Ukraine Bans Dozens of Journalists
It imposes sanctions on 388 companies and individuals deemed to represent an “actual or potential threat to the national interests, national security, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine”.
The latest list of sanctioned persons was released on September 16, 2015, by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s administration.
Under terms of the much-violated peace deal, local elections were meant to be held in the separatist regions in tandem with the rest of the country, but Kyiv has said they can not take place due to security and monitoring concerns.
The blacklisted reporters included three Moscow-based journalists with the BBC.
“Now, President Poroshenko’s government should remove all journalists and bloggers from the list and allow them to cover the region freely”.
“Freedom of the press is of absolute value to me”, Tseholko quoted Poroshenko as saying in the post. In May the OSCE security and democracy watchdog criticised new laws relating to Ukraine’s 20th century history that it said discouraged freedom of expression.
The decision of the Ukrainian authorities has sparked condemnation from European media and global organizations.
But Kyiv is especially angry at Moscow for shooting down United Nations attempts to condemn what Kyiv views as Russia’s “aggression” that led to almost 8,000 deaths in Ukraine’s separatist industrial east.
Andrew Roy, the BBC’s Foreign Editor, said: “This is a shameful attack on media freedom”. In May, Eskin called Josef Zissels, the head of the Vaad of Ukraine, a “kapo” on the Vesti news program.
“I have never been to Ukraine and don’t have any intention of travelling there in the near future”, he told German news agency dpa.
Speaking after a three-and-a-half-hour meeting with his French, Russian and Ukrainian counterparts in Berlin on September 12, Mr. Steinmeier said the talks had been “less confrontational” than previous ones and that the ministers “made headway in some critical things”.
“Come on, you are blaming journalists for supporting terrorism”, Kogan complained, citing the blacklist’s reference to the promotion of “terrorist activities” as a reason for placement therein.
The new calm comes as Russian Federation appears to be ramping down its support of separatist forces in Ukraine’s breakaway provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, according to analysts who follow the conflict closely. The country has arrested two Ukrainian journalists critical of the government on charges of treason, deported several foreign reporters, and barred entry to many Russian journalists.
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