Ukraine plans to create a television channel to broadcast abroad in English and Russian to counteract the "lies" of the Kremlin's powerful international television machine, a top security official said.
Viktoria Syumar, the deputy head of Ukraine's National Security Defense Council, said Wednesday in a Facebook post that Ukraine did not have the resources or the desire to imitate the "Russian propaganda machine," spearheaded by Moscow's RT television — formerly known as Russia Today — with its estimated budget of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
Instead, it would strive to offer reporting that would "allow the world to see Ukraine," she said.
"There will be no lies and staged videos a-la Russia Today," Syumar said.
"It's better to learn from other examples, which are much more authoritative and enduring than the products of Goebbels," she said in a reference to the Nazi propaganda minister, whose methods critics have compared with the broadcasts of Russian state-run television.
The new channel would be created "on the basis of" Ukraine's state-owned UTR television, and Bank Television, or BTB, the official channel of the country's National Bank, Syumar said.
The new channel would broadcast in Europe, the U.S., across the former Soviet republics and in the "temporarily occupied" Crimea, she said.
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