NYT: Zelensky’s Government Crushes Press Freedoms in Ukraine
Reporters and press freedom monitors say the pressure, intimidation, and restrictions imposed on the media go well beyond the country’s wartime security needs
Journalists and media groups have come under intense pressure from the Kiev regime, including spying and other forms of persecution during Ukraine’s war with Russia, according to the New York Times. Reporters have been spied on and even presented with draft notices after exposing media restrictions imposed by President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government. In addition to Zelensky calling off elections and staying in power well past the end of his term, this is more evidence that Kiev is not the democratic bastion its Western military backers claim it is.
Following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Zelensky nationalized the country’s media, among other authoritarian measures such as banning opposition parties. According to the NYT, Ukrainian journalists mostly went along with the wartime restrictive measures, that entailed prohibiting, among other things, the publication of locations where Russian missile strikes have taken place, accounts of military casualties, and reports on Ukrainian troop movements or positions.
Self-censorship has also become common, local reporters told NYT, as journalists have been “holding back on critical coverage of the government to avoid undermining morale or to prevent reports of corruption from dissuading foreign partners from approving aid.”
In addition to whitewashing the failures of Ukraine’s war, which it is fighting as a proxy for NATO, analysts say the pressure is “aimed at crimping positive coverage of the opposition and suppressing negative coverage of the government and the military.”
Journalists working for Ukrinform, an ostensibly non-partisan state news agency, were furnished with a list from their higher-ups late last year, telling them which local elected officials and opposition figures were “undesirable” and thus should not be quoted in articles…
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