The charity foundation by Ukrainian businessman Ruslan Shostak is preparing a media campaign to neutralise the impact of an upcoming investigation into their work by Slidstvo.Info, the media outlet reported on 19 November.
According to Slidstvo.Info, a foundation employee emailed a file titled “War-Free Childhood: Action Plan” to their journalist, likely on accident. The document listed PR steps that suggest the foundation is preparing a campaign to neutralise the fallout from the media outlet’s investigation which is set to be released shortly. In particular, the foundation plans to involve bot farms, controlled bloggers, and meet with editors of top news outlets and publish their own materials there.
The document received by the journalists includes the following steps to be taken after the investigation is released:
- “involving real participants in the project to comment under negative social media posts;”
- “involving the database of accounts to promote reasonable talking points and facts on social media.”
The action plan also mentions:
- “a controlled post by an influencer suggesting that the investigation’s release was not incidental;”
- “non-public communication with editors of top media outlets;”
- “non-public interviews with insiders (officials, volunteers);”
- “releasing a major investigation into the failures of the state evacuation efforts in Tier-1 media outlets (NV, LB).”
The journalist received the document while working on an investigation into the evacuation of 3,500 Ukrainian children from Dnipropetrovsk oblast to Türkiye by the Ruslan Shostak Foundation as part of the project “War-Free Childhood”. During a monitoring visit to hotels where children were staying, the Commissioner’s Office recorded gross violations of children’s rights, including psychological and physical abuse. Two underage girls returned from Türkiye pregnant.
Slidstvo.Info journalists met with Ruslan Shostak to ask him about the discovered violations and the work of “War-Free Childhood”. After a three-hour interview, members of the businessman’s team promised to send journalists additional material that would refute the data in the [Commissioner’s] report, mentioned during the interview. However, the journalists received the crisis management action plan instead.
The plan features “preventive communication” (likely referring to steps to be taken before the investigation is released), including two publications in the media. One of these is “a statement on the Foundation’s website and in the media about the commiment to combat issues systematically.” Slidstvo.Info notes that the statement was indeed posted on schedule.
Slidstvo.Info were unable to find the second material, “an expert’s column on teenage pregnancy (focusing on orphans),” which was set to be released in news outlets such as NV, Liga, and The Page. The column by the founder of the organisation, i.e. Ruslan Shostak himself, is planned for the second month after the release of the investigation.
“If the Shostak Foundation is really preparing so extensively for the release of our investigation, then we are worried for the sources who testified to us,” commented journalist Yanina Korniyenko.
Slidstvo.Info said they would monitor whether the Foundation will go through with the plan. The premiere of the investigative documentary “Children of the state. What happened to orphans during evacuation to Türkiye” is scheduled to premiere on 28 November.
Ruslan Shostak is a Ukrainian businessman, owner of the store chains VARUS and EVA whose fortune in 2021 amounted to 140 million US dollars. Ruslan Shostak is also the head of the Retail and Logistics Group at the Business Council under the President of Ukraine.