New English-language outlet for Western audience launched in Ukraine

Ukraine’s state-owned International Broadcasting Multimedia Platform (MPIU) has launched The Gaze, a digital infotainment platform which, among other things, will keep Western audiences informed of the latest events in Ukraine in English.

Source: Oleksandr Tkachenko, Minister of Culture and Information Policy, on Telegram; Detector Media

Quote: "Introducing The Gaze, the promised Ukrainian international broadcasting in English."

Details: Tkachenko said Ukraine’s International Broadcasting Multimedia Platform is launching The Gaze to familiarise Western audiences "with the phenomenon of the countries of the New Europe and Ukraine as a component of it, with its people, history, nature, culture, politics, economy and influence on the global future."

Tkachenko says the new platform will combine top news stories, reporting, entertainment content, analysis and streaming formats.

Quote: "The Gaze's key task is to become the information space where Ukrainian narratives, heroes and stories will be organically presented through themes and values that are interesting and understandable to a broad audience in the Western world, for which the part of Europe east of Berlin remains terra incognita.

Now, when so much attention from around the world is focused on Ukraine, the establishment of projects like this plays an important role, allowing us to tell people about our culture and history as much as possible, so that we are recognised not only as a country at war with Russia, but as an integral and interesting part of the European community."

In addition to a website, The Gaze has a YouTube channel and is on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Yuliia Ostrovska, Director General of MPIU, reports that work on creating the new media started last year.

She says MPIU conducted a number of studies and developed several concept solutions that were tested on various audiences to get a clear picture of international readers’ and viewers’ interests.

"In the end, we chose the format of The Gaze that we are presenting today. Meanwhile the English-language YouTube channel UATV will keep working as usual," Ostrovska says.

Ukraine's Ministry of Digital Transformation says The Gaze's core audience should match the list of countries that have been Ukraine's most generous supporters during the war and that show the most interest in Ukraine, primarily the US, UK, EU member states and Canada. The content is designed to reach a broad audience who are active users of social media and YouTube and are used to the interactive delivery of information.

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