In Ukraine, Attacks On Journalists Chill Media Landscape
By Christopher Miller
KYIV -- At a bustling Kyiv intersection lined with storefronts selling coffee and pastries, a pile of red roses surrounds a black-and-white photograph of Pavel Sheremet, an intrepid journalist who was killed by a car bomb here on July 20.
The simple, solemn memorial to Sheremet is also a symbol of a wave of attacks on journalists -- online and in the streets -- that has raised stark questions about power, patriotism, and the freedom of speech in Ukraine, and clouded the country's chances for normalcy.
In a nation struggling with economic troubles and Russian aggression, media professionals suspect they are being targeted in a far-reaching campaign of abuse whose perpetrators, like Sheremet’s unidentified killers, have so far acted with total impunity.
Journalists who have challenged the authorities, veered from the government’s narrative on the conflict with Russia-backed separatists in the east, or reported from separatist-held territories have found themselves in the crosshairs of coordinated online attacks carried out by hypernationalist trolls and bots -- attacks that in some cases have been supported, at least verbally, by high-ranking government and security officials.
The barrage of criticism has inspired public contempt for journalists as well as hacks and leaks of their personal data, including e-mail addresses, phone numbers, and passport information, and their correspondence with sources. Some journalists have faced death threats and physical assaults.
The day before Sheremet died -- when a bomb blast hit the car he was driving to work -- a journalist was stabbed three times in a Kyiv park and another was beaten on the street five days later.
According to the Kyiv-based Institute of Mass Information (IMI), a media watchdog that tracks attacks on reporters in Ukraine, the Prosecutor-General's Office logged 113 criminal offenses -- including physical attacks, damage to property, and obstruction of activities -- committed against journalists in the first half of 2016.
For a quarter-century, muckraking journalists in Ukraine have faced harassment, intimidation, and worse from powerful people in government and business. The media landscape is still scarred by the grisly killing of journalist Heorhiy Gongadze, whose headless corpse was found in a forest outside Kyiv after he disappeared in 2000.
The Kyiv Post newspaper has compiled a list of more than 50 Ukrainian journalists who have been killed or who died under suspicious circumstances since the country gained independence in the Soviet collapse of 1991. Others have gone missing, been beaten, or threatened with violence.
Read the entire story here.
Here's another item from our news desk:
Moscow Prosecutors Refuse To Indict Ukrainian Library Director
The prosecutor's office in Moscow has refused to indict Ukrainian Literature Library Director Natalya Sharina, who was facing charges of extremism and embezzlement.
Sharina's lawyer, Ivan Pavlov, said on August 15 that the prosecutor's office had returned the case to investigators, adding that no reason for the action was provided.
Sharina was detained in October and charged with inciting extremism and ethnic hatred because the library's collection allegedly included books by Ukrainian ultranationalist author Dmytro Korchynskiy, whose works are banned in Russia.
She was placed under house arrest.
In April, investigators charged Sharina with misallocating library funds, allegedly because she used library funds to pay for her legal defense in another extremism case against her that was dismissed in 2013.
Attorney Pavlov said the authorities had "trumped up" new charges after realizing their initial case against his client was too weak.
Sharina has rejected all the allegations, saying they are politically motivated.
Based on reporting by Interfax and rapsinews.ru
Here's the upshot of the Lavrov-Steinmeier meeting in Yekaterinburg, courtesy of our news desk:
Lavrov, Steinmeier Discuss Ukraine, Syria In Yekaterinburg
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier have held talks in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg that focused primarily on Ukraine and Syria.
Speaking to reporters after the August 15 meeting, the two ministers affirmed their support for the Minsk process aimed at resolving the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
Lavrov said Moscow is prepared to provide "irrefutable" evidence of an alleged plan by Kyiv to launch sabotage attacks in Crimea, the Ukrainian region that Moscow annexed in 2014.
Moscow does not plan to sever diplomatic relations with Ukraine over the incident, saying that doing so would be "an extreme measure," Lavrov added.
Ukraine has denied any involvement in or knowledge of such a sabotage plot.
Steinmeier said the worsening situation in Ukraine in recent weeks is "worrisome" and called on both Moscow and Kyiv to investigate the alleged sabotage plot.
On Syria, Lavrov said a cease-fire in the area around the city of Aleppo is needed, but that first "it is necessary to deal with the issues of the fight against terrorists."
He accused rebels fighting against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of using short-term humanitarian truces to regroup and of using humanitarian corridors to bring additional fighters and weapons to the conflict zone.
Before his meeting with Steinmeier, Lavrov had told journalists that Russia was not to blame for strained relations with Berlin.
"We are paying top-priority attention to relations with Germany and it is not our fault that they are enduring a difficult period," Lavrov said.
The position of EU powerhouse Germany has been crucial to keeping sanctions in place against Russia over its interference in Ukraine.