Ukraine’s president bans pro-Russian media
According to ALJAZEERA, In a move hailed by pro-Western Ukrainians, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy unplugged three television networks overnight that he said spread Kremlin-funded “propaganda” and served as a bullhorn of an increasingly popular pro-Moscow party.
But his ex-Soviet nation of 43 million is polarised linguistically and politically, and the move may prove risky for the political fortunes of Zelenskyy, a former star comedian who hails from a Russian-speaking family.
Millions in Ukraine’s east and south are Russian speakers – without necessarily being pro-Kremlin – and their votes propelled Zelenskyy to the presidency against all political odds.
Zelenskyy was elected in 2019 with 73 percent of the vote, a staggering figure for a rookie politician whose only experience in the halls of power was the role of an accidental president in a popular TV series.
But recent polls show that Zelenskyy’s approval ratings have fallen well below 40 percent, reflecting the public’s growing dissatisfaction with his inconclusive policies and constant cabinet changes.
The trio shut down are part of a dozen TV networks in Ukraine owned by several regional oligarchs. The networks produced plenty of exclusive content, covered the entire spectrum of Ukraine’s political life and refrained from directly praising the Kremlin.
But their anchors often called the central government’s conflict with Russia-backed separatists in the southeastern region of Donbass a “civil war”, said that Crimea’s population overwhelmingly supported their peninsula’s annexation by Moscow in 2014, and called for the restoration of peace and trade with Moscow.
The networks were nominally owned by Taras Kozak, a politician with the Opposition Platform for Life (OPFL), a party that has the second-largest faction in the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s lower house of parliament.
But their real owner is reportedly OPFL’s “grey cardinal” Viktor Medvedchuk, the main conduit of Moscow’s influence in Ukraine, whose daughter was baptised by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The United States sanctioned Medvedchuk in 2014.
He called the networks’ shutdown “absolutely illegal,” and said he would challenge the move in court.
At the dawn of his presidency in 2019, Zelenskyy pledged to “never, ever shut down any TV networks”, and key members of his Servant of the People party frequented the studios of the three television stations he would order off the air.
However, the EU reprimanded Zelenskyy’s move.
“Given the scale of disinformation campaigns affecting Ukraine including from abroad, this should not come at the expense of freedom of media,” the spokesperson of EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in a statement.
