ISLND TV

ISLND TV (Ісландія) is a Ukrainian political TV channel owned by pro-Russian propagandist Volodymyr Petrov and integrated with the internet project of the same name.

The channel was accused of spreading Russian propaganda,  broadcasd insults against the Ukrainian Armed Forces, threats and insults against Ukrainian journalists.

The ISLND TV was also accused of spreading misogynistic narratives. In 2023, the National Council on Television and Radio Broadcasting twice appointed an unscheduled inspection of the channel due to the use of profanity on the air. On 21 December 2023, the regulator fined the TV channel as a result of the inspection.

History
On 11 July 2019, the ISLND TV channel was licensed by the National Council of Ukraine on Television and Radio Broadcasting. According to the website of the National Council, the channel's founder and primary owner is a pro-Russian propagandist and black campaign manager Volodymyr Petrov (he owns 94% of the authorised capital, with another 3% each held by the channel's co-founders, blogger Oleksandr Baraboshko and channel director Pavlo Nemeryuk). On 1 June 2020, the channel began broadcasting via satellite from Azerspace-1, but after the Law on Media entered into the force in July 2023, ISLND TV changed the technology to Internet broadcasting (OTT).

On 26 October 2023, the National Council of Television and Radio Broadcasting appointed an unscheduled inspection of the ISLND TV channel. The National Council received a complaint from journalist Dmytro Gordon about the channel's broadcast. The regulator monitored and recorded the presence of foul language in the Rozryv and Super Live programmes with the participation of Volodymyr Petrov. According to Maksym Onopriyenko, a member of the National Council, according to the Law "On Media", the dissemination of obscene words can harm the mental and moral development of children. At the same time, there were no signs or warnings about this in the aforementioned programmes of the ISLND TV channel. Following the inspection, on 21 December, the regulator fined the channel UAH 268,000.

The channel participated in a tender for broadcasting on the state-owned MX-7 multiplex of the DVB-T2 digital terrestrial network. Based on the results of the tender, announced by the regulator on 31 October 2023, the National Council denied ISLND TV a digital broadcasting licence. Representatives of the regulator, in particular, noted during the discussion that Volodymyr Petrov and other hosts of the channel told outright lies about the regulator in their broadcasts. According to the members of the National Council, the regulator has repeatedly received complaints about obscene language and mat on the channel's airwaves.

On 11 December 2023, the National Council of Ukraine on Television and Radio Broadcasting appointed another unscheduled inspection of ISLND TV due to the use of profanity in the Super Live programme.

Scandals
In one of the broadcasts on ISLND TV, Petrov's guest was Dmytro Vasylets, a politician and head of the pro-Russian political party Derzhava, which is banned in Ukraine, who, after the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, repeated the Kremlin's propaganda lies that "Ukraine deserved to be destroyed" because it had been "destroying Donbas for eight years". In 2015, Vasilets was arrested on suspicion of aiding Russian mercenaries and assisting the separatist TV channel Novorossiya TV, but was released in 2018. In 2020, Petrov praised Vasylets for spending more than two years in jail for his pro-Russian views, which, according to Volodymyr Petrov, means that Vasylets has a "systematic approach".

In 2021, in one of the broadcasts on the ISLND TV channel, Volodymyr Petrov organised a provocation on the topic of the Ukrainian language. He posted a video in which he criticised the Ukrainian language and said that it sounded like a crawling cart. He said that Russian language was easier, while Ukrainian had letters that were difficult to pronounce.

After the beginning of Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, on the ISLND TV channel, in one of the broadcasts, the host Volodymyr Petrov insulted the military. He recorded a video message to a Ukrainian serviceman, Senior Sergeant of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Oleh Barna, calling him worse than the Russian occupiers. On 17 April 2023, Oleh Barna was killed in action at the front near Vuhledar.

During 2023–2024, threats and insults against journalists were disseminated on the ISLND TV channel. On 23 October 2023, in one of the broadcasts on ISLND TV, Volodymyr Petrov threatened to "punish" Natalia Lygachova, the editor-in-chief of Detector Media for her words about his work for the Presidential Office. Roman Golovenko, a lawyer with the Institute of Mass Information (IMI), notes that at the end of the video, Sergii Ivanov asked Volodymyr Petrov to stop speaking and not to threaten, and stressed that even his colleague on the air interpreted these words as threats. Danylo Popkov, a lawyer with the Zmina Human Rights Centre, explained that Petrov's words about Natalia Lygachova fall under Article 345-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine — threatening or violence against a journalist. He stressed that Lygachova's words about Petrov's activities, which led to his threats, were spoken in public and can be interpreted as journalistic activity, and therefore the article covers this case.

On 27 October 2023, on ISLND TV, Petrov called Natalia Lygachova, editor-in-chief of Detector Media, and Yulia Mostova and Vitaliy Sych, editors-in-chief of Dzerkalo Tyzhnia and The New Voice of Ukraine, "escorts". On 7 November, Petrov called Ukrainska Pravda journalists "wafflers".

On the air of the programme Chornyi Rozryv on the ISLND TV channel, Volodymyr Petrov, discussing journalist Dmytro Gordon with co-host Sergii Ivanov, repeatedly insulted his mother, Mina Davydivna Gordon, who passed away in 2018.

In 2023–2024, ISLND TV channel was accused of spreading misogynistic narratives, and the channel's hosts were accused of being sexist during their broadcasts. In particular, the hosts Volodymyr Petrov and Sergii Ivanov repeatedly spoke negatively about Masha Efrosinina and the singer Alyona Alyona and humiliated them. Alyona Alyona responded to Petrov and Ivanov's statements on Instagram. She reminded that this was not the first public insult they had made against her. Masha Efrosinina also reacted to the Alyona Alyona scandal, saying that she was "perhaps the very first woman they started upholstering their misogynistic narratives". He adds that she "never drew attention to it". "For me, they are just like a street garbage can that I pass by every morning without turning my head," Efrosinina said.

Criticism
The editor-in-chief of the Detector Media portal, Natalia Lygachova, was outraged that the National Council on Television and Radio Broadcasting had granted a licence to the ISLND TV channel. "The fact that the National Council granted ISLND TV a licence is nonsense. These are black political technologists working for the Presidential Office, who have no place in telethons, YouTube, or anywhere else," Lygachova said.