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Ukrainian authorities are tightening their grip on the media ahead of the 2019 presidential election, raising fears of new restrictions on freedom of speech. President Petro Poroshenko has been accused of trying to build his own media empire and heavily influencing TV channels owned by fellow oligarchs. He denies the accusations.
ZIK
ZIK Channel said on March 21 that the Presidential Administration was planning to take over the channel’s premises by using radical nationalist groups. The Presidential Administration denied the accusations.
“The takeover of one of Ukraine’s few opposition channels will even aggravate the incumbent government’s monopoly on media and decrease ideological pluralism in Ukrainian society,” ZIK said.
“We realize that being an opposition media outlet in a country that is lurching towards a dictatorship is dangerous. And, when this threatens the lives and health of journalists, this is unacceptable.”
ZIK’s owner Petro Dyminsky was put on the wanted list in December in connection with a traffic accident that caused a person’s death.
The National Television and Radio Council said on March 22 that ZIK had been transferred from Dyminsky to his wife and daughters, and that its management had been changed.
Ukrainska Pravda
In September, the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, also opened a criminal case into an Ukrainska Pravda article on defense corruption, accusing the online newspaper of divulging a state secret. The case concerned a story, published nine months earlier, about defense procurement that contained scans of documents that the authorities said were classified. The Ukrainian government classified spending on the country’s vast defense budget, which amounts to $6 billion, or over 5 percent of the GDP.
TV coverage
Poroshenko holds big sway over television channels owned by fellow oligarchs.
According to a 2016 VoxUkraine analysis, there was almost no negative coverage of Poroshenko on Sunday news shows on Ukraine’s biggest channels — Ukraina, Inter, ICTV and 1+1.
The share of negative coverage of Poroshenko in news and talk shows amounted to 7.3 percent on 1+1, 4.9 percent on Ukraina, 3.1 percent on Inter, 1.6 percent on Channel 112 and 0 percent on STB in May 2016, according to the Content Analysis Center.
Channel 112
Poroshenko, who already owns Channel 5, is reportedly interested in growing his media portfolio — albeit undercover. Exiled lawmaker Oleksandr Onyshchenko, who is wanted as a suspect in an embezzlement case in Ukraine, said in 2017 that Poroshenko had asked him to buy Channel 112 for him in secrecy. Channel 112 is a popular news-oriented channel with obscure ownership that media experts have repeatedly linked to Yanukovych’s ex-Interior Minister Vitaly Zakharchenko, also exiled since early 2014.
In 2016, Onyshchenko leaked an alleged memorandum between him and Channel 112’s then-owner Andriy Podshchypkov, under which the channel would abstain from criticizing Poroshenko, which was confirmed by Podshchypkov. Meanwhile, Leshchenko published an alleged 2015 plan by the government to take over Channel 112.
Since then, the channel has had problems with extending its license, while its coverage of Poroshenko has become less critical.
Shuster
Savik Shuster, a TV show host of controversial reputation who was many times accused of getting payments for inviting politicians to his programs, had faced a tax evasion case, problems with cable providers and the temporary cancellation of his work permit before his 3sTV channel stopped operations altogether in March 2017. In the months prior to the case, Shuster’s show was critical of the Ukrainian authorities.
NewsOne
In December nationalists blocked NewsOne channel’s premises with barricades, accusing it of anti-EuroMaidan coverage. They were accused of being tools used by the government to attack the opposition channel.
In January 2017 Dmytro Nosikov, a protege of Poroshenko’s top ally and lawmaker Igor Kononenko, became the general producer of NewsOne.
Pryamy
In early 2017, ex-lawmaker Volodymyr Makeyenko bought Tonis, a small national TV station, from the son of the disgraced ex-President Viktor Yanukovych. The obscure station immediately got an infusion of investment and months later restarted under the new name Pryamy — Ukrainian for “straight.”
Pryamy gathered a plethora of TV stars and obtained a whole floor in one of the top business centers in the heart of Kyiv. It mainly focuses on political news and talk shows, and hasn’t been critical in its coverage of Poroshenko. These facts put together led media and political experts in Ukraine to believe that Makeyenko was a proxy owner for the president or his circle, something that Makeyenko denies.
War powers
In 2017 Ukraine’s National Television and Radio Council banned Russia’s Dozhd TV channel and stripped Ukraine’s Radio Vesti of its license, citing violations of Ukrainian law, even though both outlets were mostly pro-Ukrainian and liberal in their coverage.
Last year, citing their role in fomenting Russia’s war and their control by the Kremlin, Poroshenko also banned Russia’s Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki social networks.
Kotsaba
Another journalist, Ruslan Kotsaba, was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison for urging people to evade the draft in 2016 and was declared by Amnesty International to be a prisoner of conscience. He was later released by an appellate court but is now on trial again.
1+1
The Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, said in January that it had opened a case against 1+1 TV host and journalist Oleksandr Dubinsky, accusing him of misinforming citizens about security threats. Oleh Hladkovsky, a Poroshenko associate and a deputy secretary of the National Defense and Security Council, had previously asked the SBU to open a case against Dubinsky on high treason charges.
Dubinsky sees it as payback for his investigations into Hladkovsky’s alleged businesses in Russia and his alleged graft schemes, whose existence is denied by Hladkovsky.
In early 2017 1+1 also had problems with extending its license, which it attributed to political pressure. A source who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press told the Kyiv Post 1+1 had reached a deal with Poroshenko to abstain from criticizing him.
Ukrainian media also reported in 2016 that Poroshenko was in talks on buying 1+1, NewsOne and Era channels. Poroshenko denied the reports.
Strana.ua
Igor Guzhva, the chief editor of the Strana.ua news site, said in January that he had left for Austria and asked for political asylum. Guzhva, whose Strana.ua site is highly critical of Poroshenko, faces five criminal cases in Ukraine and was released on bail in June after being charged with extortion.
A video tape published by the prosecutors shows Guzhva apparently negotiating to receive money payments to drop stories about members of the Radical Party, which has 22 seats in parliament.
Strana.ua has often been criticized as an anti-Ukrainian website. Its funding sources are unknown.
