Olena Kravets used a Russian book to advertise her book club “Readers”: details of the scandal
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Ukrainian actress and TV presenter Olena Kravets announced the launch of a paid book club “Readers”, but a promotional photo for the initiative has drawn criticism on social media. In the photo, Kravets is holding a book that users identified as a publication by the Russian publishing house “Azbuka”.
This is reported by Chytomo .
The “Readers” club is positioned as a shared reading service: participants read one book each month according to a specific plan in a closed Telegram channel. The cost of participation is 395 hryvnias per month, and participants purchase the book itself separately.
Kravets plans to publish audio recordings of readings from the book twice a week. An online meeting on Zoom is planned for the end of the month, which authors, translators, or editors can join.
The club’s first book in October was Fredrik Backman’s novel “My Friends” from the Ukrainian publishing house “Knygolav”. The club began work on October 3.
The criticism arose over a photo of Kravets holding a paperback book. Lyubov Bovan, founder of the Telegram channel “Book Therapy”, drew attention to the alleged use of a Russian edition.
Later, users compared the promotional photo with Kravets’s post from 2020 and concluded that the photo depicts the “Azbuka-Classika” series from the Russian publishing house “Azbuka”. The book shows the author’s name and the triangular logo of the publishing house. It is about Milan Kundera’s novel “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”.
At the same time, due to the altered details in the photo, users assumed that the image could have been processed using artificial intelligence. Kravets later confirmed that she processed the old photo using AI.
Users also noted the removal of negative comments under the post about the club’s launch. The photo with the book was later removed from the publication’s carousel.
The actress later explained that the scandalous photo was actually taken at least 16 years ago. The former “Kvartal” star chose it because she had no other photo of herself holding the book in her hands, and she didn’t even pay attention to the cover when editing it.
“I processed it in AI, because it was black and white and yes, Milan Kundera was there. Honestly, I didn’t even notice it, because different books were being sold at the time, we were reading different books. And now I noticed that it wasn’t very correct, so I deleted it and replaced it. The idea came suddenly, by chance, and I wanted to read cool books and, perhaps, support people in this way. So, yeah, I didn’t see it right here, but I’ve already fixed everything. Because the photo is old, as I said,” Kravets said.
As of October 3, there is no photo of the book on the project website.
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