Newspaper in Kharkiv is firebombed after being accused of airing “seperatist” views.

By New Cold War.org editors, Jan 11, 2015

UK video journalist Graham Phillips and his film partner, Patrick John Lancaster, have been declared “wanted criminals” by Ukraine’s secret service, the SBU. The news is reported on Facebook by Patrick Lancaster (report below).

The declaration by the SBU is part of the widespread crackdown on freedom of the press taking place in Ukraine. There have been at least five journalists killed since the beginning of the ‘Anti-Terrorist Operation’ of the Kyiv government in eastern Ukraine last April. They were killed by shelling by Ukraine armed forces and militia. One was Italian, the other four were Russian.

Elsewhere in Ukraine, Russian language newspapers, radio and television stations have been closed because they were deemed to be ‘security’ threats. Journalists deemed to be reporting the views of “seperatists” in eastern Ukraine face threats and harsh legal sanctions.

Meanwhile, journalists began staging protests in Kyiv in late November after the government announced the formation of a ‘Ministry of Information’ that will henceforth tightly control the dissemination of information.

The latest attack on media took place on Jan. 11 at the office in Kharkiv of the Ukrainian-language newspaper Slavyanska. At 2:20 pm, a mob of some 20 people broke the windows of the newspaper with stones and then threw firebombs inside. (See photo or weblink.) There were two people working inside.

The co-founder of the newspaper, Vladimir Abramenko, told 057.ua that earlier in the day, the newspaper received a threatening phone call accusing the newspaper of voicing “separatist” views and demanding that it cease publication. “They called our newspaper pro-separatist, but we’ve never published separatist views. They threatened to kill and burn us.”

There have been a string of arson and other violent attacks in recent months against media outlets and political and social organizations in Ukraine. On January 3, the office of ‘Inter’ Television channel was violently attacked by an extremist group called ‘Revenge’. The January 3 attack can be viewed on this You Tube posting. The extreme right in Ukraine has a habit of broadcasting its attacks on YouTube video.

Inter Television had been criticized by government officials for a new year’s program featuring Russian music stars. The secretary of the National Security and Defence Council, Oleksandr Turchynov declared that the channel had become “part of the information war being waged against their own country” and demanded that its licence be cancelled immediately.

‘Revenge’ has also declared responsibility for attacks against the offices of the Communist Party of Ukraine, including an arson attack on the party’s office in Svyatoshinskiy district of Kyiv on the night of Jan. 10-11, 2015. A video of that attack is posted here.

Interfax Ukraine is reporting on Jan. 12 that the State Committee for Television and Radio Broadcasting in Ukraine is initiating termination of a Ukrainian production and participation in Euronews. In August, Ukraine cut off the broadcasting of the Russian version of Euronews, stating that it is a “propaganda tool”. Euronews was founded in 1993 bythe European Broadcasting Union, a group of ten European public broadcasters, in order to counter the monopoly of CNN. It has since been partially privatized. Ukraine’s NTU (National Television Company of Ukraine) owns shares in it. Broadcasts of many Russian-language television channels into Ukraine were cut last summer.



All this takes place as hundreds of thousands of people have taken part in street protests across France in the name of freedom of the press. Western media agencies have filled their pages with reports of the killings of the satirists and graphic artists working at the Charlie Hebdo weekly in Paris. Leaders of France and other NATO countries joined the march in Paris that reportedly drew more than one million people.

Most mainstream news agencies in the West along with the NATO governments have been utterly silent about the attacks on press freedom in Ukraine, including the killing of journalists. Similarly, they have ignored or denied the ruthless shelling of towns and cities in eastern Ukraine by the armed forces of Ukraine and its allied, rightist militias.

The denial of war crimes in eastern Ukraine by NATO governments is understandable: they are backing the Kyiv government and financing and arming it. But what is the excuse of Western media? They obscure Kyiv’s civil war, calling it an ‘armed conflict’ in which no one, apparently, is responsible, all the while decrying violence in the streets of Paris and crying to the heavens for freedom of the press.

Graham Phillips’ YouTube channel is here.

(With thanks for additional reporting drawn from the website of Solidarity With The Antifascist Resistance in Ukraine on Jan 12.)

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Posted to the Facebook page of Patrick Lancaster on Jan. 9, 2015:

Just spoke to a colleague and friend. He told me he was arrested by the Ukraine army and turned over to the Ukraine secret service, SBU. They told him that Patrick Lancaster and Graham Phillips are wanted criminals and that he needed to supply them with information about us. When he refused, they beat and interrogated him for over 10 hours then put him out in the cold weather with little clothing. We are journalists and are being targeted for putting out the facts that we see. I will not let this hold me back. I will strive to bring all the facts I can to the public. Maybe by doing this I can save at least one civilian life.