The website RT in Russian published news alleging that Russian artist and actionist Petr Pavlensky was presented on Ukrainian 24 TV channel as an economic expert.
“Artist and actionist Petr Pavlensky, who became well-known after his outrageous performance with nailing his testicles to pavement on Red Square, analyzed economic situation in Russia in a program of a Ukrainian TV channel”, informed RT in Russian.
Now this news is being massively spread through social networks and blogs. Their users accuse Ukrainian journalists in incompetence as they allegedly invited artist to comment on economic events.
However, in the program of 24 channel no-one presented Pavlensky as an economic expert and on-one asked him to comment on economic situation. The artist was invited to tell about his lection regarding performance. The lection had been given in Kyiv two days before that program.
Pavlensky was captioned as an “artist and actionist” and the topic of the program was “Art and power”. As a matter of fact, the talk was about art. The anchor woman started the conversation with the following words: “And now let’s get back to the relations between Ukraine and Russia. However, from a little bit different side – from the side of art”.
As for Pavlensky words, published by “RT in Russian”, they are true. Indeed, Pavlensky said: “It’s obvious that Russia wages war on Ukraine and it’s obvious that economic war is waged against Russia”. But by this statement the artist expressed his opinion as a citizen of Russia, not as an economic or political expert.
Here is the complete version of the interview:
