Ukrainian Canadian

Last month I posted that Ukrainians who want independent and fair TV news coverage only had Channel 5 (Kanal 5) and TVi left. Channel 5 played a crucial role during the Orange revolution and TVi was set up by a Russian media tycoon who was the first victim of Vladimir Putin’s squeeze on media in Russia. Recently a court has stripped them of their new broadcast frequencies:

The board claimed that the court hearing was being influenced by Ukrainian Security Service head Valery Khoroshkovsky. Khoroshkovky owns the rival media holding Inter Media Group, which has asked for a new tender for frequencies. Khoroshkovsky strongly denied exerting pressure on Channel 5 and demanded proof of the allegations made by its editorial board.

"What kind of direct proof one can have, other than the fact that Khoroshkovsky is one of the owners of Inter Media Group? He is the chief of the security service, a member of the Higher Council of Justice. His wife is the manager of Inter Media Group. Here you have double standards," Roman Skypin, a journalist who heads TVi’s information service, said in an interview with RFE/RL.

As a result TVi will remain a satellite channel with little coverage in Ukraine, and Channel 5, whose licence allows it to be mainly about entertainment, may not be able to retain its news programmes.

It’s not surprising that independent media would start to disappear when the Yanukovych government decided to sack the current head of the SBU (secret service) and replace him with a rival television network and media empire owner. It is clearly a conflict of interest and journalists are vying for an independent parliamentary commission to investigate as well as Khoroshkovsky’s dismissal.

The development follows weeks of growing complaints by journalists about the resurgence of censorship and heightens fears that a Kremlin-styled crackdown on media freedoms could be in the works five months into the presidency of the Moscow-friendly Viktor Yanukovich.

Oleh Rybachuk, a former presidential administration chief turned civic activist, said “censorship is re-emerging, and the opposition is not getting so much coverage. There are similarities to what [Vladimir] Putin did when he came to power. We are seeing Putin-style attempts to monopolise power.”

In 2012 Ukraine makes the transition to digital broadcast television, in which all the old analog channels will discontinue and TV stations must re-apply for these new digital frequencies. Telekritika, a media watchdog news website and magazine commented in her Kyiv Post interview ‘Power wants monopoly’:

TVi had prepared the frequency for itself. It is common practice here that after that there has to be a tender held. By agreement with the National Council and all market players, the initiator has historically received the most frequencies. But they had to share with others, too.
But Inter Group claimed most of these frequencies – and that’s unfair. [Having understood that the claim would not be satisfied], they withdrew their application, and then filed a lawsuit. It’s not very clear why.

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The desire of the new power to control and monopolize television is visible through many of its actions and through the quality of the news we have.

Khoroshkovsky is a member of the High Council of Justice. In any democratic country, undoubtedly, this kind of a court hearing, with major procedural violations, simply could not happen.

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Another point is that something needs to be changed at the National TV and Radio Council. These sorts of commercial disputes lead to the loss of news channels. This shows inadequate work of the National Council, which has to make sure that we have information channels, public TV and that the needs for Ukrainian-language media are satisfied. But it has never done it in a civilized way.

And finally some background on television and politics in Ukraine:

During the Presidency of President Kuchma Ukrainian television was more or less controlled by Kuchma while the Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (united) controlled Inter TV^[1]. After the Orange Revolution Ukrainian television became more free. In February 2009 the National Council for Television and Radio Broadcasting claimed that "political pressure on mass media increased in recent times through amending laws and other normative acts to strengthen influence on mass media and regulatory bodies in this sphere".

As of January 2009 Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko refused to appear in Inter TV-programmes "until journalists, management and owners of the TV channel stop destroying the freedom of speech and until they remember the essence of their profession – honesty, objectiveness, and unbiased stand".

Members of Ukraine’s media have banded together to form the ‘Stop Censorship!’ movement to protest these actions of flagrant censorship.

From Window On Eurasia:

Aleksandr Bortnikov, the head of Russia’s FSB, and Valery Khoroshkovsky, head of Ukraine’s SBU, have signed a five-year agreement that will allow Moscow again to put intelligence agents in Crimea, from which 19 such Russian officers were expelled at the end of last year for attempting to recruit Ukrainians as spies.

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The behavior of Russian agents last year, Rostislav Pavlenko, the director of the School of Political Analysis of the Kyiv-Mohylev Academy, said, raises doubts as to whether any document Moscow officials sign or any statements they make can be trusted. After all, what the Russians did last year was prohibited by bilateral agreements.

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Given that Ukraine has agreed to extend the presence of the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol for another 25 years, there is certainly time for the appearance of a situation “when the Black Sea Fleet and the special services based within it can be used in actions that are counter to the interests of Ukraine.”
But the impact of this FSB-SBU accord is likely to be even larger, Ukrainian political scientist Yevgeny Zherebetsky argued. That is because the commanders of the Black Sea Fleet, immediately after the extension of the basing accord, began a “massive” downsizing, retiring some 7500 staffers, “of whom 6500 are civilians and citizens of Ukraine.”

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In addition, the fleet plans to retire 550 officers, many of whom will like the civilians have relatively low pensions and thus be open as are the civilians for recruitment by the Russian special services for work against Ukraine as a way to supplement their relatively small benefit checks.
According to Zherebetsky, it is “very important for Russians to obtain control over Crimea” because it lacks warm water ports. But “if everything will develop so ‘well’ [for Moscow] as it is now, then the Russians will try to extend their influence to Odessa, Kherson, and Nikolayev,” in an arc extending from Transdniestria to Abkhazia.
For that purpose, he continued, “Russia needs a broad network of agents of the special services,” but its prospects for success if these agents are active are very good because “over the course of the period of independence, the Ukrainian leadership has done nothing so that Ukraine could obtain complete power over the territory of Crimea.”

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Meanwhile the SBU recently tried to recruit a Ukrainian Catholic priest to become a secret informant to infiltrate student protests, many whom dislike the Yanukovych government:

Read more…

Update: Meanwhile in France today, Yanukovych denies the Holodomor of genocide to Europe.

From the New York Times:

Ukrainian Parliament on Tuesday narrowly approved an agreement to allow Russia to extend a lease on a naval base on Ukrainian territory.

Opponents, who maintained that the deal would infringe on Ukrainian sovereignty, jeered loudly inside the legislative chamber in Kiev, set off smoke bombs and threw eggs at the parliamentary speaker, Volodymyr M. Lytvyn. His aides tried to protect him by holding umbrellas around him.

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“This is a black page in the history of our government,” said Yulia V. Tymoshenko, a former prime minister who is now the opposition leader.

Ukrainian politics are contentious, but even so, Tuesday’s vote was unusually unruly, offering a glimpse at the depth of feelings toward Russia.

Ukraine in recent years has turned into flashpoint in the struggle between the West and Russia for influence in the former Soviet Union. And for many Ukrainians, the Russian naval base has been a primary symbol, for better or worse, of the Russian role in the country.

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Mr. Yanukovich has long had close ties to the Kremlin, in part because he is from the Russian-speaking region of eastern Ukraine. Last week, he reached an arrangement with his Russian counterpart, Dmitri A. Medvedev, to extend the lease for another 25 years in return for a 30-percent reduction in the cost of Russian natural gas.

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But was the vote rigged to begin with?

The opposition – led on the streets by ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and inside by 150 deputies of her bloc — called parliament’s vote rigged. They tried in vain to physically stop the vote by covering their desks with the Ukrainian flag. Some deputies tossed a hail of raw eggs at the speaker, who sat at the rostrum protected by two bodyguards who shielded Lytvyn under two black umbrellas.

The vote is suspect since only 211 lawmakers, 15 less than the majority required to ratify the vote, registered for the session. A dozen new Party of Regions deputies were sworn in before the crucial vote. All deputies belonging to the ruling coalition — Party of Regions, Communist Party and Volodymyr Lytvyn bloc — supported the measure, along with 13 non-aligned deputies.

Tymoshenko vowed to unite the democratic opposition in nationwide protests culminating in a major event on May 11, when parliament reconvenes.

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Tymoshenko bloc deputy Volodymyr Polokhalo said Party of Regions deputies occupied the chamber by force and voted from the seats of deputies from the Our Ukraine opposition. “After the second smoke bomb went off, they barged into the Our Ukraine sector and used the cards of the deputies who defected from the faction in order to pass the vote,” Polokhalo said.

The Financial Times also chimed on what extending the Black Sea Fleet means for Ukraine:

By allowing the Russian navy to extend the lease over its base at Sevastopol in the Crimea, he has effectively torpedoed Ukraine’s pursuit of Nato membership. The alliance’s rules prohibit any member nation from hosting foreign bases on its soil.

Here’s a video of people rallying outside the Rada from Ukrainiana:

And here’s one of demonstrators in parliament, is this government really ‘democracy in action’ by the will of the people?

Vladimir Putin was quoted on the deal:

“Military co-operation, without a doubt, increases trust between two countries, gives us an opportunity to do work full of trust in the economic and social and political spheres,”

Scratch another one off the master plan to undo the Orange Revolution:

• Gas Prices Deal for Russian clout
• Extending Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Ukraine’s Sevastopol
• Cancelling honours of Heroes of Ukraine
• Economic alignment with former Bloc countries (ie. reforming the USSR) - getting there
• Russian language in Ukraine (a resurgence of a century long campaign of de-Ukrainianzation)  - getting there
• Holodomor denial

This is the new face of Yanukovych’s Ukraine:

A political science professor from Rutgers University writes in today’s Wall Street Journal about the grim future ahead for Ukraine with Yanukovych as President:

Mr. Yanukovych has committed a series of mistakes that could doom his presidency, scare off foreign investors, and thwart the country’s modernization.

Mr. Yanukovych’s first mistake was to violate the constitution by changing the rules according to which ruling parliamentary coalitions are formed, making it possible for his party to take the lead in partnership with several others, including the Communists.

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His second mistake was to appoint as prime minister his crony Mykola Azarov, a tough bureaucrat whose name is synonymous with government corruption, ruinous taxation rates, and hostility to small business

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(About a larger cabinet) That the cabinet contained not one woman—Mr. Azarov claimed that reform was not women’s work—only reinforced the image of the cabinet as a dysfunctional boys’ club.

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His fourth mistake was to appoint two nonentities… to head the ministries of economy and finance… The size of the committee guarantees that it will be a talk shop, while the incompetence of the two ministers means that whatever genuinely positive ideas the Committee develops will remain on paper.

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His fifth mistake was to appoint the controversial Dmytro Tabachnik as minister of education. Mr. Tabachnik has expressed chauvinist views that democratically inclined Ukrainians regard as deeply offensive to their national dignity, such as the belief that west Ukrainians are not real Ukrainians; endorsing the sanitized view of Soviet history propagated by the Kremlin; and claiming that Ukrainian language and culture flourished in Soviet times. Unsurprisingly, many Ukrainians have reacted in the same way that African Americans would react to KKK head David Duke’s appointment to such a position—with countrywide student strikes, petitions, and demonstrations directed as much at Mr. Yanukovych as at Mr. Tabachnik.

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Several other key dismissals and appointments have only reinforced this view. The director of the Security Service archives—a conscientious scholar who permitted unrestricted public access to documentation revealing Soviet crimes—has been fired. The National Television and Radio Company has been placed in the hands of a lightweight entertainer expected to toe the line. Most disturbing perhaps, several of Mr. Yanukovych’s anti-democratically inclined party allies have been placed in charge of provincial ministries of internal affairs—positions that give them broad scope to clamp down on the liberties of ordinary citizens.

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Indeed, if Mr. Yanukovych keeps on making anti-democratic mistakes, he could very well provoke a second Orange Revolution. But this time the demonstrators would consist of democrats, students, and workers. The prospect of growing instability will do little to attract foreign investors, while declining legitimacy, growing incompetence, and tub thumping will fail to modernize Ukraine’s industry, agriculture, and education. Mr. Yanukovych could very well be an even greater failure as president than Mr. Yushchenko.

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A very grim future indeed if Yanukovych continues down this path. Lots of events are transpiring in the country as a result of this new power shift:

Ukraine’s new governing coalition in parliament says it will pass a law preventing the country from joining any military alliances, including NATO…Russia, keen to restore its Soviet-era influence over Ukraine and other former Soviet states, is fiercely averse to NATO’s eastward expansion. [Associated Press]

Russian nationalists in Crimea have burned Ukrainian history textbooks to protest what they say are distortions of the past by the administration of former President Viktor Yushchenko.  The recent transfer of power in Kyiv has raised hope among Russian nationalists and fear among Ukrainians.

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Among the participants was Sevastopol city councilman Yevgeniy Dubovik, a member of the pro-Russian and far left Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine.  He agrees with the warning of 19th century German writer Heinrich Heine who wrote, “Where they burn books, they will in the end burn people.”

Nonetheless, Dubovik told VOA that Monday’s burning of Ukrainian history books was justified. [Voice of America]

President Viktor Yanukovych has said he supports a project on the construction of the Kerch (Crimea, southern Ukraine) – Caucasus (Russia) bridge, the head of state said Thursday when visiting the Autonomous Republic of Crimea [BSANNA News]

Meanwhile, many Ukrainians, particularly in the western part of the country, fear controversial new Education Minister Dmytro Tabachnyk will promote pro-Russian policies.  Tabachnyk has raised eyebrows with statements that suggest western and eastern Ukraine should be separated, or should never have been united in the first place.

In a protest against him on Monday in the city of Lviv, Ukraine’s Congress of Young Nationalists collected old Soviet history books to turn them into pulp. [Voice of America]

Last week, Yanukovych’s hand picked parliament appointed a new education minister Dmytro Tabachnyk from the Party of Regions. Many are worried because of Tabachnyk’s xenophobic Russocentric comments he’s made in the past:

The appointment of Dmytro Tabachnyk as education and science minister of Ukraine became a downright shock – he is a politician who doubts the very Ukrainian identity, offering instead a concept of the unknown “Ukrainian-Russian culture.”

In Tabachnyk’s opinion, the law of Ukraine “on Holodomor of 1932-1933 in Ukraine” places our state “in the same line as the most repulsive totalitarian dictatorships.” The minister for education and science thinks that “the desire to play little dirty tricks on the neighbor, betray, make something up to deceive another, a readiness to lose an eye if the neighbor goes completely blind are characteristics of the forming Ukrainian nation.”

His dictums like “Halychyna residents are lackeys who have barely learned to wash their hands,” who “practically have nothing in common with the people of the greater Ukraine in either mental, or confessional, or linguistic, or political sphere,” as well as other statements about “the struggle between the two types of ethnic groups, Roman-Catholic-Halychyna and Russian-Orthodox” that is supposed to be happening on the territory of Ukraine make one wonder how can they possibly belong to a Ph.D. in history.

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