One of the biggest conundrums facing Ukrainian leaders is this: How do you present yourself as a democrat, and yet make the press shut up at the same time? The answer is not to attack the media directly, but use another part of the state to do your dirty work.
A glaring example of this came this week when a Kyiv court granted prosecutors access to the cell phone data of two prominent journalists, Natalie Sedletska of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Kristina Berdynskykh of Novoye Vremya magazine.
Both journalists were allegedly at an off-the-record meeting with Artem Sytnyk, head of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, in May 2017. Sytnyk allegedly shared with them the details of an ongoing case against a top prosecutor. The authorities are now investigating Sytnyk for disclosing a state secret, while journalists’ phone data could apparently prove that the meeting took place.
It was a poor justification, but not the true aim for receiving the call logs, texts, and geolocation data for the journalists’ phones for 17 months. The targets offer more proof that this is an attempt to intimidate the press while silencing Sytnyk, who has proven to be too independent of an anti-corruption crusader for Ukraine’s elite.
Sedletska runs a team of investigative journalists who have revealed some of the most explosive findings of wrongdoing about top officials, including Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, whose subordinates sought the journalists’ phone data, and Lutsenko’s patron, President Petro Poroshenko. Berdynskykh is one of the top journalists at Novoye Vremya.
This flagrant attack on free speech follows other episodes of hostility to the press, from uninvestigated murders to physical assaults. Ukraine’s leaders have long pioneered what U. S. President Donald Trump is doing now in America — teaching citizens to hate the free press.
Poroshenko said in 2017 that Ukraine had an unprecedented level of freedom of speech. But only in August he grabbed and pushed away the microphone of a journalist who approached him with a question during a visit to the southern city of Mykolaiv. Such gestures are symptomatic of top officials’ attitudes towards a free press.
The Kyiv Post joins a long list of media outlets and organizations to condemn the authorities for seizing the phone records of journalists. Nobody can be a democratic leader while simultaneously persecuting the free press.
