State Enterprise International Broadcasting Multimedia Platform of Ukraine has launched an English-speaking digital platform The Gaze, which is supposed to make mass Western audience acquainted with the phenomenon of countries of new Europe and Ukraine as a part of it, its people, history, culture, nature, politics, economics and influence on the global future. The new platform will comprise top-of-the-line news, reports, entertaining content, analytical materials and streaming formats.

The key role of The Gaze is to become that informational space where Ukrainian narratives, heroes and stories are organically introduced through interesting and understandable topics and values for the broad audience from the West, for whom a part of Europe east of Berlin remains terra incognita. At the beginning The Gaze targets first of all at readers and viewers from the UK and USA, that are genuinely interested not only in current news of a region of New Europe, in particular Ukraine, but in a broader social, cultural, economic, political and historical context and taking in the events being watched by the whole world and forming our new global future.

Yulia Ostrovska, CEO of the state enterprise International Broadcasting Multimedia Platform of Ukraine, said: “The need in a modern English-speaking media for Western consumers, that wouldn’t be just telling them about global disasters in Ukraine or making it exotic and therefore interesting, but broadcasting to the West our deep mental affinity, common civilizational path and values, arose a lot of time ago. Last year Ukrainian state broadcasting started working on such a media, because we cannot afford to lose a wave of a genuine interest towards our country, which we had dearly paid for. This interest will help us to anchor acceptance of Ukraine and Ukrainians as a normal component of European civilization vital for the future in the public consciousness of citizens of Western countries. At the same time, this intuitive perception of our country as their own will help us to destroy entrenched in the West Russian myths and stereotypes about Ukrainians and undoubtedly will be a part of Ukrainian subjectivity. I also would like to mention that we have carried out several researchers, worked out a few conceptual solutions and tested them on different audiences to clearly define queries of foreign readers and viewers, choose optimal format and become one of the trusted media among citizens of Western countries. Having done all this, we have finally stopped at the format of The Gaze, which we are introducing to you today. Meanwhile, the English-speaking UATV YouTube channel will continue working in the same way as it was before“.

The Gaze comprises three main units – a news feed, analytics and videos. The news feed shows top-of-the-line news of Ukraine, Europe and the USA. The analytical unit provides an author`s point of view about a number of events and activities that are always directly or indirectly related to the Ukrainian context. This unit is segregated into different headings: politics and first of all its foreign aspects, culture, economics, technology, community and people.

Original political and social shows, podcasts by authors of the analytical unit and entertaining projects will be used as video footage on the platform. For example, a talk-show “Talk For More” with Henry Keen and an entertainment news show “Hidden Angel” have already been launched. The video content of The Gaze is available not only on the site, but on the YouTube-channel as well.