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This marks the second consecutive Independence Day that Ukraine is observing amidst full-scale war. As the nation tirelessly fights to survive, with thousands sacrificing their lives in the name of Ukrainian independence and democracy, the nation’s independence declaration and subsequent thirty-two years are increasingly analyzed and reinterpreted.
Today, we bring to you an interview with the renowned journalist, presenter, and political analyst Vitaliy Portnikov, touching upon the events that transpired in August 1991. Additionally, he sheds light on the crucial role played by independent media in shaping Ukraine and discusses the triumphs and setbacks faced by Ukrainian independent journalism over the years. Portnikov, a veteran in the media space, helms various original projects, including Dialogues with Portnikov on Ukrainian Radio Liberty, Political Club on Espresso TV channel, and Roads to Freedom on Russian Radio Liberty, apart from being credited with numerous articles in both Ukrainian and international media outlets. This year, in recognition of his extensive contributions, he was honored with the Shevchenko Prize for “journalistic articles and speeches of recent years,” following the Vasyl Stus Prize that he received the previous year. Moreover, he is growing his own YouTube channel, which currently boasts over 400,000 subscribers.
In commemoration of Independence Day, Detector Media is also presenting a selection of archival pieces — personal reminiscences of media professionals recounting their experiences on August 24, 1991.
Discover the firsthand accounts of individuals like Yuliya Mostova, Oleksandr Martynenko, Olha Herasymyuk, Andriy Tsapliyenko, and many more here. Additionally, delve into Danylo Yanevskyi’s narrative of the happenings in the Rada on that significant day here, complemented by Mykola Veresen’s account of evading the KGB and Olha Musafirova’s recount of her quest to locate Gorbachev during those critical August days. Vitaliy Portnikov shares his own narrative of those days as well.
— Vitaliy, how and where did you meet the August Coup?
— In Kyiv, where I happened to be by coincidence: I was working as a Moscow correspondent for the newspaper Molod Ukrayiny [Youth of Ukraine] and living in Moscow. But I always came home in August on the birthday of my mother, who, unfortunately, has already died. So on August 25, I tried to be in Kyiv. In early August 1991, I had a vacation, spent it in Poland, returned from Warsaw to Moscow, and from Moscow, I took a ticket home for August 18, which meant that I had to arrive in Kyiv on the morning of August 19.
I took the latest Moscow press with me on the train, including the newspaper of the Soyuz deputy group, a deputy association that opposed Perestroika, a kind of association of Russian Soviet chauvinists. People who, within a few days, supported the GKChP, the State Committee for the State of Emergency of the USSR (SCSE).
On the front page of this newspaper was an article on the need to disrupt the signing of the new Union Treaty, which was scheduled for August 20, 1991. The article argued that it was necessary to make sure that the republics did not have any real sovereignty and that the best way out of what Mikhail Gorbachev had brought the country to was a military coup. I was alone in the compartment and spent the whole evening writing an article in response to this text. I wrote that, in my opinion, a military coup would not only fail to strengthen the Union center but would accelerate the disintegration of the Soviet state. At two in the morning, I finished my article and went to bed.
At that time, trains had radios, and early in the morning, I don’t remember what time, it started broadcasting the famous message from the State Emergency Committee. And I decided in my sleep that this was a continuation of my article! I began to reproach myself for writing such texts at night because I would dream of military coups later. But then I realized that this was a real coup.
— What were your feelings at that moment? Did you think it was the end, so to speak, or the beginning of something new?
— Of course, I was thinking about what would happen next. And not only about the general situation but also about my personal situation — I thought about how safe I was. I was one of the democratic journalists. It wasn’t a big secret, I worked with the first independent publications that appeared in the Soviet Union, and I realized that I could be on the list of people to be interned if the coup was successful from the point of view of the plotters. I wondered what I should do and how safe I was in my own apartment in Kyiv. I went to the editorial office, contacted my colleagues in Moscow from Nezavisimaya Gazeta [Independent Newspaper], with whom I was working at the time, and learned that all Moscow’s democratic newspapers were closed.
In those days, we at Molod Ukrayiny tried to make a newspaper to help people get true information, but now I can’t even say for sure how successful we were. Because time was so tight, many of the articles we prepared in those days simply did not have time to come out. We were delayed by censorship, and they were being published when it became clear that the coup had lost.
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Boris Yeltsin and Vitaliy Portnikov
That is, we tried to do our job, and more. I also went to the Writers’ Union, where the Narodna Rada [People’s Council], the democratic opposition in the then parliament, held regular meetings. A lot of people came and exchanged views. We tried to help organize rallies against the SCSE in Kyiv. I have great respect for journalistic standards, but I don’t think about them in critical moments. Therefore, together with activists of the democratic movement, I tried to convince people that they should take to the streets, that they should support those who gathered near the White House in Moscow and took to the streets in defense of the legitimate democratic Russian government. There were rallies in Kyiv, maybe not as large as in Moscow, but in any case, we tried to show that we did not accept the coup either.
I had sleepless nights. I was waiting for an attack on the White House and believed that if the attack succeeded, the protesters in Moscow were crushed, and this regime was established, it would be a disaster not only for the country but also for me personally — I did not really know how safe I could consider myself to be when the regime would begin to entrench itself. So we lived to see the coup collapse, and on the morning of August 24, I was already in the session hall of the Verkhovna Rada.
— At the time, did you think that everything important was happening in Moscow or Kyiv?
— This is the case when a person can never predict how things will turn out. Both in your own life and in the life of the country. Imagine my state of mind when I arrived in Kyiv: the main events were happening in Moscow. There was a huge protest, a real revolution. Where should a journalist be during a moment like this? Of course, in the thick of things. And I am, so to speak, in the thin of things, in Kyiv, where almost nothing is happening. And I cannot prepare reports from Moscow for my Ukrainian readers! I didn’t know whether they would be published, but I considered it my duty to prepare them. My friends, Russian democratic journalists, were in the White House, and my colleagues from Radio Liberty were broadcasting reports from there. My activist friends from the Ukrainian Youth Club were on the barricades outside the White House. By the way, I don’t know if people remember this, but the first blue and yellow flag that we brought to the Verkhovna Rada and installed near the Lenin monument on August 24 was the flag from the barricades near the White House. The communists did not want to see any blue and yellow flags in the hall. But they didn’t dare stop the flag from the barricades because it was the victor flag. People from there brought it to Kyiv, and I did an interview with them later at the Presa Ukrayiny [Press of Ukraine] publishing house (then called Radianska Ukrayina [Soviet Ukraine]), and the guard also tried to kick us out because I wanted to take a picture of them in front of the blue and yellow flag.
Then, on August 24, I realized that I hadn’t missed anything. Because the main event took place in Ukraine. Of course, the banning of the Communist Party, the collapse of communism — all this was incredibly historically important. However, something more was happening in Ukraine — the collapse of the Russian Empire in all its chauvinistic fullness. To a certain extent, this was a consequence of the collapse of communism, but in terms of historical continuity, it exceeded the collapse of communism. And I was at a meeting of the Verkhovna Rada, at meetings of the Narodna Rada, listening to the discussion of the Act of Independence. What fervor there was, how they tried to understand the voting procedure: to vote for independence and the ban on the Communist Party as a package, or to vote for each item separately, that is, to vote for independence first and then to deal with the Communist Party. These were heated discussions, and I would say that they were compressed hours of real history.
— Did you hold the document in your hands?
— Yes, I held the draft. Dmytro Pavlychko was supposed to take it to the printing office, but at the last moment, it was decided to remove the word “republic” from the final version of the document so as not to scare the communists. So that they would not notice that there was no longer a Ukrainian SSR and would not cause more havoc: if a republic, then what kind, why not a Soviet one, and so on. Otherwise, the parliament would have voted, the Ukrainian SSR would have disappeared, and Ukraine would have appeared. At Pavlychko’s request, I personally crossed out the word “republic” everywhere in this document — maybe someone else did as well because it was very difficult to navigate in that chaos. In this format, we gave the document to Dmytro Vasyliovych, and he went to the printing office to have the typists print this copy of the document cleanly. It was then put to a vote by Kravchuk and passed as the Act of Independence of Ukraine.
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— Do you remember how the news was broadcast?
— It was clear that the newspapers came out the next day, and I was interested in passing the news on to the electronic media. And what were the electronic media back then? Radio stations. I decided that the first thing I would do was call Moscow. I felt a kind of gloating, strange as it may sound, a kind of youthful gloating, because I could tell the Russians that Ukraine was no longer with them. “That’s it, you have lost Ukraine.” There was a negotiation room in the Verkhovna Rada, and I ran there. I called the on-air studio of Ekho Moskvy [Echo of Moscow], which was then the largest democratic radio station in Russia, and I had my own Ukrainian program there. I said I had an urgent message. They put me on the air, and I said that Ukraine had declared independence and left the Soviet Union. I remember that the host of the program, I think Sergey Buntman, said: “This cannot be so.” I said that it could, and then I addressed those Ukrainians living in Russia in Ukrainian. I said that the coexistence of Russia and Ukraine was over forever and that if they wanted to live in their own country, they should leave the foreign land and come back to build a democratic, sovereign state. That’s how it happened.
Then there were several calls to other countries — to radio stations in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. There was a different reaction there. They were happy. They had fought for independence themselves, and I told them that now it would be much easier to get Moscow to recognize the independence of these countries. These were my first four calls. During them, my colleagues, since there were literally two phone booths, were rushing into mine, and I was holding the door with my hands. I can’t remember who was trying to open the door because I wasn’t looking. Otherwise, I would have seen my friends there and had to open it. And I wanted to finish the conversation.
— In your opinion, what is the role of the Ukrainian media in the establishment of Ukraine’s independence?
— By and large, we did not have national state journalism at that time. It was republican journalism, and at its core, it was regional journalism. In fact, in Soviet times, the Ukrainian press, both Ukrainian-language and Russian-language, could cover a limited range of topics. Everything from international information to high culture had to be written in Moscow, in Moscow publications, or at the very least, in the TASS agency for republication in the provincial press, as it was called then. And we were such a provincial press. Even before the Declaration of Independence, we tried to change the situation and create a real national self-sufficient journalism.
My very work in Moscow, the fact that I wanted to write from there for the Ukrainian media, for Molod Ukrayiny, was based on my conviction that we should look at the changes in the Soviet Union with our own eyes rather than reprint Moscow’s messages. I didn’t just work in Moscow; I traveled to the Baltic states and published entire columns about the congresses of the Popular Fronts in the Baltic countries, which was very important before the congress of our Rukh [Narodnyi Rukh Ukrayiny, People’s Movement of Ukraine]. I met with people who wanted change and did extensive telephone interviews with people from all over the world precisely because I wanted us to look like a real national newspaper. I was guided, by the way, by the newspapers of the Union Republics of Yugoslavia, which, although they were newspapers of the Union republics, had their own correspondents in different capitals of the world — they gave their readers full information. You could read reports from Moscow, Brussels, London, you name it, in Slovenian or Macedonian. We didn’t have this for decades.
A particular memory stands out vividly in my mind. The first thing I did when I came to Moscow to study was to get accredited to the press center for the visit of US President Ronald Reagan, who was visiting the Soviet Union for the first time in many years. At one of the press conferences at the World Trade Center in Moscow, I asked a question and introduced myself as a journalist from the Molod Ukrayiny, Kyiv. And then I saw American journalists stand up and look at me. But it wasn’t a standing ovation — they had simply never seen a Soviet journalist from outside Moscow in their lives. The fact that someone called himself a correspondent for a Ukrainian publication (the only non-Moscow journalists at that conference were me and my colleague from Tallinn) was a sensation, something that had never happened before. And Ukraine was a member of the UN, it was represented on the international stage — only in name. And we had to make a real state out of this name.
I remember when I interviewed Anatoliy Maksymovych Zlenko, our first foreign minister, after the Declaration of Independence, and asked him how we would work when we don’t even have embassies anywhere, and in Moscow, we only have a representative office of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR to the Council of Ministers of the USSR, which deals exclusively with economic issues? Who will now be engaged in political analytics in terms of what is happening in the Russian government — the things political advisers do in the embassy? It was during an interview. He looked at me and said: “You, Vitaliy, are the one who will write until we set up the embassy.” And I wrote for several months until the first ambassador appeared and the staff was formed.
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— In your opinion, were you successful in creating independent media then?
— We started creating them step by step. At first, it was Soviet journalism that wanted to change. For me, Molod Ukrayiny is an example of such a publication. But not only it — the Komsomolskoe Znamya [Komsomol Banner] newspaper, which was later called Nezavisimost [Independence], is another example. It was a Russian-language media outlet that I wasn’t familiar with, but it was also an example of Soviet journalism that wanted to change. Then new publications began to appear, including Dzerkalo Tyzhnia [Mirror of the Week] and the newspaper Den [Day]. Later, we began to have our own TV channels, although Russian media and Russian television remained the reference point for most of our compatriots. The capital remained in Moscow, and everything important remained in Moscow. But step by step, we were building our own media. For me, a very important moment was the creation of the first Ukrainian-language international program on the STB TV channel, even back at Internews Media — Mykola Veresen and I, along with Rostyslav Khotyn, were its first hosts. Then I was engaged in creating an analytical weekly on STB, at a time when people in Kyiv and in all the capitals of the Soviet republics were watching [the Russian] Itogi S Yevgeniyem Kiselevym [Conclusions with Evgeny Kiselev] on NTV — that’s what we had to compete with at the time.
— And also, probably, with Inter, which broadcasted mostly Russian content.
— Of course, this was a different way: as if a Ukrainian channel, which is actually an operator of the Russian world, was not hiding its priorities. It has always been different: some channels, like 1+1 in the days of Alexander Rodnyansky, tried to create their own cool product, while other channels, like Inter, were operators of Russian or Russian-like products. This struggle went on for all these years until Ukrainian television finally became an instrument of oligarchic influence.
— Why do you think this happened?
— This is a natural process in the absence of state and society reform. Since no real reforms have taken place in either Russia or Ukraine, the media in both countries have become oligarchic, just as the economy has become oligarchic. And when I was told that Russia has free media, I always said that they are not free — they simply broadcast various interests of the oligarchs. And the moment may come when these oligarchs merge their interests with those of the state, and the freedom of the press will be over. This is exactly what happened after Vladimir Putin came to power. We had similar processes: on the one hand, the oligarchs competed with each other, and this created the illusion of media freedom. On the other hand, as soon as they united their interests, it was becoming apparent that we did not have two alternative opinions in the media. This happened at the most critical moments in our history. Let’s remember the Maidan of 2004 when Channel 5 was the only one reporting on real events in Ukraine. Let us look back on the Maidan of 2014, when almost all oligarchic channels, which are now an integral part of the telethon, silenced many of the events of the Maidan.
— 1+1 also covered the events on the Maidan.
— Not immediately. Again, the only channel that showed the opposition rally was Petro Poroshenko’s Channel 5. We also created Espresso at the beginning of the Maidan — Espresso was broadcasting live, Channel 5 showed rallies from time to time, and Hromadske TV did it on the Internet. TVi had some more opportunities, again, not immediately, but in a few weeks. And everyone else pretended that nothing was happening. They simply could not do otherwise.
— Do you think the responsibility for this lies with the teams of journalists who agreed to follow the orders of the oligarchs or with the society that had no demand for truly independent media?
— Undoubtedly, on society. If a society is ready for such a model of economy and such a model of life, then it has the appropriate media. And these appropriate media are joined by appropriate journalists.
It’s simple: if you have free media, you have some people working there. If you have controlled media, you have different people working there. The Russian media now also employs different people than those who worked there in the 90s.
— Konstantin Ernst is working now as he had worked then, like many other executives.
— I’m talking about teams, not top executives. And Ernst didn’t appear there right away either, but only when Russian television became obviously oligarchic. Ernst’s appearance already testified to the television being under control. So was Dobrodeev’s appearance. And now they remain for obvious reasons: a person who works for an oligarch can work for the state. They just work for the owner.
— Can we say then that the same thing is happening now on Ukrainian television?
— I would say that this happened before the war, no doubt. But now we are in a situation where we cannot talk about television as such. We can only talk about the telethon as an instrument of informational influence on the political situation in the country. But we cannot say what will happen after the war and after the marathon. It depends on so many things. If Ukraine really wants to move forward on the path of Euro-Atlantic integration, the structure created in recent decades, which, by and large, led to the 2019 triumph, must be destroyed. Otherwise, Ukraine will remain somewhere between the EU and Russia, with the prospect of falling under Russia’s economic and political influence even after such a war.
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— By triumph, do you mean Zelenskyy’s victory?
— Of course. Because this victory is also the result of the union of oligarchic interests. Consider how TV channels behaved toward their competitors. Were there any TV channels that created equal conditions for presidential candidates?
— Suspilne did.
— But how can we compare the ratings and capabilities of UA:PBC with those of such popular channels as 1+1 or Inter? After 2014, we wanted to make UA:PBC a reputable broadcaster. However, the financial capabilities of UA:PBC are incomparable to those of Kolomoiskyi or Firtash. I’m not talking about the other thing — when UA:PBC was supposed to play its role as the main broadcaster, the main instrument of dialogue with society, that is, after February 24, 2022, the authorities decided to replace it with a marathon with the participation of oligarchic channels. This is a real shame.
— What do you think explains this decision?
— I think it was a simple idea: The public broadcaster did not seem to be a controlled instrument because the management is really elected through the Supervisory Board, and the members of the Board are not under the full control of the government because it has a procedure of electing representatives of parliamentary factions and non-governmental organizations — and it is much easier to negotiate with oligarchs. And, if you like, it’s a cartel conspiracy: the oligarchs had neither the money to support the work of their own TV channels nor the desire to support their work because they lost interest in them as instruments of influence, at least temporarily. So they decided that this way, they could get money for their maintenance from the state budget of Ukraine. That’s the whole secret of the telethon: it’s a cartel conspiracy between the oligarchs and the current government.
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— UA:PBC also participates in the marathon.
— It does. But it could and should have been the same channel that would broadcast 24 hours a day. That’s why we pay taxes so that the public broadcaster can provide us with trustworthy information at critical times.
— What is your assessment of the closure of Medvedchuk’s channels? Do you think this is a positive step in the development of our society and media, or is it the other way around?
— I believe that their influence on Ukrainian society was exaggerated. Of course, they had an impact on their audience segment. But people who were already disillusioned with the Russian world after 2014 were very cautious about these channels, so to speak. People who hoped for the success of the “Russian world” certainly found their outlet in these channels. But by and large, the result of this propaganda influence is demonstrated in the results obtained by OPZZh [Opposition Platform — For Life party] in the presidential and parliamentary elections. If these channels were so influential, why such a small percentage?
The very existence of these channels and the fact that they were not taken off the air, to be absolutely cynical, was part of the tactics of deterring the aggressor. President Petro Poroshenko, no matter how we treat him, is still an experienced player in such things. And he obviously held these channels and Medvedchuk himself as a carrot in front of president Putin’s nose. The latter wanted to see these carrots and believe that sooner or later, with the help of this information influence (because all Ukrainians love Russia, right?), he could get the political revenge that Russia got in 2010. Without war.
Then other people came to power who were not ready for a policy like this and tried to demonstrate to Vladimir Putin that he should negotiate only with them and that Volodymyr Zelenskyy was the only person with whom a dialogue should continue. Therefore, the channels were closed, and Medvedchuk was sanctioned and arrested.
I absolutely agree that the only person with whom the Russian president should have a dialog is the legitimately elected president of Ukraine, not some Medvedchuk. I also absolutely support the closure of propaganda channels and sanctions against Medvedchuk and Kozak because I consider them to be people hostile to Ukraine. But what was the goal of the people who closed the channels? I asked them at the time if they were prepared for the fact that Russian president Vladimir Putin, much like a donkey that’s been denied the carrot dangled in front of its nose, might retaliate. Everyone told me: what more can he do than what he has already done? I heard it with my own ears. Now we know what. Every political action has its consequences, which must be calculated. You must ask yourself the question: I closed Medvedchuk’s channels, I put Medvedchuk in jail, this is absolutely the right action. Am I ready for Kyiv to get bombed? This question should be asked in the presidential office. If you ask yourself other questions, for example, “I’ve closed Medvedchuk’s channels, am I ready to negotiate with Vladimir Putin, who will understand my importance?” you will get the wrong answer to the wrong question.
— It is unlikely that Putin needed an additional reason to start a war — he was preparing for it and for Medvedchuk’s imprisonment, as is now more or less clear.
— I think the invasion of Ukraine is a complex thing. It was dictated, among other things, by the realization of the simple fact that there is no other way to create a “proper” pro-Russian government in Ukraine than through military intervention. I remember very well my conversations in Moscow back in 2010 when Yanukovych won. One of my interlocutors, a high-ranking Russian official, said to me: “You realize that Yanukovych is a temporary phenomenon, right?” I asked him who was not a temporary phenomenon, and he mentioned Medvedchuk’s name. He was supposed to become the new president of Ukraine soon — that was the plan. I told my interlocutor that this was unimaginable because Viktor Medvedchuk was an unelectable person for the presidency. And the man answered me: “There are no unelectable candidates when such a decision is made by Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. Medvedchuk will be your president, whether you want him to be or not.”
And all this time, they were looking for a way to bring this unelectable candidate back into politics: through crises, through the election of Medvedchuk as the head of parliament, through turning him into a temporary president. This is what, as far as we know, they tried to do in February 2022: Yanukovych as president, Medvedchuk as parliamentary speaker, then Yanukovych resigns and Medvedchuk becomes president.
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— When the war is over, hopefully soon, do you think we will be able to create truly independent media?
— I am far from thinking that we hope the war will end in the near future. We do not know when the war will end. We want the war to end in the near future, but this is a conflict that can last into the twenties and thirties of the twenty-first century. There is hope that it will end under certain circumstances: the West’s ability to put pressure on Russia, some internal processes in Russia itself, and so on. This is also very important and may be even more important than the preconditions. But these are not preconditions. There are no objective social, economic, political, or military preconditions for ending the war between Russia and Ukraine. That is why all of Ukraine’s prospects are shrouded in mist, I would say.
We do not know many components of this task. First, we do not know what the population of Ukraine will be at the end of the war. Second, we do not know what territory the Ukrainian government will control at that point. Third, we do not know how the population will be distributed across this territory. Fourth, we don’t know whether this will be a break, a pause to prepare for a new war, or whether it will actually be over. All of this is unknown, and each answer entails a different development option.
If we get out of this war in the coming years and are able to move towards the EU and NATO, we will, in any case, be forced to fulfill the conditions that will put an end to the state’s ability to control the media. And we will get a completely different quality of government, see the collapse and punishment of populists, and get completely different mechanisms of relations between the media and society. It will be impossible to avoid this because our Western partners and creditors will slap us on the wrist for trying to avoid it. We are aware that Ukraine is now living on Western money and fighting with Western weapons. Ukraine’s agency will still need to be restored, and this will take longer than the war itself. And if we want to overcome the state of absolute protectorate in which we find ourselves and become a truly independent state in the EU, we will have to clearly, assiduously, and without unnecessary talk fulfill these conditions that will form a society of European values in our country.
There is an option that this will not be the case. That we will continue to be in conflict, and we will be forced to live under martial law for a long time. Then there will be no real political process, no free media, and a time of wartime communism funded by Western money. This is the second scenario, and it is also possible.
There is a third option. Ukraine today is very similar to Viktor Orban’s Hungary in terms of consolidation of power. During martial law, this does not look like a tragedy, but Ukraine may remain such a country between Russia and the West after the war, and this will also be the choice of Ukrainian society. And not necessarily with the current president at the helm — the current president, with his popularity, may disappear after the war as if he had never existed. But another figure may emerge who may have the same level of trust and be able to usurp power.
— Can independent media prevent this development, I mean the authoritarian-populist direction of Ukraine’s development?
— Not in a situation where the media will not have economic factors to exist.
— We now have powerful donor programs, excellent investigative projects, and independent online media.
— All of this will only matter if Ukraine follows the path of European integration. If Ukraine ends up like Georgia, which is an even better example than Hungary, all of this will have little impact. The Georgian media also has donors and support from Western foundations, and how do they influence public sentiment? Not much.
To summarize. There are three options in terms of how events will unfold. Conditionally Polish or Romanian, a normal path of development, movement towards European democratic values and appropriate media. A Hungarian or Georgian one. And a frozen situation of martial law for many sad years. All three of these options have the potential to be realized. If you are interested, I can give you a percentage: 45-50% for democracy, 30% for the Georgian option, and 20% for the continuation of the war for many years.
— What would you call the biggest defeats and biggest victories of the Ukrainian media since independence?
— The biggest failure of the Ukrainian media is that it failed to stop authoritarianism, the oligarchization of the media and society under previous presidents, and the frenzied triumph of populism under Zelenskyy. This is a serious problem: we have failed to give people an objective picture that would at least give them the opportunity to become aware of the consequences of their own actions. Another big defeat is that we did not save our colleagues who became victims of murder and torture, and we did not create an atmosphere of intolerance to crime in society. And the victory is that we were worthy, at least some of us were. We stood with our society during the times of Independence, the Maidans, and the war.
Photo: Vitaliy Portnikov’s Facebook page
