On Wednesday, Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko signed a decree sanctioning 90 legal entities and 388 individuals, including politicians and journalists, based in Russian Federation and other countries.
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In a statement, Poroshenko said he had ordered Ukraine’s security council to take three journalists from Britain’s BBC broadcaster off the list.
The European side has yet to publicize the details of the proposed arrangement with Russian Federation regarding the supply of gas to Ukraine, the European Commission saying only that “the financial issue was among those discussed at the outset of the trilateral negotiations”, and that “efforts to assist Ukraine in finding the best financial decisions” are being undertaken.
“As [the] Ukrainian government continues to review the list we encourage it to keep in mind the importance of unfettered and factual journalism in a democratic society,” Spokesperson John Kirby said in a daily briefing.
The decree which was published on the president’s website said the reporters and media executives on the list presented an unspecified “threat to national interests, national security, sovereignty or territorial integrity”.
Same-sex sexual relations may not be illegal in Ukraine, and there may not be a “gay propaganda” law as there is in Russian Federation , but the two countries do by-and-large share the same hostility toward the LGBTI community.
“I have never been to Ukraine and don’t have any intention of traveling there in the near future”, he told German news agency DPA.
Russian Federation had also promised to ward off any USA attempt to win the Security Council’s endorsement of such a campaign.
Ukraine’s agricultural exports to China have increased to almost 1 billion US dollars in January-July 2015 from 407 million dollars in the same period a year ago, Ukrainian Agriculture Minister Olexiy Pavlenko said here Thursday.
Global watchdogs, the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE, said the sanctions would restrict media freedom.
“It is frustrating to note how low the Ukrainian government’s expertise on the basics of worldwide affairs and cultural diplomacy is”, Umland said in a Facebook post.
The 34 journalists and seven bloggers named in the ban come from Bulgaria, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Macedonia, Moldova, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
Even the Kremlin has taken the opportunity to attack the decision describing the sanctions as “totally unacceptable”.
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Poroshenko’s office said the president had personally intervened on the BBC correspondents’ behalf because “a free press was a fundamental value”.
