Editorial: Responding to Steve Bannon and His Like

It has come to our attention at Kyiv Post that an opinion piece we published on April 18, “The Enemy Within the US Is Letting Russia Get Away With Murder” by Askold Lozynskyj, has incited the anger of Steve Bannon, who cast aspersions on us in an April 20 edition of his televised podcast War Room.

Rather than address his hostility toward us, suffice it to say that we give voice to a variety of opinions and go to great lengths to label them as opinion rather than news. Recently, we have voiced opinions criticizing the Biden administration and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky himself. At the end of every opinion essay, we explicitly acknowledge that “the views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.”

Bannon, like all other individuals in a free society, has the right to his own opinion, and we honor the principle that allows him to publicly criticize us. He can do this because he lives in the United States, a society where despite the fact that he was arrested for fraud in August 2020 and subsequently pardoned before the trial by outgoing President Donald Trump on Jan. 19, 2021, only days before leaving office, he can still have a significant voice in the political debate of his country.

Bannon had been a strategist in the Trump administration, until he was let go by the President himself. Yet he continued to support Trump and his MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement. His experience as strategist and current position as media “influencer” make him a lynchpin for Trump’s re-election efforts. As such, he and other supporters of Trump are the legitimate targets of dissenting opinion.

Lozynskyj also has a right to point out people he feels are “useful Putin idiots.” Bannon is not alone in Lozynskyj’s categorization. The former Trump strategist is joined by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and others who have at some point appeared to advocate for leaving Ukrainians to their own devices in their struggle against Russian aggression.

That being said, we at Kyiv Post feel obliged to address two of Bannon’s criticisms in particular.

The controversial US political technician dismisses Kyiv Post as the voice of “Zelensky and the group of criminals around him.” His fellow-commentator on the show, an ultra-right British Catholic, Benjamin Harwell, who a few years ago got into trouble with the Italian and Church authorities for promoting Bannon’s ultra-conservative political philosophy, did not hesitate to parrot Moscow’s description of the Ukrainian government as “the regime in Kyiv.”

In fact, we represent the free press of a democratic Ukraine fighting against a fascist-like, despotic, and imperialist Russia and its foreign lackeys, wherever they are situated, including in the US, and have no hesitation in revealing and criticizing shortcomings and issues of concern within Ukraine itself. 

Bannon also appears to suggest that having US-citizens contributing to our publication is somehow untoward.

Let us for the record be clear: we publish US citizens, Ukrainian citizens, and even Russian citizens. We call ourselves “Ukraine’s global voice,” so it goes without saying that anyone on planet Earth is welcome to express their opinion on our platform.

As for our employees, our flagship publication is in the English language. Therefore, we employ many writers and editors whose mother tongue is English. Some are US citizens, some are UK citizens, such as our Chief Editor, others come from far-flung lands in Asia and the Southern Hemisphere. Yet the majority are Ukrainian citizens.

Moreover, our offices are in Kyiv, a city that has come under regular Russian bombardment since February 2022. Our employees – some of whom have served in such illustrious institutions as the US Armed Forces, the British Armed Forces, and the Armed Forces of Ukraine – come to work day-in and day-out under the threat of missile attack. They have seen casualties on the street in front of their offices and they work next door to a rehabilitation center where they see injured and maimed soldiers on a daily basis.

So, on a human level, it should be perfectly clear to our readers as well as to the viewers of War Room that anyone who would deny Kyiv aid to fend off these missile attacks will be judged harshly.

The fact that Bannon has repeatedly called for halting aid to Ukraine is on public record.

We at Kyiv Post – at the very least – support the survival of Ukraine as an independent, sovereign and democratic nation, able to resist the imperial and/or revanchist ambitions of any belligerent neighbor. We opine that it is clear Bannon and his associates do not. So, they will continue to remain in our sights.

We take pride in the fact that our coverage and messages are clearly hitting home and having an impact.