Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, and other politicians have called on a group of nationalist activists to end their blockade of the offices of the NewsOne TV channel’s office in Kyiv.
The activists, who on Dec. 3 blocked the main entrance to the building with sandbags and razor wire, are demanding that NewsOne’s owner, lawmaker Yevgeny Murayev, a former member of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, apologize for his recent claim that the EuroMaidan Revolution was a coup d’état.
“Murayev is a scoundrel and provocateur,” Avakov tweeted on Dec. 4. “But you have to stop the blockade, you shouldn’t make victims of the wrongdoers. And the owners and editors of NewsOne TV channel should stop provoking people,” Avakov said.
Activists from National Corp of Azov Battalion, the Dmytro Korchynskiy’s Bratsvo nationalist organization, far-right C-14 and other radical organizations told ZN.ua news website they would lift the blockade if only Murayev “apologizes for his separatist statements and change the editorial policy from pro-Kremlin to pro-Ukrainian.”
NewsOne positions itself as an opposition channel. In an official statement, it described the blockade as “direct pressure on freedom of speech, and editorial interference”.
The blockade started the same day Mikheil Saakashvili, the former president of Georgia and former Odesa governor, led several thousand supporters on a march calling for the impeachment of Poroshenko.
Saakashvili and his supporters said that, although they disagree with Murayev, the blockade had been orchestrated by the authorities to put pressure on the opposition channel.
NewsOne was one of the few channels that broadcast the Dec. 3 rally for impeachment and had repeatedly invited Saakashvili to appear on its shows.
However, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko also supported the blocked TV channel, saying any kind of pressure on the media, especially a blockade of its work, was unacceptable.
“Also unacceptable are the attempts to justify the actions of the aggressor country (Russia) and playing along with Russian propaganda in such topics as the Revolution of Dignity (calling it a coup d’état),” Poroshenko wrote on Facebook on Dec. 4.
He called the NewsOne blockade a public reaction to “the inactivity of those organs, such as the National Council of Television, Radio, and Broadcasting, who should regulate Ukraine’s media more actively.”
Murayev hit back against the blockade on social media.
“The NewsOne blockade clearly shows what kind of freedom of speech, democracy, and European values we’ve achieved (since EuroMaidan),” Murayev wrote in Facebook on Dec.3.
Murayev said that he wasn’t surprised that National Police and Ukraine’s SBU security service had done nothing to break the blockade.
“The law enforcers haven’t been providing protection to Ukrainian citizens, or law and order, for a long time,” Murayev wrote.
He also said that according to his sources, the blockade was organized by Dmytro Korchynskiy’s Bratsvo organization. But he claimed that the nationalists were acting on behalf of the Presidential Administration and had been paid to launch the blockade.
“The administration doesn’t like the objectivity of the (NewsOne) channel and the fact that we give Poroshenko’s opponents a platform to speak,” Murayev said.
“And the second term that Poroshenko is dreaming about will only be possible if the opposition, as well as media, are shut up. Otherwise, the government that came into power after the catastrophe, won’t win the votes of the people,” he added.
Presidential Administration spokesman Yarema Dukh said the administration had no comment further to those made by Poroshenko on Facebook on Dec. 4.
Bratsvo activists denied all Murayev’s accusations, saying they have been fighting with “pro-Russian media” and other “vata” (a disparaging term for Ukrainians with pro-Russian views), for a long time.
“We’ve got used for such loud accusations from the separatists,” Vitaliy Chorniy, a Bratsvo activist, told the Kyiv Post on Dec.4.
“Yes, we gathered on the same day of the Impeachment March (Dec. 3), but it was a coincidence. Our activists took part in that march, so we decided to start a new protest while we were all together.”
He said the protest did not constitute an attack on “freedom of speech,” as Poroshenko had said.
“Our blockade is symbolic. We’ve just blocked one entrance of the building. Journalists and cars can still enter the NewsOne office and continue working,” Chorniy said.
Сhorniy said activists would continue their symbolic blockade until the National Council of Television, Radio and Broadcasting starts checks of the channel and its editorial policy.
“Deputy Interior Minister Vadym Troyan came up to us and promised to organize a meeting with the National Council. And we’re going to attend it,” Chorniy said.
