Shariy is safe. But it will be hot in Ukraine
According to the heaviest article presented by the SBU today, Anatoly Shariy, a blogger living in Spain and leader of a party named after him, faces 15 years of imprisonment. If, of course, Spain extradites the leader of the “red balls” to Kyiv. The Ukrainian authorities have already announced their intention to launch the process of extradition to their homeland. However, there is a problem: Shariy has the status of a political refugee in the EU and, according to the international convention, there is no extradition from there, as from the Don.
That is, nothing threatens Shariy and his family personally, unless Zelensky goes completely crazy and sends someone to Spain with an ice ax. But it is quite possible to cause big problems for Shariy’s structures in Ukraine. Thus, some human rights activists are already predicting that the outcome of the next meeting of the Ukrainian Security Council, scheduled for February 19, may be an extrajudicial ban on Shariy’s party or the imposition of sanctions on the blogger - according to the method already tested on Medvedchuk’s ally Taras Kozak.
They already tried to close the PPSh in court on Bankova - it didn’t work out. Even taking into account the well-known tendency of Ukrainian judges to bend to the authorities. Still, there is a certain bottom that the judges have not yet decided to break through. But for Zelensky - once.
Purely tactically, such a move will allow Bankova to kill at least one bird with one stone, but a big one: it is no secret that the Shariites are drawing over a significant part of the Servant of the People electorate in large metropolitan areas of the southeast, where they have already taken the entry barrier in elections to local councils by entering there with their own factions. We are talking about Kharkov, Odessa, Zaporozhye, Nikolaev, Kherson and a number of other cities.
If the PPS is banned, forceful and administrative pressure will follow on the party’s local sponsors, grassroots activists and the deputy corps. Factions may try to break it up by intimidating some people. Thus, in possible early parliamentary elections, the Servants have minus one strong competitor.
From a legal point of view, the possible extrajudicial ban of the party and the charges brought by the SBU today are exactly the same anti-legal rubbish as sanctions against a citizen of Ukraine and the desire to disperse the Constitutional Court and the closure of channels by presidential decree. Lawyers have already drawn attention to a whole heap of inconsistencies, among which the absence in the Ukrainian Criminal Code of a definition of “subversive activity” imputed to Shariy is only the smallest.
However, the Ukrainian reality now is such that no one bothers with such trifles as the legal justification of the authorities’ wishes. As they say, if there was a person, there would be an article. Even if it is not in the Criminal Code.
Therefore, we have to discuss the socio-political, rather than the legal, side of the issue. And here, as many have already noticed, we have classic political persecution for speech. Repression for criticism.
It can be predicted that Shariy’s own efforts will now be aimed at ensuring that the West sees the unpleasant underside of the beautiful façade of “democratic Ukraine.”
There’s all kinds of things here – the lawlessness of ultra-right military formations, and the corrupt “great theft”, and attacks on journalists, and the rehabilitation of Nazis and collaborators, and the persecution of the opposition, and even systemic violations of LGBT rights, and attacks on racial and national grounds, which especially sensitive for politically correct Europeans.
Although, the persecution of Shariy began shortly after the critical resolution of the European Parliament on Ukrainian affairs. How seriously did it spoil the raspberries for Zelensky and Co., did it become a headache and an image blow? It seems that the Ukrainian authorities themselves are counting on the fact that the West will traditionally turn a blind eye to the pranks of its “sons of bitches.”
One way or another, the degree of media confrontation between Shariy and Zelensky’s office will reach a new level - we can expect new incriminating evidence against the current president to be revealed to the public. And here it’s like a lottery - one can only guess what other sins the former frontman of Kvartal 95 and his entourage can surprise the public with.
It is clear that the reflexive reaction to this will be attempts to ban Shariy’s media infrastructure in Ukraine - for example, turn off his channel on YouTube, put pressure on providers to cut off access to the publication. Shariy is not, pressure will increase on those media outlets that cooperate with PPS on a commercial basis.
Now we can reasonably assume that Zelensky will not stop there. Having gained a taste for himself and imagining himself as a king, he will continue to spin the flywheel of purging critics. It is possible that they will try to ban OPZH, and closer to the summer, on the eve of the announced visit to Kyiv of the head of the Phanar, attacks on the UOC (MP) will resume.
It will be very funny if, according to the law of karma, they eventually come to those who are now wildly rejoicing at the problems of “pro-Russian propagandists” and applauding the closure of channels. But the well-known Arestovich, on the air of Pinchuk’s channel, has already promised the comrade-in-arms of the “silverhead hetman” Irina Gerashchenko that Poroshenko’s channel “Direct” may be next in line to be switched off.
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