Ukraine Government Cracks Down On The Press

Savik Shuster, Inter TV

Anna Nemtsova, Foreign Policy: Do Ukraine’s Leaders Understand Freedom of the Press?

When it comes to the treatment of journalists, Kiev is starting to look a lot like Moscow.

On Tuesday, Ukrainian authorities banned the country’s top television anchor, Savik Shuster, from working in the country. Shuster, who is a Canadian citizen, hosts the country’s leading Russian-language talk show, Shuster LIVE, which is watched by four million people each week. The government’s action prompted corresponding outrage. Mustafa Nayem, a former journalist who is one of the leading reformists in parliament, assailed the move on his Facebook page, calling it a fresh example of the government’s “idiocy.” Vitaly Klitschko, the mayor of Kiev, also condemned the measure, and offered Shuster a slot on a TV channel run by the city.

Later in the week, another Ukrainian agency blocked the ban, saying that Shuster’s case required closer scrutiny. But that’s no guarantee that the final decision will go his way. In any case, the ban has already struck a blow to Ukraine’s image as an aspiring liberal democracy — coming as it does after a series of other moves that call into serious question the authorities’ commitment to freedom of speech.

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WNU Editor: This is nothing new .... the crackdown on the media in Ukraine has been ongoing since the Maiden revolution. After the fall of the Ukraine government in 2014 .... all media managers/journalists/etc. whose background was Russian and/or who had affiliation with the previous regime were fired. Flash forward to today .... the only difference now is that the Ukrainians are eating their own. On a side note, Anna Nemtsova points out that recent polls put Ukraine President Poroshenko's approval polling numbers at around 19% support. 19% !?!?!?! My take is that  it was around 5% (due to margins of error).