.

In contrast, American newspapers did not write anything about the prohibition of the Russian observers for the elections as well as that the people in Donbass will not be able to vote.

To illustrate how the language patterns of the discourses differ for the candidates is the first three articles (in WP, NYT and WSJ, Table 2) to mention Zelensky's leading in the race are put in table with the first several characteristics of the candidates. The usage of sources is indicated to show the differences in how the argument is supported.

erican and Russian journalists juxtaposed the candidates and drew more attention to their promotion campaigns rather than to the decision-making and critical approach to their political programmes. Furthermore, all American publications about elections are basically started with the social statuses of the candidates. Quite stereotypically, WP and NYT often employed a genre of “play-by-play” coverage, asking the Ukrainian citizens about their hardships and putting in it in the context of elections. This approach is used to support an argument about the importance of the elections for democracy and involvement of Ukrainians into the process.

Table 2. First characteristics for the presidential candidates; sequences of sources

	Zelensky	Poroshenko	Tymoshenko	Sequence of sources (reported speech)
Washington Post 10.03.19	“comedian plays a schoolteacher turned a presidential candidate” “a 41-old comedian with no political experience” “the real-life candidate” “no recent presidential campaign has featured such a head-spinning blend of fact and fiction”	“been beset by infighting and state spending scandals” “the incumbent Poroshenko, who is also a chocolate tycoon one of Ukraine's richest men” “Ihor Kolomoyskyi, the billionaire rival of [Poroshenko]”	“The former prime minister”	Political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko - Yulia Tymoshenko - a Western diplomat in Kiev - Fesenko - Zelensky - ambassador Yovanovitch - a 24-year-old sailor from Crimea
New York Times 17.03.19	“a comedian and actor” Mr. Zelensky's critics are not buying into his rags-to-riches tale	“deeply unpopular incumbent”, “has been at loggerheads with nationalist parties in Parliament over a 2015 peace accord, which they abhor”	Paul Manafort, orchestrated a yearslong and costly smear campaign against her; “has been the target of <…> Poroshenko”	Zelensky - a former ambassador to Kiev John Herbst - Poroshenko - Zelensky
Wall Street Journal 29.03.19	“a comedian with no political experience” “tapping into the disillusionment ” “a popular comedian”	“incumbent” “a chocolate tycoon” “has made some progress” <…> “stabilizing finances and cleaning up a bloated banking sector”	“former Prime Minister”; “a political survivor” “imprisoned by Poroshenko's predecessor”	24-year-old advertising professional - former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst - chairman of the Anticorruption Action Center in Kiev Vitaliy Shabulin - Ukraine's cyber police -Poroshenko - Tymoshenko

When Zelensky won the first tour, the former deputy of Poroshenko's bloc Mustafa Nayem said to Kommersant (01.03) that “parliament is much more important than the president, so investors of Zelensky act according to the principle: “if he wins, it's good; if he doesn't, then we'll get a parliament”. Confirmed by the other source close to Tymoshenko. Nayem said that Yulia Tymoshenko is ready to support Zeelnsky if he agrees to create a parliamentary coalition. The coalition would press for the change from the mixed to the proportional scheme of parliament to have a leading party with a fixed 51%. Then the leading party would form a cabinet of ministers. In case of these agreements, Zelensky might announce Tymoshenko a prime minister”.

Two days later, Vedomosti notes that Tymoshenko already refused to support Zelensky. According to the report from the investment bank “Goldman Sachs, loss of Tymoshenko positively affected the prices of the Ukrainian bonds. Also, analysts expected that the prime minister Groisman would stay in the cabinet. The director of the Deutsch Centre of Eastern European research Gvendolin Zasse called Zelensky's winning “an extreme case of the candidate without his own movement and parliamentary structure”.

Kommersant and NYT took comments from the same person Vladimir Fesenko, from the Kiev Centre of Applied Political Research. He estimated the chances of Zelensky as 75 to 25. In the WP (03.04), an analyst from the BlueBay Asset Management Timothy Ash said: Zelensky's team was joined by ministers who resigned from Poroshenko's government - Oleksandr Danylyuk and Aivaras Abromavicius.

In reply to the RG opinion that the elections were “the dirtiest in Ukrainian history”, NYT blamed Russian officials for their willing to return to 2014 as an only possibility to change the situation. The author emphasised that “election in Ukraine was democratic, with a real choice and an outcome that was not preordained - unlike elections in Russia”. Op-ed by the WP expressed the same attitude: “a vote Moscow tried and failed to discredit showed that Ukraine is cohering as an independent nation - and that its democracy is working”. This reflects the difference in the official positions of the countries: while the U.S. journalists expressed positive views on the “young democracy” in the Ukraine, Russian president press-secretary Dmitry Peskov doubted the elections and was quoted in the WSJ report (23.04) from Moscow.

Vedomosti (02.04) reported that the number of violations was only around 2000, which is lower than in the previous elections. Georgiy Chizhov from expert group Dialogue in Kiev called Zelensky a comfortable candidate for Moscow and mentioned that he badly understands politics, barely knows Ukrainian and is not able to speak without script. Similar approach was expressed later by the experts in the WSJ article (23.04), who expected that Putin will use weaknesses of Zelensky to resolve the conflict in Donbass.

Between the 1st and 2nd tours the WP and NYT published articles with the focus on the personality of Zelensky, including some details of his creative biography and a set of preferences among other politicians (the main preference for Zelensly is Emmanuel Macron). WSJ (07.04) mentioned that on the meeting with Western diplomats in January “beyond talking points on fighting corruption, he offered no detail on his plans to resolve the conflict, overhaul the economy or how he would continue the pro-European path forged by Mr. Poroshenko”.

Relying on the journalists from “Information resistance”, Kommersant (04.04) suggested that a Ukrainian oligarch Valeriy Khoroshkovskiy is also connected to Zelensky and that he might have participated in the loss of control in Crimea and Donbass. Supposedly, Khoroshkovskiy built ties with Russian intelligence on the Ukrainian borders when he was a director of SBU.

In an interview with Zelensky, WSJ (07.04) got to know that it was Poroshenko who asked Zelensky to go into politics. Zelensky decided to fight for presidency when Poroshnko asked him to “lend his name” and did not even ask him about his political views. This story opposes the images of cynic magnate Poroshenko and a principled businessman Zelensky.

RG of 09.04 reported the position of Kolomoyskiy on the takeover of his Privatbank during the presidency of Poroshenko: “IMF incited them to do it. Special people were coming to check how capitalization is going. They said that we do not give money to the Ukraine until you take the bank over”.

He added: “I don't need Privatbank. But there were two billion of capital. They would return it and no questions. It is not obligatory to go to court. There'll be no just court in the country unless Poroshenko is in power. And not only on my case. I do not hurry. For me it is not a question of life and death. The question is not about money, but about principle”.

In RG (22.04) a consultant from Kiev Dmitriy Dzhangirov said that Zelensky would not be able to stop raising of housing and utility prices after 1 May, because it would be a prerogative of the government and also because it should be negotiated with IMF. The expert maintains that Zelensky came to make the Ukraine a parliamentary republic where all parliamentarians would be the shareholders of the country's assets.

Vedomosti (23.04) quotes Tymoshenko: “New president should be given a possibility to change power enforcement - general prosecutor, SBU director, minister of defense” to “see if he has a political will and a help from his own power enforcement to ask all those involved in corruption to take responsibility”.

Fesenko from the Center of Applied Political Sciences told Kommersant (23.04) that Avakov and his party National Front with 80 out of 450 places in Rada will support Zelensky, Another potential supporter in the parliament is a deputy group “Renaissance” (24 MPs) and Tymoshenko's Fatherland (20). 135 MPs of Poroshenko bloc are also likely to reconfigure. According to the polls referred to: Zelensky's party “Servant of the people” has 26%.

Analysis of journalistic discourse in WSJ: sequence of paragraphs for meaning-making

Among around a hundred of the American publications studied, one report has been out of place in terms of the breadth of presented context and analysis. The article “Let Down, Ukrainians Set to Vote” by the Wall Street Journal of 28.03.19 at once represents several arguments that have been used by WP and NYT in the March-April publications on the Ukraine. The publication is notable for a generally higher level of objectivity, because of the critical reflection on the U.S.-Russia relations and explicit mentioning about the dependence of the Ukraine on IMF. In all other aspects, however, it constructs a negative image of Russian Federation in the Ukrainian context.

Mainly, the article is distinctive in its structure where the details of the coverage are put in a certain meaningful order. Because of that, quantity (or intensity) of implied associations between the short and seemingly unconnected paragraphs is higher than in all publications studied.

To elaborate on the theoretical understanding of this description, I suggest referring to Van Dijk (1985) approachVan Dijk, T. A. (1985). Structures of news in the press. Discourse and communication: New approaches to the analysis of mass media discourse and communication, 10, 69. on the structure of news. He identified that journalists not only formulate a dominant position of authorities (state officials, experts etc.), but imply hidden meanings about the interconnections between them. Consequently, in the journalistic texts different agents, their words and activities are represented in the thematic structure of the publications. The unit of analysis is the so-called “semantic macrostructure” consisting of:

1) meaning - a paragraph suggests one idea;

2) reference - an idea is tied to the other paragraphs and ideas.

To support this implication, Van Dijk's explanation elaborates on the unit of analysis:

“The macrostructures are called “semantic” because when we are talking about notions such as “topic”, “theme” or “gist” of a text, we are dealing with meaning and reference, and not, for example, with syntactic form, style or rhetoric devices. Also, we are not even talking about the (local) meaning of isolated words or sentences, but about the meaning of larger fragments of text or about whole texts. We do not assign a theme or topic to one sentence, but to larger stretches of talk or text”.

This description of an analytical unit is taken for the analysis with an only methodological exception to pay attention to the style of writing. In the analysis of the WSJ article, I would specify paragraphs where “intensified” language is used. The point I would like to make is that author changes the style of his writing from paragraph to paragraph, which is also indicative of the intentions to make the report more persuasive.

General principles of analysis are formulated in the two main propositions. First, Van Dijk notes that meanings and references allocated by journalists can be reviewed from the perspective of a hierarchical order. The layout “first point - more important, second point - less important” irrevocably positions political agents against each other. Second, structural purposes of the author can be reviewed in the frequency (additional emphasis) of a topic in the text. Number of times a topic is mentioned, as well as the intensity of associative connections between the topics, support the cognition of a reader in a certain way and advances journalistic intentions.

To recover the logic of the author in structuring the article about the Ukrainian elections, I would pay attention to the selection of themes, oppositions between the subjects (political actors, statements) and sequences that connected the structural parts in the constrained and concise quality report. The two operations needed for the analysis are:

1) summary (extracting the main aspect (or idea) of the topic in a paragraph);

2) generalisation (putting ideas into context of the whole publication and discussing possible interpretations).

When these steps are conducted, it is possible to speak of the discursive strategies of the author. Each paragraph of the article has been numbered (full article in appendices) and one idea from every paragraph defined (Table 3). As the report is rich with contrasts, including ideological ones, the table displays contrasting propositions (opposition) to the leading idea.

To follow the analysis, full article is attached in the appendices.

In the beginning 1-6 paragraphs, the author introduces the topic of Ukrainian elections by emphasising the country's problems in economics (corruption, dependence on Western aid) and politics (frustrated hopes of membership in NATO and EU). The basic idea is that elections can change the situation for the better. The presupposed idea is that Russia was a main counteragent in the Ukrainian problems. It is maintained by three parallel link-ups of arguments:

Ukrainians “staged” revolution against (1) a Russia-backed government and (2) a corrupt elite class;

Ukraine's joining NATO and EU is prevented by (1) war with Russian-backed fighters and (2) corrupted economy;

a future president can act against (1) dumped economy, (2) graft and (3) Russia's efforts of influencing the Ukraine.

Table 3. Oppositions of actors, events and propositions in the WSJ article “World News: Let Down, Ukrainians Set to Vote” (28.03.19)

	Position (positive) Position (negative)	(topicality)
(1)	Ukrainians, revolution; hopes that Europe and the West would pull the country into their orbit	Russia-backed government and a corrupt ruling class	Background (five years ago - revolution - hopes)
(2)	revolutionary fervor country's hopes for membership in NATO and EU economy dependent on Western aid	widespread disillusionment a war with Russia-backed fighters chronic corruption	ntroducing the topic (today - preparation to vote)
(3)	hopes, people's aspirations	the political elites, their own interests	illustration (advertising professional)
(4)	several dozens of candidates, a comedian with no political experience yearning for change	Ukraine's economy, second poorest Russia's efforts to return the country to its sphere of influence	developing the topic (Sunday's vote)
(5)	Washington and other capitals	Moscow	developing the topic (deteriorating relations, Ukraine as a frontline)
(6)	(for Ukrainians) faster progress (for Russia) subservient neighbor (for the West) stability in an important region	(implied) slow progress (implied) non-subvervient neighbor (implied) instability in the region	quoting an authority (former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine)
(7)	rainians, with the lowest level of confidence to their government	government	argument (Gallup survey)
(8)	people	anger	argument (expert opinion)
(9)	Zelensky	disillusionment; Poroshenko and Tymoshenko	topic (runoff 21 April)
(10)	vote	Russia looming over the vote	switch of the topic
(11)	election	Russia-backed hackers, denial of meddling	argument (Ukraine's cyber police)
(12)	[three leading candidates promise] hard line on Russia	(implied) non-hard line on Russia	comment on the candidates
(13)	voters	Poroshenko, a chocolate tycoon politically connected firms	argument about election
(14)	IMF [supports Ukraine's economy and demands an implementation of antigraft law]	the country's Constitutional Court [struck down a key anticorruption law]	argument about Ukrainian economy
(15)	U.S. ambassador Yovanovitch	a special anticorruption prosecutor	referring to authority
(16)	(implied) high wages and low gas prices	fall of wages, rise of gas prices	argument about Ukrainian economy
(17)	Poroshenko achieved progress	there are shortcomings	commenting on Poroshenko

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