Ukraine: crackdown on critical media?

The editorial offices of the Ukrainian daily newspaper Vesti have been raided because the owner of its holding company, ex-finance minister Oleksandr Klymenko, is under investigation for corruption. The building has been transferred to a managing company whose employees have destroyed the inventory, witnesses claim. Ukrainian journalists write that the state is waging war on critical media.

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Strana (UA) /

An all-out attack on press freedom

The Ukrainian state is deliberately targeting opposition media, journalist Vitali Hubin comments in Strana:

“No one belonging to the political leadership in Ukraine commented on this unprecedented incident, which stands to reason. Because the actions against Vesti are completely in keeping with the logic behind the state's moves to purge the media landscape. This is of course not an isolated case. For the same reasons the editor-in-chief of Strana, Igor Guzhva, was forced to leave Ukraine after five criminal proceedings and death threats.”

Westi (UA) /

War against opposition media

There's a distinguishable pattern to the crackdown on anti-government media, journalist Oleg Morozov writes in Vesti itself:

“There's nothing new about this. Throughout the four years of its existence the current state power has been fighting the mass media. And throughout those four years it has been saying that it is not using criminal proceedings or goon squads to achieve its political goals, and that the media is merely covering up its own violations of the law. But the chronology of this war of the state power against the press refutes that.”