The author of the flash mob "F#ck you, not Odesa" talks about media self-censorship during the war

After 2022, editorial offices were closed, and now in order to get some coverage of your events that you organize, you have to make some kind of inhuman efforts. It's very sad, really. I think that not only Odesa journalism has changed. Ukrainian journalism has changed because we can't, I mean, in a general sense, we can't do our job the way we could before the war. Because you cannot criticize the government as much as you would like to criticize it, right? Because it is now working for the enemy. This is very sad, because the government cannot exist without criticism, it should not exist. But here, you make this choice every time, so as not to do more harm. Self-censorship is usually much worse for a journalist than censorship.

I remember the change in my views, I was not always the person I am now. And this change was a change in my whole life, in my whole view of my own life, the life of the country, the life of the planet, and life in general. So there are many things that no one remembers now. And I am happy that this is so, because I am not that person anymore. And there are a lot of people who observe some changes. For example, yesterday I received a call asking about Oleksiy Honcharenko. I am sure that his outlook has changed under the influence of circumstances. And it's organic, it's hard. I know people who say that I have changed my hair color and everything else. But my whole life has changed. My whole world broke down.

In 2023, I came and lived in the center. I lived on Gogol Street, and when it came to the carpentry, the cathedral, I made a flash mob "F#ck you, not Odesa." And somehow it went viral. And we really, really need attention to it. And the further we go into this war, the more attention the world pays to us, because everything else is happening and we need to be reminded. And that flash mob worked as a reminder, because I was angry, I was so lively, welcoming, and so "fuk you." Somehow it was so intuitive, because I thought, I was sitting there, "No, no, no, I won't give anything away, I'll be here to the last." And then the next year I came back in 2024 and it was a hard winter. I spent it in the comfort of New York and it was somehow ugly to do any more flash mobs. I thought: "No, this is not my role anymore". So I started making candles. And we've already made so much money with these candles, and we've already made so much money, we've repaired cars and bought important things...