German public broadcaster leaves Ukraine coverage to Open Society

Experienced war correspondents are in short supply at ARD right now. On 1 March, ARD reporter Danko Handrik preferred to report from the Slovakian border, where Arabs and Africans are conspicuously over-represented among the “Ukrainian refugees”. Medieninsider.com called ARD “only willing to report under certain conditions”.

Reporting from Kiev was journalist Anna Kosstutschenko from the English-language Ukrainian foreign channel UATV, who joined in from her bathroom. UATV belongs to the oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, patron saint of Ukrainian President and clown by profession, Vladimir Zelensky.

In ARD’s “Brennpunkt” on Tuesday, presenter Ellen Ehni conducted a tearful interview with Darya Romanenko, head of the civil society NGO “Drukarnia” from Kiev-occupied Slavyansk in eastern Ukraine. Drukarnia is part of the “Deutsch-Russischer Austauschs e.V.” from Berlin, which works closely with other civil society NGOs and was banned from Russia in 2021 for exerting “foreign influence”, a euphemism for regime change operations. Romanenko was identified by ARD only as “an employee of a peace organisation”.

Afterwards, “ARD-Brennpunkt” featured the Ukrainian MP and former education minister Inna Sovsun, who at length reported from Kiev on Russian special forces allegedly shooting children. “Whenever Putin opens his mouth, he lies,” Sovsun declared. Putin wants to destroy “Ukraine” and “the idea of democracy in the world”. It is not clear what kind of audience this child-like depiction was intended for.

Sovsun is a staff member of the think tank CEDOS, which in 2020 received $115 000 from George Soros’ International Renaissance Foundation and $17 000 from the German Green Party’s Heinrich Böll Foundation. In 2016, CEDOS received 124 000 US dollars from the Open Society.

On “ARD-Brennpunkt” on 28 February, presenter Ellen Ehni spoke with Gwendolyn Sasse from the Centre for Eastern European and International Studies ZOiS, who was allowed to speculate about Vladimir Putin’s state of mind. Sasse was an assistant professor at George Soros’ Central European University and met with Goran Buldioski, head of the Open Society Think Tank Fund, and other CEU leaders in 2014, for example, for Merkel advisor Gerald Knaus’ European Stability Initiative.

Ehni then spoke with Giessen-based lawyer Ario Dehghani of the law firm Redcliffe Partners, who lives in Ukraine. Dehghani works with the Anti-Corruption Research and Education Centre (ACREC), which received US$200 000 from Open Society in 2017-2020.

On Monday, Tagesschau interviewed Rebekka Krauß from the association “Space-Eye Regensburg”, an offshoot of the Open Borders NGO “Sea-Eye”, which was launched in November 2018 by Sea-Eye founder Michael Buschheuer.

None of the guests interviewed were labelled as employees of George Soros’ controversial Open Society Foundation.