Talking Back to the Media

Last week, NTU, the Ukranian state television, broadcast a ceremony in Moscow in which Russian and Crimean leaders signed a treaty marking Crimea's annexation by Russia—presumably a newsworthy event in Kiev. Later that day, five members of Ukraine's Svoboda political party, led by Member of Parliament Igor Miroshenichenko (the man with the pony tail), broke into the office of NTU president Aleksandr Panteleymonov and demanded his resignation. They recorded the event on video.

The following partial translation is rated PG-17, so if you're not feeling mature, you may wish to skip the italicized paragraphs.

Miroshenichenko: “Write your resignation! Sit down! I told you, sit down!”

            They drag him across the room, punch him in the face, and sit him down.

Miroshenichenko: “Here is a paper, pen, write the resignation now quickly, you animal. . . You Russian piece of shit. Write your resignation now. You bloody Muscovite, do it!”

Panteleymonov: “I am not a Muscovite, I am a Ukrainian.”

They hit him again.

Miroshenichenko: “You are Ukranian? You are a piece of shit, not a Ukrainian. You fucking dirtbag. You are a traitor!”

Miroshenichenko is deputy head of the Ukranian government's committee on freedom of speech. Apparently, he wanted to make it clear that there was none.

Svoboda logo

When Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that the Ukranian coup, supported by the US, includes “neofascist extremists,” he was talking about Svoboda. Svoboda, which means “freedom,” is Ukraine's fourth largest political party. They received 10% of the vote in the 2010 election and held 37 seats in Parliament. They, along with two other less far right-wing parties, make up the ruling coalition following the coup. They hold five key positions in the new government, including the Deputy Prime Minister, Oleh Tyahnybok, the Minister of Defense and the Prosecutor General. Svoboda is a party of Ukranian nationalists. They are described as anti-Russian, anti-Semitic, anti-gay, and neo-Nazis due to their historic ties to Ukranians who supported Hitler during World War II. Mr. Tyahnybok, the party's leader, recently claimed that "organized Jewry" dominated the Ukranian media and government.

Svoboda's attack on NTU was condemned by Amnesty International. However, it has received little attention from the corporate media in this country. One exception is an article in the Washington Post under the headline, “Ukraine nationalist antics seen as gift to Russia,” in which the incident was treated as a public relations problem for the new government. In general, there are few references to Svoboda in the US press. They were mentioned briefly as leaders of some of the more violent street demonstrations prior to the coup. After the new government took charge, the only mainstream source to raise serious alarm about them was Post columnist Eugene Robinson. Progressive commentator Robert Parry has referred to the corporate media's actions as “whiting out the brownshirts.”

Next time you get angry at Comcast or Verizon, you may want to recall the example of our Ukranian allies.