{"id":1265686,"date":"2025-07-20T21:54:43","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T18:54:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/the-government-has-allocated-over-800-million-hryvnias-for-the-united-news-telethon-in-2025\/"},"modified":"2025-07-20T21:54:43","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T18:54:43","slug":"the-government-has-allocated-over-800-million-hryvnias-for-the-united-news-telethon-in-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/the-government-has-allocated-over-800-million-hryvnias-for-the-united-news-telethon-in-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"The government has allocated over 800 million hryvnias for the \u201cUnited News\u201d telethon in 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2025, the Ukrainian state allocated over 800 million hryvnias for the national telethon “United News” and the parliamentary channel “Rada”. At the same time, the project is increasingly drawing criticism from the public, journalists, and international partners – in particular, the European Commission, which is calling on Kyiv to restore media pluralism.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is reported by Bihus.Info.<\/a><\/p>\n

Investigators found that the total costs of the telethon in 2025 have already exceeded 800 million hryvnias<\/strong> from the state budget. The bulk of these funds are intended to support the broadcasting of “United News” and the “Rada” channel.<\/p>\n

Journalists note that the telethon, which was created in the first months of the full-scale war as the only source of verified information, has over time lost its function as an impartial broadcaster. It is now increasingly being called a PR tool for the authorities.<\/p>\n

According to investigators, Culture Minister Mykola Tochytsky continues to support the telethon, just like his predecessor Oleksandr Tkachenko. Tochytsky stated that the telethon will operate until the end of martial law.<\/p>\n

Ukraine’s European partners have already openly criticized the telethon. In October 2024, the European Commission stressed that Ukraine should restore media diversity and end control over the information space.<\/p>\n

In addition, Ukrainians’ trust in the telethon has significantly decreased. According to KIIS, in 2023, 69% of citizens trusted it, but by the fall of 2024 this figure had dropped to 48%.<\/p>\n

Journalists emphasize that the telethon, despite significant budget injections, is not effective in conveying information to society and may have negative consequences for democratic processes in the country.<\/p>\n

Earlier, a former journalist of the “United News” telethon spoke about censorship and Ukrainian officials’ fear of journalists.<\/a> According to him, state press services have turned into “owners of information”, requiring coordination of questions before interviews, and in response to criticism or uncomfortable questions, threatening to refuse to comment.<\/p>\n

We will remind you that about 67 thousand procurement notices worth over 15 billion hryvnias<\/a> were published in the Prozorro system from March 9 to 15. In particular, the largest contracts were awarded by the State Enterprise \u201cMultimedia Platform of Foreign Broadcasting of Ukraine\u201d.<\/p>\n

Also follow \u201cPryamim\u201d<\/strong> on Facebook<\/a> , Twitter<\/a> , Telegram<\/a> , and Instagram.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2025, the Ukrainian state allocated over 800 million hryvnias for the national telethon “United News” and the parliamentary channel “Rada”. At the same time, the project is increasingly drawing criticism from the public, journalists, and international partners – in particular, the European Commission, which is calling on Kyiv to restore media pluralism. This is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54,"featured_media":1154450,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76885,76871,76872,76875],"class_list":["post-1265686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-policy","category-news-2","category-news-feed","category-other-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1265686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/54"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1265686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1265686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1154450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1265686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1265686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}