Ukraine launches TV channel for Russia-occupied areas

Ukraine on March 1 launched an entertainment and cultural television channel for its territories that are occupied by the Russian Federation.

Its name is "DOM/DIM," meaning "HOME," according to UATV.

Acting Director General of UATV Yulia Ostrovska says that the main goal of the new channel is to bring residents of the occupied part of Ukraine back to the country's political, cultural and public agenda.

"We know from polls that people are very tired of politicized content and want to see something more comfortable – motivational content on their TVs that will let them relax and be more reassured of their better future," she said.

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According to Ostrovska, over the years of the Russian occupation, Russian TV channels gained dominance in the temporarily occupied territories. "Our main goal is to fix the situation," she said.

The channel will entertain and inform; its task will be to " return the minds of those living in the temporarily occupied territories of Donbas and Crimea by delivering the key message: Ukraine is our home," she said.

While presenting the concept of the new channel, Yuriy Kostyuk, the deputy head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, said that its full-scale broadcasts would start from the following week, according to an UNIAN correspondent.

It will be bilingual, available in Russian and Ukrainian; it will produce both national and regional news of Donbas and Crimea, he said. According to him, its broadcasts are in test mode now.

Another deputy head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Kyrylo Tymoshenko says that the channel does not have its own content and plans to gradually start its own production within two years.

In the coming days, it will start producing news blocks, and subsequently its own shows, and until then, it will broadcast entertainment content to be provided by such media groups as 1+1 media, Ukraina, Inter, and Star Light Media.

In turn, Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada's Committee for Humanitarian and Information Policy Nikita Poturaev emphasized that the above-mentioned media groups would provide entertaining content only, and they would not have any impact on the channel's information policy.

Yet, he said, the channel will use terms that are stipulated in international documents: illegal armed groups, the aggressor country, the contact line, and others. "No one on this channel will mention 'rebels' or 'civil war,'" he stressed.

He says the signal will cover the entire territory of occupied Donbas. However, due to Crimea's terrain, it will be able to cover only its northern steppe part and partly the coast, as the further signal will be blocked by the mountains.

Poturaev did not rule out that the signal could be jammed by Russian-controlled authorities.

First Deputy Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports Anatoliy Maksymchuk, in turn, said that since the channel has limited rights to content, it will not be broadcast via satellite, but it will be available in T2 digital video broadcasting format.

As UNIAN reported, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last week instructed to unblock the satellite signal of nationwide television channels. The largest television channels are expected to launch open international versions via satellite soon.