You're reading: TVi accuses television council of disconnecting channel in Donetsk and Mariupol

Ukraine's TVi Channel has claimed that the exclusion of the channel by cable operators in Donetsk and Mariupol from their networks on August 13, 2012 was due to direct instructions from the regional representatives of the National Council on Television and Radio Broadcasting.

“We have currently failed to get a reasoned answer to the question
‘Why has the channel been disconnected?’ At the same time, TVi is
receiving reports from its partners in the regions that such actions by
cable operators are caused by direct instructions from the regional
representatives of the National Council on Television and Radio
Broadcasting,” the channel said in a statement on Tuesday, Aug. 14.

TVi recalled that it had previously received answers from the
regulators of the telecommunications and broadcasting market regarding
the disconnection of the channel from the cable networks of the Triolan
trademark, which “demonstrated reluctance to deal with the problems of
the subjects of the country’s telecommunications and information space.”

“The national council, which has sufficient levers of influence on
this situation, decided to leave these violations without attention,
referring to a ‘moratorium’ on checks on television and radio
organizations in the pre-election period,” the channel said.

On July 20, 2012, TVi Channel said that it had been disconnected from
the cable networks of the Triolan trademark and that residents of 11
towns in Ukraine had been deprived of a chance to watch the channel. TVi
linked this “with the pressure being placed on the channel.”