Ukrainian media professionals and civil society organizations have issued a joint statement, calling for the inclusion of Ukrainian journalists and the removal of some Russian speakers from the True Story Festival programme, which is scheduled to take place in Bern on 20-22 June 2025.

The True Story Festival in Bern is an international journalism event held annually that brings together reporters from around the world to present and discuss their investigative and feature stories.

The signatories, including the Institute of Mass Information, expressed concern about the festival’s programme structure, particularly in sections related to the Russian-Ukrainian war.

According to the statement, at least five representatives from the Russian Federation – the aggressor country that has been waging war against Ukraine since 2014 – are listed as speakers. Meanwhile, Ukrainian journalists representing the victim nation are entirely absent from the programme.

“This is not only deeply unfair. This is ethically unacceptable,” the statement reads. “We value the contribution of independent Russian journalists to exposing the crimes of the regime. But to speak only about Russia, or about Ukraine without the participation of Ukrainian journalists – this is a distortion of reality. This is the risk of losing the truth in reporting – the very truth that the True Story festival is called to seek.”

The authors criticized specific aspects of the planned programme. They highlighted plans to once again tell the story of “Putin’s children’s lives” (Ilya Rozhdestvensky’s story from September 2024) instead of investigations into the kidnapping of thousands of Ukrainian children and cultural genocide in occupied territories.

Russia deported at least 19,000 to 20,000 children since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022, according to Ukrainian authorities.

The statement also questioned giving a platform to Dmitry Muratov to voice “challenges of the independent Russian press” while Ukrainian journalist Victoria Roshchina was killed in Russian captivity and thousands of Ukrainian colleagues and hundreds of media outlets have suffered from Russian aggression.

“Tell about ‘Wagner fighters’ and ‘prisoners who returned from the Russian-Ukrainian war’, that is, about war criminals – instead of telling about the fate of tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians who are illegally held in Russian prisons. Unfortunately, such plans look inadequate and secondary,” said in the statement.

The signatories presented three specific demands to the festival organizers:

• They called for the immediate inclusion of Ukrainian journalists who cover the consequences of war, crimes against civilians, genocidal practices, child deportations and the disappearance of reporters.
• They demanded a review of session focus to avoid replacing the context of war with stories about the “internal pain” of the aggressor state, and to remove at least some Russian speakers from the festival programme.
• They requested ensuring balance and representation of victims, as required by basic standards of ethical journalism.

“True Story Festival should be a place for truth. We are convinced that only polyphony, honesty and sensitivity to context can preserve trust in journalism as a profession,” they said.

The statement was signed by writer Oles Ilchenko, Doctor of Philological Sciences and journalist Alla Boyko, member of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine Iryna Mykhalkiv-Vinnyk, the Pylyp Orlyk Institute for Democracy, Mediarukh, Detector Media, and the Institute of Mass Information.

The XIII International Book Arsenal Festival begins today, on 29 May, in Kyiv and will run through 1 June 2025, according to festival organizers.

The event brings together 100 major publishers and 12 small publishing houses, accoding to the statement on the website.

The official opening is scheduled for 5 pm on 29 May, but attendees can begin to enter the premises of the National Cultural, Artistic and Museum Complex Mystetskyi Arsenal from 4 pm.

Festival organizers report the event consists of a programmatic section and a book fair. The book fair will be held on the first floor of the Old Arsenal. Publishers will present discussions, presentations and lectures alongside curatorial and special programs.

The festival features more than 200 events across several program tracks. These include the focus theme program, main program, children and teenagers program, and professional program.

This year’s focus theme is “Everything Is Translation.” Yale University historian and professor Marci Shore and writer, translator and Ukrainian PEN member Oksana Forostyna serve as curators of the focus theme. They selected the theme to address questions of literary, cultural and social translation amid global changes.

The Book Arsenal festival launched in 2011 at the Mystetskyi Arsenal complex. The annual event unites book, literary and artistic communities from around the world. Events include author meetings, workshops, musical and artistic presentations, competitions including book design awards.

Writers, poets, philosophers, illustrators, artists and publishers from Ukraine and more than 50 countries participate in the festival. Approximately 500 international authors have attended over the years of the festival’s existence.