Ukraine’s Only English-Language TV Channel Shuts Down
Ukraine’s only English-language television channel, UATV, has stopped broadcasting.
“Ukrainian international state broadcaster UATV will cease the production of news and satellite broadcasting, starting from January 13, 2020,” UATV said in a news release. “As a result, several of the English language news presenters bid farewell to their jobs and to their viewers around the world.
Its last broadcast was on January 12.
In the beginning of the year, the government in Kyiv decided to shut down international broadcasting and to close its Crimean-Tatar, Arabic, and English-language departments.
UATV was created in 2015 amid what media analysts have called a fierce “information war” with Russia.
In 2014, the proliferation of spurious news reports accompanied Russia’s seizure of Crimea from Ukraine and its backing of separatists in the two easternmost regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in a conflict that has killed nearly 14,000 people.
The channel was established "to ensure access of foreign audiences to objective, up-to-date, and complete information about events in Ukraine and to maintain a positive image of Ukraine in the world,” an earlier news release from the broadcaster stated.
In the span of four years, UATV was connected to nearly 400 cable networks and broadcast to nearly 30 countries in Europe, North American, Asia, and Africa, including in the Middle East.
The administration of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has stated it intends to launch a Russian-language TV channel at the state broadcaster this year specifically for audiences living in “temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine,” local media watchdog Detector Media reported in December.
Ukraine Seeks To Shrink Underground Economy, Takes On Illegal Gambling, Other Sectors
Ukraine is cracking down on illegal gambling and logging and fraudulent gas stations in a bid to reduce the size of the country’s shadow economy.
Speaking at a meeting with the heads of the country’s 24 regions over the weekend, Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk said the year 2020 “will be the year of the uncloaking of the Ukrainian economy.”
He noted that in the last two weeks, police had shuttered 900 illicit gambling dens.
He said about half of the gas stations police inspected -- 707 -- were not paying fuel taxes.
A digital record of all cut timber is set to be placed in a centralized digital registry by February 1, Honcharuk said.
The Economic Development and Trade Ministry estimates that 33 percent of Ukraine’s gross domestic product (GDP) is in the shadows.
Some economists say the figure is higher and makes up about 40 percent of the economy. In monetary terms, Ukraine’s economic output last year equaled $155 billion, Kyiv-based investment bank Dragon Capital estimates.
Based on reporting by Ukraine Business News
Canada's Trudeau Promises 'Justice' As Iranians Protest Downing Of Ukrainian Plane
By RFE/RL
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he will seek "justice" for those killed on board a Ukrainian passenger plane shot down by Iran last week.
"We will not rest until there are answers," Trudeau said on January 13 in Edmonton, Alberta, during a vigil for the 57 Canadian victims of the disaster, as a second day of anti-government protests broke out in Iran over the way officials have handled the downing of the airliner.
Iran's military said its air-defense forces unintentionally shot down the Boeing 737-800 airliner on January 8, killing all 176 people on board.
The tragedy occurred a few hours after an Iranian ballistic-missile attack against military bases hosting U.S. forces in Iraq.
Tehran had previously rejected suggestions it was to blame for the crash of the Ukrainian airliner.
After Iran’s January 11 admission, protests broke out in Tehran and other cities, with demonstrators chanting slogans against the Iranian leadership and reports of clashes with police.
Videos posted online purported to show police and security forces firing live ammunition and tear gas to disperse demonstrators near Tehran’s Azadi (Freedom) Square on the night of January 12, AP reported.
Reuters said videos showed blood on the ground and images of people who appeared to be security personnel in the vicinity of protests carrying rifles.
Other posts showed police in riot gear hitting protesters with batons on the street, the agency said.
In a statement carried by Iran’s state broadcaster's website on January 13, Tehran's police chief Hossein Rahimi denied that shots had been fired at protesters.
"At protests, police absolutely did not shoot because the capital's police officers have been given orders to show restraint," Rahimi said.
U.S. President Donald Trump on January 12 warned that Iranian authorities should not target anti-government protesters, writing in a tweet: “Thousands have already been killed or imprisoned by you, and the World is watching. More importantly, the USA is watching.”
On January 13, Iranian government spokesman Ali Rabiei accused Trump of shedding "crocodile tears" when voicing concern for Iranians.
Rabiei also denied a "cover-up" after it took days for Iran’s armed forces to admit it had shot down the airliner.
"In these sorrowful days, many criticisms were directed at relevant officials and authorities.... Some officials were even accused of lying and a cover-up but, in all honesty, that was not the case," he said in remarks aired on state television.
Ukrainian International Airlines Flight PS752 was also carrying 82 Iranians, 11 Ukrainians, 10 Swedes, 10 Afghans, three Germans, and three Britons.
Iran has invited Canada and Ukraine to take part in an investigation into the plane disaster and said those responsible would be held accountable.
In Kyiv, meanwhile, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukraine hopes to repatriate the bodies of the 11 Ukrainians by the end of this week.
Zelenskiy said he would like for the bodies to return home “by January 19” so that their relatives can “say goodbye to them,” according to a statement on the presidential website.
Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council secretary Oleksiy Danilov told the BBC that the 11 bodies most likely would return at a later date.
“Thirty percent of the bodies are identified,” Danilov said. “Around January 20-21, they’ll come back to Ukraine.”
Nine of the Ukrainians on board were crew members and two were passengers.
Amirali Hajizadeh, the head of the aerospace division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), said on January 11 that his unit accepts “full responsibility” for the tragedy.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei expressed his “deep sympathy” to the families of the 176 victims and called on the armed forces to "pursue probable shortcomings and guilt in the painful incident.”
With reporting by the BBC, AP, and Reuters
This ends our live blogging for January 12. Be sure to check back tomorrow for our continuing coverage.
Man arrested in 2017 attack on Chechen accused of Putin plot:
By RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service
Ukrainian authorities say police have arrested a man linked to a 2017 attack on a Chechen who was accused by the Russian authorities of plotting to kill President Vladimir Putin.
Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said in a January 12 post on Facebook that the unidentified man was arrested along with an unspecified number of other people who were also allegedly linked to the October 2017 attack on Adam Osmayev.
He gave no further details.
Osmayev was wounded in the October 2017 attack on Kyiv's outskirts that killed his wife, Amina Okuyeva.
Four months prior to that attack, Osmayev was targeted in a separate incident during a meeting with a man who was posing as a French journalist.
The man then opened fire as they sat in a car, wounding Osmayev, he later told police. His wife, who was also in the car at the time, returned fire, wounding the alleged attacker.
Ukrainian police later identified the alleged shooter in the June attack as Artur Denisultanov-Kurmakayev, a Russian national who went by the nickname "Dingo." Authorities were looking into how he obtained a Ukrainian passport.
Denisultanov was turned over to Russian authorities on December 29, 2019, in exchange for a number of Ukrainian prisoners held in Russian detention or in detention of Russia-backed separatist fighters in eastern Ukraine. It was one of two major prisoner swaps that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has pushed through as part of an effort to ease tensions with Russia.
Osmayev first made headlines in Ukraine in February 2012 when he was detained and charged with illegal explosives possession, damaging private property, and forgery.
At the request of the Russian authorities, he was charged with plotting to kill Putin, and Moscow sought his extradition.
Kyiv ultimately refused to extradite him, and he was then released from Ukrainian custody in November 2014, after more than 2 1/2 years in jail.
Three months after his release, Osmayev assumed command of a volunteer battalion fighting separatists in eastern Ukraine.
His wife, Okuyeva, gained renown working as a medic during the street protests in Kyiv that culminated in violent clashes with police in February 2014, and the ouster of then-President Viktor Yanukovych.