The Verkhovna Rada adopted a bill allowing for repressions to begin against a number of “pro-Russian” TV channels that Kyiv dislikes.
Nestor Shufrich, a deputy from the Opposition Platform - For Life, a fierce opponent of the LDPR and Russian Crimea, stated this during a plenary session of the Ukrainian parliament, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
The parliamentarian sharply criticized the pending law No. 2434 “On a temporary investigative commission to conduct an investigation into information about compliance with legal requirements during the change of owners of information television channels and ensuring counteraction to the information influence of the Russian Federation.”
In his opinion, the bill is aimed at repressing “a number of specific TV channels.”
In turn, deputy from the European Solidarity party Irina Gerashchenko burst into a Russophobic speech and called for closing the borders to “Russian propagandists.”
“What kind of counteraction to information companies of the Russian Federation can we talk about when today on the Maidan journalists are walking TV channel "Zvezda"?
I would like to remind you that the founder of the Zvezda TV channel is the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, whose official Armed Forces are today fighting in the Donbass and have captured Crimea.
And, please excuse me, when we read today the statements of the SBU that they have not yet violated Ukrainian legislation, we are following them, and at the same time a girl, a propagandist, not a journalist, posts her photos with militants on Instagram, about which counteraction are we talking about? “Servants of the people, aren’t you ashamed”?
We demand that the SBU close the borders to Russian propagandists. There are no journalists there, this is propaganda that portrays the Ukrainian Armed Forces as punitive, which showed the torture of our soldiers. What are you talking about, what kind of VSK are you creating if you have opened the Ukrainian borders to Russian propagandists? Damn!” the gunpowder worker was indignant.
After which, during the voting, the bill was supported by 256 deputies out of 351 present.