July 20, in Kiev was blown up by a car with a well-known journalist Pavel Sheremet. Ukrainian law enforcement authorities have confirmed that it was murder. A native of Minsk, Sheremet began its work on local television in the early 1990-ies, in 1996, he headed the Belarusian Bureau of the Russian channel ORT (now First channel), where the famous criticism of Alyaksandr Lukashenka.
Show full… a Conflict with the authorities led to the criminal case – Sheremet spent three months in Belarusian prison for illegal crossing of the state border. After that, until 2008, worked on the First channel in Russia.
We publish archival interview Natalia Rostov took Sheremet in July 2014 after his retirement from Public television of Russia. After this last attempt to work in Moscow Pavel Sheremet has left for Ukraine, where he became Executive Director of the edition “Ukrainian truth”.
– My leaving is not connected with the conflict in NEG, I have no claims to leadership, the immediate superiors. My care is associated with the conflict with separatists and their backers in Moscow. Although there were people on the channel, I know a few that are constantly pounded, wrote denunciations to various authorities on me, tried to run ahead of a steam locomotive and show a proactive loyalty to the authorities and a proactive and vigilant about my activities.
– Where they wrote denunciations?
As “where” in the presidential administration. Maybe even in the UN. (Laughs.)
– Ban Ki-Moon?
Yes, Yes. (Laughs.)
There was even Belarusians, who complained, too, of the Belarusian Embassy were all signals were sent – they thought I was the old Man hurt in some programs. But all this was local history. In General in almost a year, for the first nine months of the program, Right?Yes! I have not had any situation that was told to me: this man does not invite, but that invite. We very strictly adhere to the format of public television: you must provide a word and beetle, and the toad, and right and left and red and white. I’ve been in the program almost all the leaders of the opposition. That’s just [Alexei] Navalny was not Pussy Riot. Two programmes we are about Pussy Riot did, their friends were constantly involved, lawyers, associates.
– And why not the Bulk?
– I went on the air after the Moscow elections, so we waited for a reason, and purely organizational and failed. But [Yevgeniya] Chirikova was, [Boris] Nemtsov was several times, [Ilya] Yashin was a few times… We’ve done several programs about the Maidan, which was quite not the same as on other channels. Once we had a program about Maidan, which was attended only by journalists, who were his witnesses – Matthew Ganapolsky, Jack Feldman… I didn’t call any politicians chatterbox, no politicians-populists, but only journalists-eyewitnesses. In the program of the Crimea, for example, we were Crimean Tatars, with a rather harsh criticism of Moscow’s actions. In short, I want to say that there is no censorship, we were not, and no stone in his bosom against the OTP and Lysenko I don’t.
And then, when the war in Ukraine started, then it became the separatists have all kinds of letters to send, from the President’s administration began to send letters to the public like: understand, we the team of a collective farm wrote that Sheremet Russophobe. If Anatoly Grigoryevich was less short years and it would have had more power, then maybe we would have lasted longer. I saw how he was suffering and didn’t want to increase suffering. Despite the fact that it is a monument that no one except the President can’t touch, that he is a man in authority, in every sense of the word, he was hard – because of the pressure from all sides, because of this hysteria.
– The pressure was about your programs?
– Well, Yes, that the main enemy of the people – Sheremet. All wrote letters, then “news” made the expanded article that I Russophobe (also because controlled stuffing on the fan). Simultaneously with the newspaper, by the way, the story was featured on NTV that the separatists want to punish journalists “echo of Moscow” for the betrayal. Then some “Russian front” began to send letters to the Ukrainian journalists. I decided that even if I suffer I, and OTR is more work. Let them find another reason, but I will not be a reason to clamp Lysenko in the corner. It was a war with elements of the NEG. At OTP after all, a difficult fate, and I suspect that now they want someone to connect to RTR or some other holding. He sticks out like a pain now, as the false tooth in the system gosmedia.
– While all the time he asks for money and says it will be closed if you don’t.
– There is a stupid funding system. Wanted initially to create a completely independent system, but did not invent it. In England bi-Bi-si financed by tax in Finland and Germany – at the expense of TV. We didn’t want anything to enter, but did not want direct budget line, so came up with some crazy system, when NEG takes loans from the state, interest-free… I am for nine months of work and could not understand.
– Maybe you don’t have to? You’re a journalist.
– (Laughs.) Yes. I’m not particularly into this, but I know that there is a problem. And this false tooth that want something, is to pull out, so that nothing is distracting from the landscape now because the media landscape is beautiful: all are slender, are plain, absolutely at the command jump, crawl, shoot), and OTR were picked because Lysenko monument and it is difficult to push.
– You are the only one on the whole canal irritated?
– Yes, it happened in some strange way. Actually, I was surprised that he was on the channel. Was surprised how long we lasted, was unusual. A channel is created, why to trample him, if his few looks? You need to channel shrugged, won the audience… But now is a very nervous time, and any word spoken across the obscurantism that us surrounds, destroys the whole system. The lies that poured from all channels, so extreme that one common word negates the work of the crowd of these propagandists. Irritates them. In addition, we worked every day except Saturday and Sunday, the program was an hour and a half. After we started to broadcast, and [Vladimir] Solovyov was out every day. People need some conversation.
Paul, I don’t understand. You hands break out and forced to tell a lie?
– No. Just because I had a wave of pressure on Lysenko – endless letters, at some point, it started to blackmail me, as I understand it: if his channel works a national traitor, Russophobe, hired by the Ukrainian junta, and blah-blah-blah… They do not see the program “Right?Yes!” they do not care about Sheremet, they use the occasion to attack the channel.
– “They” – who is this?
– Groups in the Kremlin, as I understand it, there is no unity on the Ukrainian question. It’s all different people who want to clean the NEG to remove the reason to Lysenko was not calling every week, to stop sending printouts of my posts on Facebook and my articles, for example, in the “Ukrainian truth”… Once my article there, for example, sent from Gromov, with a cover letter.
Refers to Alexei Gromov?
Yes. In April I wrote an article about the plans of Putin and this was the first scandal mad when Gromov and sent her Lysenko to review, with some soprovodilovka.
– You have not seen?
– No, not seen. We had, of course, secretly take pictures and upload to social networks. But I don’t do those things. What do you think, and then say, sorry. Maybe you have to be smarter. When I was in Belarusian prison for the first time in 1997, chambers was wearing a wire. (Sheremet was then held in jail for three months. – Slon.) And then, years later, security officers who led the case, said that they did not help – the wire coincides with the transcripts of my court appearances and personal conversations with them. I think I’m not a typical Belarusian. Maybe I Chukchi in any generation? They say that everything on the planet are relatives, I may be there?
I consistently criticized our policies on Ukraine, against the war, and not in the program, I was connected with his professional position – I was leading, not a participant. I have the programme faces, which I on spirit do not digest. If I had my way, my channel, these people are rascals, populists, liars per kilometer would not have been suitable, but, unfortunately, among them were deputies of the state Duma, are very popular journalists, politicians and officials. So I had to give them the word, we journalists have to give the word all, that’s our job. So sometimes you have to step on a throat to an own song. But still under the guise of the Colonel was hiding a criminal (laughs), from the mask leading “liberast” is still broke.
Most irritated my publications in Newspapers and Facebook, print my Twitter is brought to the Director General. All this he responded calmly, philosophically, sometimes I Zhurilo, and I have no negative emotions towards Lysenko.
– While Anatoly Lysenko said that you just ended contract, and is the reason for leaving the channel.
I don’t want to comment on what he says Anatoliy, because the level of my respect for him high. I don’t want to engage in polemics with him and repudiate his words. We have no internal conflict. My contract ends in two months. I wrote the application at own will, and this is my decision. Anatoly offered different options for me to stay, but they, in my opinion, the situation would not improve. In June, I was no longer on the air, we decided: let me go on vacation, wears off this excitement, this wave of obscurantism. But the wave is not only not slept, and became even more. I think in the current situation on Russian TV is almost impossible to work. And better a horrible end than horror without end.
Worked together with Dima Laskovym, so real Communist, Orthodox banner bearers, and receive the balance, I’m a liberal. He with his leftist ideas, I with my right, around the raging crowd of deputies. Great! It should look like. I think parting with OTR will be quiet, we don’t have time to so merge in ecstasy, as was the case with “the First channel” with which I grew up. I did not drink, did not get sick…
– What, readers recall, you left the “First”?
– The formal reason was the article in the newspaper “Vedomosti”. Called “Lokalizacija of Russia” (the article was called “the Opposition Belarusian lessons.” – Slon). When they arrested Garry Kasparov for five days (the Opposition leader was arrested at the protest March in November 2007, the year – Slon.), I was so outraged by this that he wrote an article that said if you do not protect Garry Kasparov, then tomorrow sit down all the Germans and so on. All is not so bad in 2008, but I wrote that Russia goes the way of Belarus, is lokalizacia. There was a terrible scandal, almost a Union meeting was arranged, and I left quietly.
– Union meeting on “the First channel”?
– Yes, in the office where I worked: how could I write this article, I frame people, and I have then all will be well, but the people, how can they feed their families? It was in 2008, now 2014. The people then had to feed the family, still on the “First channel”, they have everything in order, no one was hurt. I have everything in order. (Laughs.)
To me already then it was clear that everyone in Russia is gloomy. After Belarus nothing shocks me. My Russian colleagues still in the zero years have experienced each event, such as the closure of NTV: there can be, there are some limits, boundaries… And I were going on and that there are no boundaries, no limits, and we will get terrified of the extent of our fall. Not because I’m so smart or pessimistic, just all that I have seen in Belarus. It seemed to me, however, that the corrupting influence of the glamour of the bourgeoisie can stop this process that a well-fed life, in principle, does not imply the construction of concentration camps. But I still made a mistake. In our phantom pain and complexes of the Soviet people fell the oil wealth, and we decided that really cool and the whole world can show gruel. And all this in a aggressive manner. If you were poorer, could not conduct himself.
It was then, in 2008, now 2014. It seems that horror. But I continue to insist that…
– This is not it?
– It’s awful, but we shall see the horror, the horror, the horror. There are some bright spots, however. Here in NEG naughty, and thanks to destiny for a few months.The last claim was that I took a fawning interview with the Ukrainian punitive, and interviewed the commander of the battalion “Donbass” and the commander of the battalion “Azov”. Most interesting is that the villains and robots of all sorts in Ukraine, there is also lack of these, write that Pavel Sheremet asks professional questions from FSB agent to our soldiers, so do not be surprised that shot down our aircraft and killing our Ukrainian soldiers. That is, there is accusing me that I ask questions of the FSB, and here – that fawning interview with the Ukrainian punishers. What are you gonna do…
– What to do? Going to retire?
Early. I’ll ask professional questions and doing fawning interviews, but the scope of their employment relationship with the state Russian TV. Is there a website that I created, “the Belarusian partisan”. Anything else will create. But the foie Gras will have to give. My daughter all the time I was criticized for it, says weight is a problem. Have uzhatsya what to do. In General, the problem of many Russian journalists that some part of the sold freedom for the foie Gras. And those people who are unable to say black is white, experiencing a hangover. Bad money, inflated salaries in the oligarchic media has corrupted many. Absolutely non-competitive environment the last fifteen years, greatly relaxed, and it is very difficult to give up going to cafe “Pushkin”. Nothing, the situation will filter out the real journalists from those who played role playing games and depicted the journalist. Has corrupted the agreements of information cooperation, when the state media, municipal, from Newspapers to television channels, has entered into contracts with everyone-mayors, governors, police, hospitals. These pay the money, and have a good talk about them, make, what is called, “positive stories.”
And Deputy Minister of communications Alexei Volin advises to do.
Yes, Yes. And here a mortgage holiday in decadent Europe where you can ride through Provence with a wry face, to see all of their ulcers, to spit in Paris with the Eiffel tower and return with a sense of accomplishment to their petrodollars. This time, unfortunately.
– You mean yourself, too, so tell me?
– No, I Eiffel tower has never spit. I go to Europe, not for ulcers, and for the positive impressions. Unfortunately, blissful time zero, time, blissful in oil prices, we wasted in the space is lowered, drowned banknotes atmosphere.
