- Source: Petro Terentiev (media executive)
Petro Terentiev (born 14 July 1983, Kyiv) is a Ukrainian pro-Russian propagandist and media manager. Former co-owner of the Bukvy news agency and founder of the Mezha news agency.
Early life
He was born on 14 July 1983 in Kyiv.
= Cooperation with GRU agent Pablo González Yagüe
=Since 2014, according to Ukrainian media reports, Petro Terentiev has been cooperating with an agent of the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, Russian journalist Pavel Rubtsov, better known as Pablo González Yagüe.
Shortly before the full-scale invasion, the Security Service of Ukraine expelled Pablo González Yagüe from Ukraine, and in February 2022, he was detained by Poland on the Polish-Ukrainian border and accused of spying for Russia. According to Western intelligence services, as a GRU agent, Rubtsov used his status as a journalist to collect information for the Russian authorities while travelling to Eastern countries.
According to the Ukrainian media, Gonzalez's seized digital media contained correspondence and conversations with Petro Terentiev. As part of the investigation of a criminal case under international legal assistance No. 1001-102 Ds.12.2022, a judge of the Solomensky District Court of Kyiv granted permission to conduct a search at Terentiev's place of residence for communication with the detained GRU agent Pablo Gonzalez. According to the journalists, Gonzalez and Terentiev met during the Revolution of Dignity, and since then they have travelled together to the occupied Crimea and Donbas for propaganda purposes in favour of the aggressor state. Also, according to the investigation, Terentiev integrated and legalised Gonzalez into the Ukrainian information space, and introduced him to well-known Ukrainian journalists and politicians.
= Work in Crimea during the Russian occupation
=In March 2014, during Russian occupation of Crimea and the disputed 2014 Crimean status referendum, Petro Terentiev, together with Pablo González Yagüe, went to work in Crimea as a propagandist to reinforce pro-Russian narratives. In social media, Terentiev stated that it was a "celebration" in Crimea and called the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation "liberators". Terentiev also called Russia's "master actions" to occupy the peninsula.
Career
= Bukvy
=In 2014, Petro Terentiev registered the domain name bykvu.com, and in 2017 — the domain bukvy.ua. In 2016, Terentiev filed an application and in 2017 registered the bukvy trademark (TM).
In May 2016, Petro Terentiev and Kateryna Roshuk registered the Russian-language newspaper Bukvy.com, and in 2017, the news agency. On 21 April 2021, the publication announced the abandonment of the Russian version of the website. The English language was introduced.
On 22 November 2021, the Bukvy Facebook page posted a message about the dismissal of the editorial staff due to the "toxic atmosphere and public humiliation" by the publication's management. In a commentary to Detector Media, one of the Bukvy employees who resigned said that most of the team had left the editorial office. In particular, four editors of the news feed and two employees of the SMM department left. Two photo editors, three literary editors, two news editors, and two SMM specialists remained in the editorial office.
The former head of the SMM department, Vladyslav Volkov, voiced a number of accusations against the publication's management and stated that one of the co-owners, Petro Terentiev, was threatening him. Volkov said that he would publish screenshots of the internal correspondence of the editorial office, but the threats, according to him, only intensified. In the evening of 24 November, Volkov posted on Facebook about "how the owners of the publication actually earn their bread and how the work in the editorial office is organised". He called it stories from the life of the newsroom.
On 9 July 2023, Bukvy announced that it was terminating its cooperation with one of its founders, Petro Terentiev, and changing the website's domain. Kateryna Roshuk confirmed the domain change and spoke about the conflict with Terentiev to Detector Media. The entire team of the publication, headed by Kateryna Roshuk, moved to the new website bukvy.org. The Bukvy explained that Terentiev had created an "unhealthy working atmosphere" that blocked the publication's work and negatively affected employees. The team accused the former manager of interfering with editorial policy, demanding that content be removed due to personal dislike of speakers, censorship, threats to shut down the site, attempts to use the media for personal gain, and violations of work ethics. In addition, the co-founder allegedly tried to discredit the reputation of the staff and interfered in their personal lives.
The statement also noted that Terentiev insisted on maintaining the publication's social media in Russian, called the Azov Brigade "Nazis" and considered publications about the LGBTQ community to be propaganda. The team also assessed the ex-manager's statements on his own social media pages as sexist and homophobic.
= Mezha
=On 10 July 2023, Terentiev reconciled with part of the Bukvy team that had left due to a conflict with him in 2021 and announced that he planned to start a new project called Mezha. The publication's website states that Mezha is "a former Bukvy news outlet that has rebranded, removing the name at the request of readers."
On 18 January 2024, Petro Terentiev announced that Mezha would use the domain name of the fifth President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, petroporoshenko.com, calling the decision "a move to the second level of his game". Terentiev also added that Petro Poroshenko should go to court against him, "or rather against the Mezha media agency". Since April 2024, Oleksandra Fedorko has been the editor-in-chief of Mezha.
Media activities
= Action against Saakashvili
=In December 2017, Petro Terentiev, at the request of Igor Kononenko, instructed a former employee of Bukvy to organise the posting of invitations to visit Mikheil Saakashvili on the windscreens of Kyiv cars.
= Blocking the fact-checking project
=In November 2021, Petro Terentiev got into a scandal over a conflict with the fact-checking project The Other Side of the News. The website about coronavirus fakes The Other Side of the Pandemic was blocked on 22 November after a dispute between the fact-checkers of The Other Side of the News and the co-owner of Bukvy, Petro Terentiev, who also owns the domain Coronafakes.com.
The conflict arose because the fact-checkers criticised the Bukvy's summary of the news on Facebook. Serhiy Odarenko, the head of The Other Side of the News, believes that Petro Terentiev's actual blocking of the resource is revenge for criticising the Bukvy summary of a Facebook post about the acquittal of an American who shot two people. Odarenko also said in a comment to Detector Media that the fact-checkers no longer have anything to do with Coronafakes.com.
= Accusations against Ukrainska Pravda
=On 26 January 2024, Terentiev accused Ukrainska Pravda and investigative journalist Mykhailo Tkach of using information in their materials allegedly obtained from a fugitive smuggler under sanctions without evidence.
Political views
Petro Terentiev has pro-Russian and Ukrainophobic views. After the annexation of Crimea by Russia, he stated that he considers Crimea to be Russian. In March 2014, during the Russian occupation of Crimea, Terentiev spoke out in favour of Vladimir Putin, calling him "the standard of modern democracy." Also, Petro Terentiev has repeatedly shared Putin quotes on his social networks and suggested the possibility that the Russian president would hold the Victory Day Parade on 9 May in Kyiv. After the outbreak of the war in Donbas, in his author column on the Obozrevatel website, Terentiev called the war "civil" and wrote that the Ukrainian authorities should recognise that they are infected with the virus of nationalism and called to "stop playing Nazism games", thus using the narratives of the Russian Federation, which identifies Ukrainian nationalism and Nazism. On 16 April 2014, Terentiev wrote a post in which he suggested that it was not Ukraine conducting the ATO, but Vladimir Putin, thus hinting that it was Ukrainians who were terrorists. In May 2014, Terentiev spoke in favour of the "separation of Donbas from Ukraine" through a "referendum" on the territory of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. In addition, during the Siege of Sloviansk, Terentiev described Russian saboteurs as "adequately armed" and claimed that the population of Sloviansk was allegedly anti-Ukrainian. Terentiev shared a video on his Facebook page of eight fighters of the Aidar Battalion being captured, with the Russian fighters in the video being referred to as "militiamen."
In 2016, commenting on Brexit, Terentiev used the cliché "Anglo-Saxons" in reference to the British, calling them "fabulous talkers and instigators of all wars".
In July 2023, the team of the Bukvy news agency announced that it had stopped co-operation with Terentiev. In an official statement, the journalists accused Terentiev of imposing the Russian language, censorship of the Azov Brigade, negative attitude towards defenders of Ukraine and homophobia.
During Russian invasion of Ukraine, Terentiev made several pro-Russian statements. In 2023, he wrote that Ukraine is no different from Russia, as they are "two post-Soviet countries with the same systems of governance" and in 2024, Peter Terentiev stated that "Russia is not a freak, Russia is not as the TV fiddlers like Oleksiy Danilov or Oleksii Arestovych tell us, Russia is a country that has spent its entire existence in war." In addition, he wrote on his Facebook page that Ukraine does not have its own elites and national interests, and "lacks an ideology for the existence of Ukraine as a whole".
Criticism
According to Vladyslav Volkov, the former head of the SMM department of the Bukvy news agency, the outlet often changed its political vector due to the position of Petro Terentiev. Volkov writes that "Terentiev spoke out against the Euromaidan, then after the victory he became its ardent supporter. "If in 2016 I was 'drowning' for Donald Trump, then after Joe Biden's victory, I became a fan of BLM and LGBTQ people." Vladyslav Volkov cites as an example a large number of publications on gender equality, LGBTQ issues, etc., and, according to the former employee, "the Ukrainian conservative audience has long paid attention to this and called them 'leftists', similar to the leftist tendencies in the humanitarian policy of the US Democratic Party."
