On Aug. 30, our TV channel, TVi, was banned from analogue broadcasting, even though the station remains on the air for now on cable TV. There have been many commentaries about it both in Ukraine and beyond, and there will surely be more.

Western politicians and civic organizations allege that freedom of speech is being curtailed in Ukraine, while the president and his team deny any wrongdoing. Having been at the epicenter of this scandal and being an active participant of it, I come back home late in the evening and remember my childhood.

My mom used to read me books. One of my favorite books was a fairytale by an Italian communist writer Gianni Rodari, called “Gelsomino in the Country of Liars.” By irony of fate, a few years later my native city Lviv became the site for filming the famous movie based on this fairytale.

Being a true communist, Rodari ridiculed the hypocritical reality of semi-Mafioso Italy of the time, for what I recognized was the Soviet Union.

The pirates who seized power in the nation attempted to completely change its values to be able to preserve this power. The bald-headed leader was referred to as “golden-haired,” bread shops sold ink, and everyone had to read the only newspaper that was called “The exemplary liar.”

People who tried to call things by their proper names, were sent either to prison, or the mad house which was called “sanatorium.”

Ukraine is slowly turning into this sort of fairytale country. We feel it every day, and there is an urge to call things by their proper names.

Back in January, TVi had honestly won the tender conducted by the National Council for TV and Radio to receive additional frequencies.

Why was it honest? Because the law gives priority to producers of news and social programs. Our channel produces many of them, employs famous journalists, and the channel’s owner invested tens of millions of dollars into creating a modern TV company, in order to win these frequency licenses.

But Valery Khoroshkovsky, head of the State Security Service (SBU, as it is known by its Ukrainian acronym) and owner of the dominant U.A. Inter Media Group television holding, did not like it. He must have thought that both our frequencies and those won by other companies should have been given to his holding.

So, his holding sued us. But how can one go to court against the person who can sack any judge at any moment?

Khoroshkovsky, in addition to heading the powerful State Security Service, is also a member of the High Justice Council which has insisted that there is nothing wrong about a businessman with a clear conflict of interests heading the SBU and appointing judges as a member of the High Justice Council.

Anyone could have seen Khoroshkovsky on TV saying the tender was illegal. We had suggested three times in court, the hearing of which we broadcast live, to call as witnesses the actual members of the National TV Council and study the shorthand record of their session.

But for some reason, Khoroshkovsky’s companies were against it. But why would they be against the truth if they say truth is what they’re seeking?

In court, Khoroshkovsky’s companies acknowledged that none of their rights were breached, and they’re only suing us as citizens who, according to the Constitution, want to make sure that everything in this country is done legally.

Well, imagine a different case, where I would sue the housing regulator body BTI of Obukhiv region outside Kyiv using any excuse, and the court will recognize that Khoroshkovsky’s own home should be taken away from him and given to someone else. It’s the same sort of absurdity.

For some reason, the court decision that was made public said that we have no right to broadcast not just on the frequencies we recently received, but on those that had been received in previous tenders.

The court found no guilt of ours in the process, but our licenses were taken away, despite European legal practice. This is censorship.

Those who are doing it understand that the famous journalists Vitaliy Portnikov, Roman Skrypin, Volodymyr Pavliuk, Artem Shevchenko and many other colleagues cannot be told to keep silent about something or call white black. That’s why they’re trying to call this conflict a business dispute.

But where is business here? Khoroshkovsky alleges that his company does not need these frequencies, and they will not take part in another tender for our frequencies should one take place in the future.

And he’s right. In Vinnytsya region alone his TV channel Inter has more frequencies than those 33 we had won in the whole of Ukraine. What they need is to keep us silent.

That’s because we call white white rather than black, but are prepared to let those speak who think otherwise. Following us, all the others can be closed down and controlled.

Khoroshkovsky has persisted that there is nothing bad about a businessman with a clear conflict of interests heading the SBU and appointing judges as a member of the High Justice Council.

He has maintained that nowhere in the world is business separated from politics, and that his staff [at the SBU] has never called anyone in for “preventative chats” based on political motives, and that the SBU had not tailed journalists, myself included.

When the country has just one holding that belongs to Khoroshkovsky, nobody will dare to ask whether the government is being honest, whether it steals the people’s money and nobody will doubt the reported growth of welfare of the Ukrainian citizens due to the wise policy of those in power.

And the main thing is, this sort of country will have no chance to join Europe, and you can forget about European values.

There will be no need for a democratic election, the opposition can be destroyed for having done what the government dreamt of doing, and those in power can finally become truly and really rich – together with their colleagues.

And then, after the responsibility for everything will be placed on the obedient Viktor Yanukovych, someone rich and powerful can actually ascend to rule the country, and then find an obedient heir.

Everything needed for this plan is in place: the secret police, the media and courts.


Mykola Kniazhytsky is director of TVi channel.