Russian and American Press on Presidential Elections in Ukraine

(18)

“I want a higher speed of changes” (promise of Poroshenko)

“speed of changes is not very high”

quoting the candidate

(19)

Tymoshenko promises to tackle impoverishment

mr. Poroshenko predecessor

commenting on Tymoshenko

(20)

“Ukrainian nation existence”

“rotten government”

quoting the candidate

(21)

Zelensky

his two opponents

commenting on Zelensky

(22)

Zelensky's platform

corruption

commenting, without quoting

Through the connected predicates, economic problems of the country are associated with actions of Russia. The resulting meanings can vary depending on the reader. For example, the corruption can be interpreted as a necessary part of the Russian presence in the Ukraine, because informal contacts and financial operations with the Ukrainian politics can help Russia to protect it's strategic interests.

Another interesting implication is that in proposition c) economy and politics are supplemented by the predicate “graft”, which automatically becomes associated with b) and a). Antigraft law is mentioned again in 14th paragraph. The emphasis on the anti-corruption law thus made in two contexts: new president might adopt it; economic and political controversy of the U.S. and Russia in the Ukraine would (should, could) acquire a legal dimension.

In the context of oppositions, it is also important to note that the author uses “Ukrainians” as a different thing from the Ukrainian political elites, while other countries are referred to as usual. Line 5 is supposed to emphasise the controversy, indicating the Western aid for the second time. This feature is remarkable, because financial aid was not so explicitly stressed as an important factor for the election in the articles of NYT and WP. 6-8 prove the importance of the elections. Ukrainians are again juxtaposed with their government (previously marked as “ruling class” and “political elites”).

agraphs 9-10, a short commentary on elections is switched to the topic of threats from Russia (annexation of Crimea, military operation in Eastern Ukraine and Russia-backed hackers). Russian “looming large over the vote” is a prevailing matter over images of the candidates. The principally distinctive feature of the WSJ is that it suggests a kind of a balance when adding to the accusations of Ukraine's cyber police that “Moscow denies meddling”.

In paragraphs 13-18, Poroshenko gets the most attention in the publication, but his image is controversial. Socio-economic statistics on corruption and political interests in the national economy are put in one paragraph (13) with the public dissatisfaction of his presidency. The critics of Ukrainian government by IMF (14) and ambassador Yovanovitch (15) seem inconsistent with a positive characteristic of Poroshenko in paragraphs 17-18. Only by the sequence of paragraphing, his presidency becomes associated with corruption, fall of average wages and rise of gas prices, although there is no indication about his concrete actions to aggravate the economy. In line 17, the most likely meaning is that “stabilizing Ukraine's finances” “and cleaning up a bloated banking sector” was done by Poroshenko at the expense of the citizens. Therefore, he can be interpreted in this text in a balanced way, having successes and losses.

By reporting on Poroshenko and Tymoshenko in their similar promises to improve living standards (17-20), the author implies that economic issues will be central for either of the candidates. Zelensky's matches this same proposition in the conclusive two paragraphs, so that it becomes evident: generally all of the candidates are the same in their potential activities and they promise the same things. This notion is proposed by the parallel paragraphing, which lets the author not using expressive lexicon or 3-rd person critical remarks.

What is remarkable in the closing part of the article with the descriptions of the candidates (17-21), Zelensky has not been cited as Poroshenko and Tymoshenko. His leadership just has been stressed for the second time in the text.

Overall, the article has several discursive directions that suggest the topics for various readings and interpretations. The conclusive statements extracted from the text can be: “Election is a possibility to change economic situation”, “Russia does not let Ukraine develop”, “Poroshenko is a successful reformer in the corrupted country”, “All candidates promise the same things”. Particularly strong ideological meaning has the distribution of agency among the “Ukrainians” when they protest or vote and “Ukraine” when it concerns government. What is paradoxical, the statements do not give any decisive influence on the reader and rather allow to allocate one's own meanings to the article as a whole. Thus, while idea of Russian meddling in the Ukrainian elections would have obvious analogies with the same assumptions on the election of Donald Trump, Poroshenko's fails with civilian economy or connections with state corruption are much less understandable. In the context of the Ukrainian elections, American readers would probably be interested to know about such political technology as “net” which provided Ukrainian citizens with money (supposedly, nets were used both by Tymoshenko and Poroshenko) to make them vote for particular candidates. But the very positioning of the international institutions (IMF, Gallup, Transparency International) to the situation in the country seems enough to maintain a general line of the Ukrainian path to Europe. This contrast is academically known as “hegemonic” discourse, when certain relations and manifestations between the political actors prevail over others. Their holders - in this case, American journalists - maintain that details of the elections are not so important as intensity of the strategic tensions for the U.S. in Eastern Europe. Another important topic implied in the text is a “stability in the region” manifested by American ambassadors. First of all, their position in the text dominates over the featureless Ukrainian candidates, and, secondly, shows that the main assessor of Ukrainian political progress is located not within the country, but abroad - in the international community and expertise.

Conclusion

In general, the U.S. press focused more on the descriptions of candidates, their political campaigns, interesting stories and an overall intrigue around the emerging Ukrainian democracy. The Russian press used to comment on the details of the Ukrainian political landscape and possible consequences of the activities for the Russian side. The overall coverage of the events by Russian authors was several times more extensive than in the American press (around 40 reports in the U.S. against around a 300 Russian publications).

The main conclusion of the research is that American and Russian newspapers excluded certain topics from the coverage and thus limited the whole picture. While agenda setting overlaps in the topics of international importance, the angles of looking at information are different. Most often, discrepancies in the agenda are found when the facts can shed a negative light on the image of the country of publication.

Ukrainian internal political affairs were almost completely ignored by the U.S. press. American journalists focused on the coverage of campaigns and public images of the candidates. Among the external sources, Ukrainian citizens were quoted almost in every article of the NYT. Russian journalists, in contrast, conducted close analysis of the activities of the Ukrainian parliamentarians and relations between them; asked Russian and Ukrainian experts about the further course of events.

In February-April 2019, Russian journalists did not address several topics covered in the U.S.: visit of the Ukrainian president Poroshenko in the U.S; details on the Mueller report; economic loan from the investment bank Morgan Chase for the Ukrainian government; NATO delivery of sea radars to Odessa. The U.S. journalists did not create a legible picture of the Ukraine-Russia relations, ignoring such events as: conflicts between Poroshenko and MVD; parliamentary elections in October; prohibition of Russian observers; a meeting of Medvedchuk and Miller.

Press, therefore, has a tendency for creating a one-sided point of view for the audiences. Given that the observed newspapers have a reputation of respectful, trustworthy and objective (except for the RG) journalism, damage to the possible resolution of the Ukrainian conflict is tremendous. Sides of the conflict are represented unequally. The main actors in the Ukrainian politics are cThe paper discusses the topics in key details to argue that American and Russian audiences are presented with strongly contrasted political agenda for the Ukrainian politics.

As for comparisons of Russian newspapers between themselves, Russian Newspaper (RG) published more articles on the U,S. presence in the Ukraine. Kommersant drew equal attention to the internal and foreign affairs of the country. Several times Vedomosti used the Ukrainian elections to criticize Russian internal situation. Overall, the agenda of the newspapers was not overlapping too much. WSJ presented a more objective view than NYT and WP in providing a wide background on the relationships between global actors and presenting more textual spaces for the expression of a Russian view.

Further course of events

Basically, in comparison to the hegemonic Russian-oriented rule of Yanukovych in 2010-2013 and Poroshenko's unstable and radical presidency since 2014, Zelenskiy's received a role of a symbol of change and suggested a positive political agenda. The project of his becoming a Ukrainian leader might originate from 2015 when his TV-series Servant of the People introduced a comic image of the populistic Ukrainian president. His popularity and recognition for the comedy programmes and TV-shows have had a decisive importance in being elected president. Among other characteristics, he is known for the successful TV-production company and a business partner of Ihor Kolomoyskiy. One remarkable moment is that his agenda was directly the opposite to that of Poroshenko who radicalised his views to a complete and barely adequate anti-Russian rhetoric.

Zelenskiy fits the trend of the populist rhetoric of such politicians as Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron. His programme promises life without corruption and bribing, which assumes pressuring oligarchs and their illegal operations. The politicians should be deprived of immunity, and the president himself should face a possibility of impeachment after parliamentary decision. The main feature of Zelenskiy's rhetoric was to attract younger voters who might be supporting him for building a “direct democracy” via digital platforms and instant communication. He assumed conducting referendums about the Ukrainian membership in NATO and EU; announced his plans to talk to Putin about the end of war in Donbass; expressed positive attitude to de-communisation policies and making the Ukrainian as an only state language.

The Russian side took the initiative on 25 April when Vladimir Putin ordered to simplify citizenship process for the people in Donbass. NYT (25.04) reports the U.S. officials responded that the decree creates `serious obstacles” to peace efforts in the east of the Ukraine. EU statement called it “Russian intention to further destabilize Ukraine and to exacerbate the conflict”.

Putin and Zelensky already exchanged the remarks on the conflict resolution. The Russian president said in Pekin that he wants to know how Zelensky wants to resolve the situation and that his decision on Donbass is a humanitarian measure. Zelensky published a post on Facebook saying that he is ready to talk about exchanging prisoners of war on the next meeting of Normandy format (Russia, Ukraine, France, Germany).

Now issuing passports in Donbass can be regarded as a sign showing that Russia would be protecting its interests on the territory according to the principles of equal security. This is important for the possible UN mission. The preparations of the mission, however, are unlikely to start before the parliamentary elections. The priority of the U.S., EU and Russia would be to re-negotiate a configuration of power in the Ukrainian parliament for Zelensky's term.

st from Prague Aleksandr Morozov told NYT (26.04) that “if the conflict continues for 10 years, up to 70% of the population will have Russian passports there. In that case no conflict resolution will be possible at all”.

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