Opposition lawmakers Sergiy Vlasenko and Oleksandra Kuzhel accused information agency UNIAN of publishing fake stories about them on Feb. 11 in articles that were subsequently shared by other media.
Vlasenko,
who heads jailed ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko defense, said he was
shocked to read a news item in which he allegedly spoke about several attempts
to poison him and that state security officers, or SBU, were watching his house
dressed in cartoonish bear costumes.
“This is
nonsense from the first to the last word,” Vlasenko told journalists in
Kharkiv. “I’ve never given this interview; I don’t know who was the author and
initiator of this.”
Kuzhel, a close
Tymoshenko ally and one of three women deputies who protested against the
ex-prime minister’s non-stop video surveillance, said that UNIAN fabricated the story about
her by combining her Facebook posts with some fake data.
“Several
paragraphs of the ‘news’ posted by UNIAN were falsifications given under my
name,” she said. Kuzhel claimed she has never called herself “the most famous
and most supported of the opposition leaders” and never said there was a spy in
the opposition camp, as UNIAN reported on its web-site.
Bogdan
Borodiychuk, deputy head of UNIAN’s online operations, refused to comment on
the incident, saying only: “I’m not responsible to comment this issue.”
Makhailo Gannytsky, chief editor of UNIAN was not available for comment.
However, an
agency employee, who spoke to the Kyiv Post on condition of anonymity fearing
retribution, said the UNIAN website had posted stories about opposition
politicians received by email. “Someone sent the text to the department heads of
the UNIAN website,” the source said. “Partly there were some real quotes that
(the politicians) previously said and partly the information was a fake.” The
source added that much of UNIAN’s website staff was recently hired after a number
of journalists left the agency in protest over censorship.
At present,
the UNIAN news agency and website are two separate organizations, with offices
located in different parts of Kyiv. UNIAN is a part of media holding owned by billionaire
Igor Kolomoisky.
The fake
stories quoting Vlasenko and Kuzhel have never been posted on the UNIAN wires.
“I found out about these stories only yesterday evening,” said Yuriy Kulykov,
chief of economic news department at UNIAN. “For me it was also strange.”
On Feb. 12
UNIAN’s website still featured the story about Kuzhel, although the article about
SBU officers wearing costumes of cartoon bears had been removed.
“It’s very
sad that now a very respected agency, with 20 years of service record, is being
transformed into a yellow newspaper,” said Tymoshenko spokeswomen Maryna
Soroka, adding that the case should be investigated by relevant
non-governmental organizations.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be
reached at [email protected]
