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.
Agency’s
staff accused UNIAN management of sharing the news for hire, while the managers
either kept silence or denied the fabrication of stories.
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. In the article, he is also quoted as saying that Security
Service of Ukraine (SBU) officers were watching his house disguised in cartoonish
bear costumes. Later, UNIAN published another story in
which Vlasenko allegedly specified that agents of the prosecutor general’s office, not
the SBU, were spying on him.
But
Vlasenko claims both stories were fake.
“This is
nonsense from the first to the last word,” Vlasenko told journalists in Kharkiv
on Feb. 12. “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-premiers non-stop surveillance, said that UNIAN fabricated the story about
her by combining her Facebook posts with some fake data.
Vlasenko
claimed that, according to what he learned, the fake news about opposition was
posted on the orders of Oleksandr Tkachenko, head of media holding by
billionaire Igor Kolomoisky, which includes UNIAN. “By my information, this is
my personal opinion, the order was sent by the Presidential Administration,
from the office of (presidential chief of staff) Sergiy Lyovochkin,” Vlasenko
told TVi TV channel on Feb. 12.
But
Oleksandr Tkachenko denied that the news about Vlasenko and Kuzhel was fake. “I
advise you to investigate whether this news is fake or not prior to asking me
about them,” he told the Kyiv Post.
Bogdan
Borodiychuk, deputy head of UNIAN’s website, refused to comment on the incident,
while Mikhailo Gannytsky, chief editor of UNIAN, was not available for talks.
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 a protest over censorship.
At present,
the UNIAN news agency and website are two separate organizations, with offices
located in different parts of Kyiv.
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,
six editors of UNIAN website issued a petition to management of the agency,
accusing them of sharing the news on hire. “It is obvious for us that it was
done directly by order of our management,” one of them Valentyna Romanenko
said.
On Feb. 14,
UNIAN’s website still featured the story about Kuzhel and a story, where
Vlasenko accused Prosecution General for illegal surveillance over him,
although the article about SBU officers wearing costumes of cartoon bears had
been removed.
“We
addressed to Borodiychuk, asking him why after such a scandal the news still
remain on the web-site, but without any answer,” Romanenko said.
On Feb. 13,
the journalists of UNIAN agency issued a petition to the management with
demands to dismiss the new managers of UNIAN web-site and save reputation of
the agency.
“It’s very
sad that a very respected agency with a 20-year service record, is being transformed
into a yellow newspaper,” Tymoshenko spokeswomen Maryna Soroka said.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be
reached at [email protected]
