MOSCOW, May 14 (RIA Novosti) – Russian international news agency Rossiya Segodnya has launched ukraina.ru, an information and analytical resource covering events in crisis-hit Ukraine.
Rossiya Segodnya Director General Dmitry Kiselev said the website will “offer different viewpoints.”
“This will be an aggregator site, it will not promote only one idea,” Kiselev told journalists at a presentation on the project. “Those interested can learn about the character of discussions around Ukraine.”
“I think that everyone needs this resource. Moreover, this is not the only resource of the Rossiya Segodnya agency. We have another website rian.com.ua, currently being modernized, but it actively works now, this is a Kiev-based site which has over 100,000 clicks a day. So we will boost various resources,” he added.
Ukrainian journalist Alena Berezovkaya said the portal is a “mirror of Russian-Ukrainian relations.”
“We will try to strengthen our friendship, our peoples and revive our history and indeed return that which unites us,” she said.
The portal will be fully operational on June 16.
Ukraine saw a regime change in February after the so-called Maidan mass rallies in Kiev. The Ukrainian parliament backed by far-right movements ousted elected president Viktor Yanukovych, amended the country’s constitution and scheduled early elections for May 25.
Moscow has cast doubt on the legitimacy of the current Kiev authorities, saying that the legitimacy of the upcoming election will depend on a number of conditions including transparency and the interests of the regions.
Ukraine’s self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics, where most citizens supported independence from Ukraine at a Sunday referendum, have declared they would not take part in the May 25 election.
