The Sunday Show: Ukraine & Turkey, Jailed For Media Work, Lethal Weapons, Soviet Sex

✅ Poroshenko and Erdogan Talk Turkey

This week Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Kyiv. A polarizing figure abroad, the Turkish leader maintains close ties with both Ukraine and Russia, as well as Eastern Europe. His country ostensibly supports the cause of Ukraine’s Crimean Tatars, but opposes sanctions on the Kremlin. It has had serious conflicts with Russia, but still treats the Kremlin as an important partner. Hromadske looks at where Ukrainian-Turkish relations stand and why Erdogan is looking to Europe’s east.

Sergiy Korsunsky

Ukrainian Ambassador to Turkey (2008-2016)

✅ Nine Years In Prison For Media Work?

If you believe the Ukrainian Security Service, they betrayed their country. But if you believe their lawyers, they were just doing their job. Ukraine has pressed charges against three men it accuses of doing media work for Russia and its proxies in Ukraine’s occupied Donbas. Two received nine-year prison sentences. One is still awaiting trial. Hromadske looks at why Ukraine is prosecuting these men and whether the charges and sentences are too harsh.

✅ US Congressman: US & Ukraine Should Counter “Electronic Warfare”

Will Hurd has an unusual background for a US Congressman: he spent nine years working for the Central Intelligence Agency with a focus on counterterrorism in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. Today, he represents Texas’ 23rd congressional district, which is located along the border with Mexico. During a visit to Kyiv, Hurd sat down with Hromadske to discuss lethal military aid to Ukraine, Russia’s US election hacking, and his views on US politics.

Will Hurd,

Member of the US House of Representatives (2015–present)

✅ Denied Political Asylum for Drag

He fled Belarus fearing political persecution for organizing LGBT Pride marches. But according to the Ukrainian authorities, his performances as a drag queen in Kyiv demonstrate that he came to Ukraine for the economic opportunity. Hromadske looks at why a Kyiv court denied Belarusian LGBT activist Edvard Tarlecki political asylum.

Ruslana Panukhnyk

Executive director of KyivPride

✅ The Soviet Taboo: Kickin’ It Under Communism

It is one of the most famous phrases ever uttered about the USSR: “There is no sex in the Soviet Union.” But that wasn’t true, says American filmmaker Chad Grasia, who is turning his lens on the Soviet Union’s biggest social taboo. Sex existed, Grasia says, but sex education didn’t. And the Soviet regime used sex as a tool for espionage, both at home and abroad. If anything, Soviet society suffered not from a lack of sex, but from the inability to talk about sex openly.

Сhad Grasia

American film director