You're reading: Journalist says YouTube wants unflattering video of Yanukovych son removed

Journalist Anna Hrabarska has been asked by YouTube to remove a video she posted nearly two years ago of President Viktor Yanukovych’s son stumbling down a Kyiv street.

In the
video, a member of the Party of Regions’
parliamentary faction and vice president of the Automobile Federation of
Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych Jr., the youngest son President Viktor Yanukovych, can
be seen struggling to find and then enter his Kyiv apartment.

Hrabarska,
whose office at the time was located in the same building as Yanukovych,
filmed the video on the evening of July 13, 2011. It was quickly picked up by
Ukrainian media outlets and went viral online.

Since then,
however, it’s rarely been mentioned in the press – until this week, when
YouTube sent a letter to Hrabarska asking her to remove it within two days, or
the online video site would remove it on its own.

Unsure of
what to do, Hrabarska appealed to friends on Facebook.

“I need
advice! Lawyers, journalists tell me what to do!” she wrote.

In a
conversation with the Kyiv Post, Hrabarska said she’d heeded the advice of
fellow journalists not to remove the video from YouTube. In a letter to the
video company, she stated that removing the video – whether done by YouTube or
her – would amount to censorship. The video, she argued, was recorded on a
public street and was not violating any privacy laws by being posted online.

Hrabarska’s
received no response from YouTube since her reply and suspects the video will
be removed soon.

Defiantly, she decided to upload the video to ex.ua, the popular file sharing
website. “There everyone can download it and share it themselves,” she said. “I
doubt YouTube can remove all of the videos people post.”

Kyiv Post staff writer Christopher J. Miller can be reached at [email protected], or on Twitter at @ChristopherJM.