The State Committee for Television and Radio Broadcasting of Ukraine implements state policy in the media, information and publishing sectors. In particular, the agency issues or refuses to import into the territory of Ukraine and distribute publishing products in the Russian language, makes decisions on imposing fines for the distribution of publishing products with anti-Ukrainian content. “Apostrophe” spoke with the head of the State Committee for Television and Radio Broadcasting, Oleg Nalyvayko, about the state of affairs in the domestic publishing sector and the fight against propagandistic book products.
- Despite such a difficult economic situation, there have been more publishers in Ukraine. What is this connected with?
- Yes, we also paid attention to this. Especially for us , November-December 2024 is an increase. Then there is a certain decline, but this decline is technical. The problem is with the register, because it was previously maintained manually, and from November 1, according to the law, they have now switched to an electronic version...
I think that the presidential project that allocates certain funds to young people to purchase books has worked, we felt it in the printing facilities. And I think this is due to the fact that even our today's campaign, which we talked about , a million books, roughly speaking, were exported to people. It was a gift in this case, but he definitely did his promotion for the book. And the demand for it, the book trade shows that it exists. In this way, we popularized the book and it worked.
- The committee monitors anti-Ukrainian publishing products. What trends do you notice in these propaganda publications?
- We also issue permits for the import of certain literature. As it turned out, since the beginning of the war, no one has made such requests asking to import literature published in an aggressor country or Belarus into the territory of Ukraine. There were none. Of course, there is literature that, from a commercial point of view, is smuggled into the hands of smugglers and so on. We have both the Border Guard Service and our public colleagues actively involved, but it certainly exists. From time to time, together with law enforcement agencies, we conduct raids, including on Petrivka, if in Kyiv, on other book markets, quite a lot is discovered. This struggle will be long.
- Are the fines serious for this?
- Right now we are waiting for the government's decision, which should determine the amount of fines. Fines are currently quite large, depending on the volume. We have trials every week or two, those who have been fined refuse to pay, they try to block them in the courts somehow. But the amounts of fines there are from 30 to 60 thousand hryvnias. For a small, say, book trade, this is quite a lot.
- Can Ukrainian patriotic products somehow end up in the temporarily occupied territories?
- We are sure that it will get there. There is no such information.
- Is there support from the state for such actions?
- They are included in general programs. For example, our campaign "Ukrainian children - a Ukrainian book", I think that literature gets there because our displaced people have this book. I think that there are some contacts, but we do not have such objective monitoring.
- The government has changed the border crossing rules for men of draft age. So some media outlets may lose the ability to send employees somewhere if they don't have critical status, is that true?
- That's right... We issue such letters [for departure] only to those who belong to our sphere of management. This is the public broadcaster and the State Joint Stock Company "Ukrvydavpoligrafiya". This is our area of responsibility, everything else is the area of responsibility of the ministry and, accordingly, the regional military and civil administrations.
- Among those to whom you are issuing appeals, were there violations - failure to return from abroad?
- A million kilometers traveled [with Ukrainian books as part of a charity campaign] - the vast majority abroad, there were a lot of volunteers on our letters - zero, no one stayed abroad.
- Finally, do you expect that publishers who were forced to move online will resume printing?
- Absolutely, yes. From our communication with publishers, from a business point of view, a significant part is precisely the printed book. And clearly, now in order to print [necessary] some advance payments are needed, which are difficult to find. But, I think, in the future they will return.
