Great question
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In risky move, Ukraine’s president bans pro-Russian media
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has unplugged three television networks he accuses of spreading Kremlin-funded ‘propaganda’, a development the EU has reprimanded.
Mansur Mirovalev
Millions in Ukraine’s east and south are Russian speakers – without necessarily being pro-Kremlin – and their votes propelled Zelenskyy to the country's presidency against all political odds [File: Ronald Zak/AP Photo]
Kyiv, Ukraine – In a move hailed by pro-Western Ukrainians, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy unplugged three television networks overnight that he said spread Kremlin-funded “propaganda” and served as a bullhorn of an increasingly popular pro-Moscow party.
But his ex-Soviet nation of 43 million is polarised linguistically and politically, and the move may prove risky for the political fortunes of Zelenskyy, a former star comedian who hails from a Russian-speaking family.
Millions in Ukraine’s east and south are Russian speakers – without necessarily being pro-Kremlin – and their votes propelled Zelenskyy to the presidency against all political odds.
Zelenskyy was elected in 2019 with 73 percent of the vote, a staggering figure for a rookie politician whose only experience in the halls of power was the role of an accidental president in a popular TV series.
But recent polls show that Zelenskyy’s approval ratings have fallen well below 40 percent, reflecting the public’s growing dissatisfaction with his inconclusive policies and constant cabinet changes.
One of the fiercest Kremlin foes and most successful reformers in the former Soviet Union applauded Zelenskyy’s move to close down the 112, NewsOne and ZIK news channels on Tuesday.
“He surprised everyone who said he was not capable of decisive steps, and he made the step none of his predecessors had been able to take in the past decades,” Mikheil Saakashvili, who served as fellow ex-Soviet nation Georgia’s president from 2004-2013 only to be expelled and end up as Zelensky’s adviser on reforms, wrote on Facebook.
‘Absolutely illegal’
The trio shut down are part of a dozen TV networks in Ukraine owned by several regional oligarchs. The networks produced plenty of exclusive content, covered the entire spectrum of Ukraine’s political life and refrained from directly praising the Kremlin.
But their anchors often called the central government’s conflict with Russia-backed separatists in the southeastern region of Donbass a “civil war”, said that Crimea’s population overwhelmingly supported their peninsula’s annexation by Moscow in 2014, and called for the restoration of peace and trade with Moscow.
“Imagine that in a conflict zone, on a national level there is a channel financed by the opposite side. It’s like an Israeli channel financed by Fatah or Hamas,” Kyiv-based analyst Igar Tyshkevich told Al Jazeera, referring to two Palestinian parties.
02:36
Full, comprehensive ceasefire begins in Ukraine
The networks were nominally owned by Taras Kozak, a politician with the Opposition Platform for Life (OPFL), a party that has the second-largest faction in the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s lower house of parliament.
But their real owner is reportedly OPFL’s “grey cardinal” Viktor Medvedchuk, the main conduit of Moscow’s influence in Ukraine, whose daughter was baptised by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The United States sanctioned Medvedchuk in 2014.
He called the networks’ shutdown “absolutely illegal,” and said he would challenge the move in court.
“Zelenskyy’s coterie and masters from over the ocean clean the information space from their opponents with his hands, made him a tool of government lawlessness,” the 66-year-old tycoon told Ukrainian media on Wednesday.
The OPFL is gaining clout as Zelenskyy’s supporters increasingly gravitate towards the party, observers say.
“Zelenskyy, as a prominent television personality, strikes at his competitor in the field he understands best,” researcher Nikolay Mitrokhin of Germany’s Bremen University told Al Jazeera.
The OPFL has indeed become slightly more popular than Zelenskyy’s party, a motley crew of B-list politicians and political newcomers that was hastily put together two years ago.
According to a survey released on Thursday by the Rating pollster, 18.9 percent of Ukrainians support the OPFL, while the Servant of the People party lags just behind, with 18.6 percent support.
Media freedom concerns
At the dawn of his presidency in 2019, Zelenskyy pledged to “never, ever shut down any TV networks”, and key members of his Servant of the People party frequented the studios of the three television stations he would order off the air.
The networks widely covered his steps to settle the separatist conflict. But in recent months, they began to harshly criticise Zelenskyy’s policies as his ratings plummeted.
Their coverage is “propaganda financed by the aggressor country that undermines Ukraine on its way” to membership in the European Union and NATO, Zelenskyy tweeted on Wednesday.
25:17
Has trust in journalists, government leaders hit an all-time low? | The Bottom Line
However, the EU reprimanded Zelenskyy’s move.
“Given the scale of disinformation campaigns affecting Ukraine including from abroad, this should not come at the expense of freedom of media,” the spokesperson of EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in a statement on Wednesday.
Zelenskyy’s decision prompted objections from his key ally.
Parliament speaker Dmytro Razumkov abstained from voting the sanctions in, and condemned them.
“Sanctioning TV networks is bad, no matter who they belong to,” Razumkov told Ukrainian media.
US weighs in with support
Zelenskyy’s decision seems like an attempt to win points with US President Joe Biden, who called him one day before the ban, on Monday, for the first time after his election.
Biden oversaw Ukraine between 2009 and 2017 while serving as vice president under Barack Obama, and visited Kyiv six times.
A key US official in Europe seemed pleased.
“Media freedom does not include the right to spread malicious propaganda and disinformation. We support Ukraine’s decision to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity by countering Russia’s blatant and malign influence,” Courtney Austrian, head of the US mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said in a statement on Thursday.
But to Zelenskyy’s critics, the sudden shutdown of the networks without a court ruling is yet more proof of his political inconsistency.
“Zelenskyy’s actions are a blow to grassroots patriotism in eastern and southern regions that is not pro-Russian politically at all,” Kyiv-based analyst Aleksey Kushch told Al Jazeera.
He called the move “McCarthyism” and “a witch hunt” aimed at saving Zelenskyy’s plummeting approval ratings.
“The shut-down networks were not Russian propaganda bullhorns, but served as platforms in the search for alternative directions in Ukraine’s development,” he said.
Fiercely anti-Russian Ukrainians meanwhile said they saw the shutdown as a ploy designed to distract the public from Zelenskyy’s allegedly pro-Russian sympathies.
“He sold us to Russia the minute he was inaugurated,” Valentina Semenovich, a lawyer in Kyiv, told Al Jazeera.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has unplugged three television networks he accuses of spreading Kremlin-funded ‘propaganda’, a development the EU has reprimanded.
Mansur Mirovalev
Millions in Ukraine’s east and south are Russian speakers – without necessarily being pro-Kremlin – and their votes propelled Zelenskyy to the country's presidency against all political odds [File: Ronald Zak/AP Photo]
Kyiv, Ukraine – In a move hailed by pro-Western Ukrainians, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy unplugged three television networks overnight that he said spread Kremlin-funded “propaganda” and served as a bullhorn of an increasingly popular pro-Moscow party.
But his ex-Soviet nation of 43 million is polarised linguistically and politically, and the move may prove risky for the political fortunes of Zelenskyy, a former star comedian who hails from a Russian-speaking family.
Millions in Ukraine’s east and south are Russian speakers – without necessarily being pro-Kremlin – and their votes propelled Zelenskyy to the presidency against all political odds.
Zelenskyy was elected in 2019 with 73 percent of the vote, a staggering figure for a rookie politician whose only experience in the halls of power was the role of an accidental president in a popular TV series.
But recent polls show that Zelenskyy’s approval ratings have fallen well below 40 percent, reflecting the public’s growing dissatisfaction with his inconclusive policies and constant cabinet changes.
One of the fiercest Kremlin foes and most successful reformers in the former Soviet Union applauded Zelenskyy’s move to close down the 112, NewsOne and ZIK news channels on Tuesday.
“He surprised everyone who said he was not capable of decisive steps, and he made the step none of his predecessors had been able to take in the past decades,” Mikheil Saakashvili, who served as fellow ex-Soviet nation Georgia’s president from 2004-2013 only to be expelled and end up as Zelensky’s adviser on reforms, wrote on Facebook.
‘Absolutely illegal’
The trio shut down are part of a dozen TV networks in Ukraine owned by several regional oligarchs. The networks produced plenty of exclusive content, covered the entire spectrum of Ukraine’s political life and refrained from directly praising the Kremlin.
But their anchors often called the central government’s conflict with Russia-backed separatists in the southeastern region of Donbass a “civil war”, said that Crimea’s population overwhelmingly supported their peninsula’s annexation by Moscow in 2014, and called for the restoration of peace and trade with Moscow.
“Imagine that in a conflict zone, on a national level there is a channel financed by the opposite side. It’s like an Israeli channel financed by Fatah or Hamas,” Kyiv-based analyst Igar Tyshkevich told Al Jazeera, referring to two Palestinian parties.
02:36
Full, comprehensive ceasefire begins in Ukraine
The networks were nominally owned by Taras Kozak, a politician with the Opposition Platform for Life (OPFL), a party that has the second-largest faction in the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s lower house of parliament.
But their real owner is reportedly OPFL’s “grey cardinal” Viktor Medvedchuk, the main conduit of Moscow’s influence in Ukraine, whose daughter was baptised by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The United States sanctioned Medvedchuk in 2014.
He called the networks’ shutdown “absolutely illegal,” and said he would challenge the move in court.
“Zelenskyy’s coterie and masters from over the ocean clean the information space from their opponents with his hands, made him a tool of government lawlessness,” the 66-year-old tycoon told Ukrainian media on Wednesday.
The OPFL is gaining clout as Zelenskyy’s supporters increasingly gravitate towards the party, observers say.
“Zelenskyy, as a prominent television personality, strikes at his competitor in the field he understands best,” researcher Nikolay Mitrokhin of Germany’s Bremen University told Al Jazeera.
The OPFL has indeed become slightly more popular than Zelenskyy’s party, a motley crew of B-list politicians and political newcomers that was hastily put together two years ago.
According to a survey released on Thursday by the Rating pollster, 18.9 percent of Ukrainians support the OPFL, while the Servant of the People party lags just behind, with 18.6 percent support.
Media freedom concerns
At the dawn of his presidency in 2019, Zelenskyy pledged to “never, ever shut down any TV networks”, and key members of his Servant of the People party frequented the studios of the three television stations he would order off the air.
The networks widely covered his steps to settle the separatist conflict. But in recent months, they began to harshly criticise Zelenskyy’s policies as his ratings plummeted.
Their coverage is “propaganda financed by the aggressor country that undermines Ukraine on its way” to membership in the European Union and NATO, Zelenskyy tweeted on Wednesday.
25:17
Has trust in journalists, government leaders hit an all-time low? | The Bottom Line
However, the EU reprimanded Zelenskyy’s move.
“Given the scale of disinformation campaigns affecting Ukraine including from abroad, this should not come at the expense of freedom of media,” the spokesperson of EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in a statement on Wednesday.
Zelenskyy’s decision prompted objections from his key ally.
Parliament speaker Dmytro Razumkov abstained from voting the sanctions in, and condemned them.
“Sanctioning TV networks is bad, no matter who they belong to,” Razumkov told Ukrainian media.
US weighs in with support
Zelenskyy’s decision seems like an attempt to win points with US President Joe Biden, who called him one day before the ban, on Monday, for the first time after his election.
Biden oversaw Ukraine between 2009 and 2017 while serving as vice president under Barack Obama, and visited Kyiv six times.
A key US official in Europe seemed pleased.
“Media freedom does not include the right to spread malicious propaganda and disinformation. We support Ukraine’s decision to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity by countering Russia’s blatant and malign influence,” Courtney Austrian, head of the US mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said in a statement on Thursday.
But to Zelenskyy’s critics, the sudden shutdown of the networks without a court ruling is yet more proof of his political inconsistency.
“Zelenskyy’s actions are a blow to grassroots patriotism in eastern and southern regions that is not pro-Russian politically at all,” Kyiv-based analyst Aleksey Kushch told Al Jazeera.
He called the move “McCarthyism” and “a witch hunt” aimed at saving Zelenskyy’s plummeting approval ratings.
“The shut-down networks were not Russian propaganda bullhorns, but served as platforms in the search for alternative directions in Ukraine’s development,” he said.
Fiercely anti-Russian Ukrainians meanwhile said they saw the shutdown as a ploy designed to distract the public from Zelenskyy’s allegedly pro-Russian sympathies.
“He sold us to Russia the minute he was inaugurated,” Valentina Semenovich, a lawyer in Kyiv, told Al Jazeera.
Now Vlad's holdin doctors and patients hostage as human shields....
Russian troops take 500 hostage at Mariupol hospital, Ukraine says
Russian troops seized control of a hospital in the city of Mariupol on Tuesday and were holding about 500 people hostage, according to regional leader Pavlo Kyrylenko.
Driving the news: Kyrylenko said on Telegram that the troops drove 400 people into the hospital. One hundred doctors and patients were also inside he said, adding that no one is allowed to leave. He alleged the hostages were being used as human shields.
What they're saying: "It’s impossible to leave the hospital, they are shooting hard," Kyrylenko said.
By the numbers: An aide to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said some 20,000 people managed to evacuate from Mariupol on Tuesday in "4,000 private vehicles via a designated safe corridor leading to the city of Zaporizhzhia," per AP.
Flashback: Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky previously called the Russian military's bombing of a children's hospital and maternity ward in the city a "war crime" and "proof that the genocide of Ukrainians is taking place."
Russian troops take 500 hostage at Mariupol hospital — Ukraine (axios.com)
Russian troops take 500 hostage at Mariupol hospital, Ukraine says
Russian troops seized control of a hospital in the city of Mariupol on Tuesday and were holding about 500 people hostage, according to regional leader Pavlo Kyrylenko.
Driving the news: Kyrylenko said on Telegram that the troops drove 400 people into the hospital. One hundred doctors and patients were also inside he said, adding that no one is allowed to leave. He alleged the hostages were being used as human shields.
What they're saying: "It’s impossible to leave the hospital, they are shooting hard," Kyrylenko said.
- He urged the world to respond to these "gross violations of the norms and customs of war, these egregious crimes against humanity," AP writes.
By the numbers: An aide to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said some 20,000 people managed to evacuate from Mariupol on Tuesday in "4,000 private vehicles via a designated safe corridor leading to the city of Zaporizhzhia," per AP.
Flashback: Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky previously called the Russian military's bombing of a children's hospital and maternity ward in the city a "war crime" and "proof that the genocide of Ukrainians is taking place."
Russian troops take 500 hostage at Mariupol hospital — Ukraine (axios.com)
Russia sanctions Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and others
The list includes Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, press secretary Jen Psaki and other members of the administration.
But it also includes two surprises: former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Mr Biden's son Hunter.
The measures block their entry into Russia and freeze any assets held in the country.
However, the ministry has said the sanctions will not impede necessary high-level contacts for the affected individuals.
Other names on the list are:
- Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley
- National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan
- Deputy National Security Adviser Daleep Singh
- US Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Samantha Power
- Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo
- President of the Export-Import Bank of the US Reta Jo Lewis
Russia is now the most sanctioned country in the world.
- What sanctions are being imposed on Russia?
- Russia's ex-president targeted in new UK sanctions
- How sanctions have changed everyday life in Russia
On Tuesday, the US announced sanctions on 11 Russian defence leaders and signalled that it could levy sanctions against Alexander Lukashenko, the President of Moscow-allied Belarus.
Earlier, the UK slapped sanctions on another 370 Russian individuals, including former Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev.
CONTINUED:
Russia sanctions Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and others - BBC News
man trump was like fuck NATO… why we giving all this money and these other countries ain’t doing as much…
so I highly doubt he’d send military forces at Putin but then again Mr. Grab Her By The Pussy is an arrogant fuck…. Soooo who knows
Zelensky keeps talking about a NFZ when everyone knows it isn't going to happen right now because he is trying to get stuff like this as a "compromise" :
www.nbcnews.com
Biden admin will provide Ukraine killer drones called Switchblades
The U.S.-made guided missiles can accurately target tanks and artillery from miles away.
www.nbcnews.com
I found this kind of interesting.
---
Gen. Petraeus: Invasion reveals a host of weaknesses in Russia's military
I still laugh at how this dude threw away his career over pussy.
He has a lot of company in that department.
God knows I've made some bad decisions over it. 
Zelensky knows this but it is all bargaining. We went from sending helmets to this:
The inclusion of the “tactical” drones, which crash into their targets, represents a new phase of weaponry being sent to Ukraine by the U.S., which so far has shipped mostly anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons. An administration official confirmed McCaul’s account that the U.S. is sending the Switchblade.
The Switchblade is a small, light drone that can loiter in the air for up to 30 minutes before being directed to its target by an operator on the ground, dozens of miles away. The drone is launched from a tube, like a mortar shell. Its real-time GPS guidance allows a service member in the field to fly it until the moment it crashes and explodes into whatever the target might be.
U.S. sending Switchblade drones to Ukraine in $800 million package
The Switchblade is a small, light drone that can loiter in the air for up to 30 minutes before being directed to its target by an operator on the ground, dozens of miles away.
www.politico.com
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They might as well use screenshots from the game World War 3 as well as Battlefield 2042
They say the Russians have lost more troops at this point than the U.S. had at Iwo Jima.
Has ANY army in history lost four generals in three weeks?
That's devastating to hear if you're a Russian commander waiting on Putin's most stealth chess move
Russia's invasion of Ukraine highlights a moral failing — and vulnerability — of the GOP
The conflict highlights the party's craven hypocrisy around its inability to take on Trump and their favorite right-wing media personalities for their troublesome ongoing affinity for Putin.
I now get the impression that the rank of "General" is given as a reward for political favors and personal loyalty, not military experience or proven strategy.
Has ANY army in history lost four generals in three weeks?
They say the Russians have lost more troops at this point than the U.S. had at Iwo Jima.
That's devastating to hear if you're a Russian commander waiting on Putin's most stealth chess move
Imagine what the reserve equipment/troops look like?
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