A post manipulates claims about the shutdown of opposition parties and media outlets in Ukraine

 It cannot be said that opposition parties in Ukraine are banned solely because they are opposition parties. Rather, there are parties whose activities are banned due to suspicions that they are controlled or connected to a country that has carried out a military invasion of Ukraine. The suspension of their political activities will last as long as the military invasion lasts

We analyze a post on the social network Facebook that says:

In Ukraine, opposition parties were banned, opposition media outlets were shut down. You took all this for granted, in the name of fighting the Russians. We are already at a point where the president of Georgia refuses to leave office, and in Romania they annulled the first round of the election. You know where this is going.

The post claims that opposition parties were banned in Ukraine, but it forgets to mention that these opposition parties are linked to Russia and that the reason they were banned was that Russia carried out an aggressive military invasion of Ukraine, with numerous casualties, including civilians.

According to the Guardian, the political parties were not banned because they were opposition parties, but because they had ties to Russia, which in a situation of military invasion poses a threat to national security. The political parties were not banned in peacetime, but in wartime, when national security became Ukraine’s primary concern. The National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine met and decided to ban the political activities of these parties. Most of them were small, but one of them, called the Opposition Platform – For Life, held 44 seats in Ukraine’s 450-seat parliament.

The activities of those politicians aimed at division or collusion will not succeed, but will receive a harsh response. Therefore, the National Security and Defense Council decided, given the full-scale war unleashed by Russia, and the political ties that a number of political structures have with this state, to suspend any activity of a number of political parties for the period of martial law, Zelensky said in March 2022.

The Opposition Platform – For Life, Ukraine’s largest opposition party, is led by Viktor Medvedchuk, a pro-Moscow oligarch with close ties to Vladimir Putin. Ukrainian authorities in 2021 charged Medvedchuk, a longtime friend of Putin (Putin is believed to be the godfather of Medvedchuk’s daughter), with treason and placed him under house arrest, a move that angered the Kremlin. Ukraine later reported that Medvedchuk had escaped from house arrest the day after Russia launched its military invasion, only to be rearrested and eventually exchanged for as many as 215 Ukrainian soldiers captured by Russia during its aggression on Ukraine.

The list of banned parties also includes the Nashi party, led by Yevhen Murayev, as well as smaller parties that had no representatives in parliament. Before the war, British intelligence claimed that Russia aimed to install Murayev to lead a Kremlin-controlled government in Kyiv, a claim Murayev strongly denied.

Therefore, it cannot be said that opposition parties in Ukraine are banned simply for being in opposition. Rather these parties were banned due to suspicions that they are controlled or connected to a country that has carried out a military invasion of Ukraine. The suspension of their political activities will remain in effect for the duration of the military invasion.

As for the claim in the post that opposition media outlets in Ukraine were being shut down, it should be noted that in 2021, at the request of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, sanctions were imposed on three television channels: NewsOne, 112 Ukraine, and ZIK, which belonged to Taras Kozak, who is believed to be a front for Viktor Medvedchuk. The sanctions were implemented in accordance with the 2014 Law, which allows Ukrainian citizens to be sanctioned if they threaten the national interests of Ukraine. These channels broadcast Kremlin propaganda.

Mass media outlets in Ukraine are both state-owned and owned by corporations that depend on advertising, subscriptions, and sales. The Constitution of Ukraine guarantees freedom of speech. The Ukrainian media system is in a process of transition. As the BBC reports, with the beginning of the military invasion, media outlets in Ukraine adopted a patriotic approach.

The BBC states that a large number of media outlets exist in Ukraine, which suggests that it is not true that opposition media outlets are “shut down.”

As for the electoral processes in Georgia and Romania, which the post also comments on, Truthmeter.mk wrote a more extensive analysis on this topic, pointing to the Russian influence that cast a shadow over the elections in these countries. You can read the analysis here.

From all the above facts, we can conclude that the post is manipulative, omitting very important information, necessary to properly inform the public about the topics and events it covers, which, in turn, leads to the creation of completely wrong conclusions, which is why we assess it as a post that is missing context.

All comments and remarks regarding this and other Vistinomer articles, correction and clarification requests as well as suggestions for fact-checking politicians’ statements and political parties’ promises can be submitted by using this form