An Anti-Corruption Probe, Or An Attack On The Media?

At the Ukrainian military’s briefing on the morning of July 14, 2017, Colonel Andrei Lysenko reported that no Ukrainian soldiers were killed over the previous 24 hours, but two had been wounded.

The Ukraine Crisis Media Center reports:

Mariupol sector was the tensest yesterday. A third of militants’ ceasefire violations took place in the nighttime. Russian proxies conducted two mortar attacks at Shyrokyne and one at Vodiane between midnight and 02:00, firing almost 25 mortar rounds. “Militants’ provocations resumed at 09:00 and continued until the end of the day with recesses. Russian proxies repeatedly opened small arms fire in Pavlopil-Shyrokyne frontline. The enemy conducted medium intensity mortar attacks at Maryinka and Novomykhailivka,” reported Ukrainian Ministry of Defense spokesman on ATO Colonel Andriy Lysenko at a press briefing at Ukraine Crisis Media Center. 

 

As one can see from the following GIF, fighting has taken place all over the front over the last week, with no clear pattern developing — beyond, perhaps, that there is no pattern and the attacks by the Russian-backed forces appear to be aimed at keeping Ukraine off guard:

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Ukraine Raids Media Facilities, Receives Criticism

Ukraine is in the midst of an $800 million corruption probe concerning former Income and Tax Minister Oleksandr Klymenko. Ukrainian authorities conducted extensive raids in order to seize Klymenko’s assets. RFE/RL reports: 

Ukraine’s chief military prosecutor, Anatoliy Matios, said investigators carried out 183 raids in the capital Kyiv on property owned by former Income and Tax Minister Oleksandr Klymenko, who now is believed to live in Moscow.

Investigators carried out raids in the Gulliver shopping mall and the pro-Russian Vesti media holding, of which Klymenko is a beneficiary.

Klymenko on Facebook described the raids as “banal banditry” by the government, while saying they had a “political rationale.”

The military prosecutor accused Klymenko of registering a number of offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands and Cyprus between 2011 and 2013 and using offshore accounts to launder money stolen from the Ukrainian state budget.

However, the Committee To Protect Journalists (CPJ) has warned that offices of the Vesti media company were also raided, and the CPJ has raised alarm at the actions against the media organization.

Below are excerpts from CPJ’s statement:

Vesti’s editor-in-chief, Oksana Semchenko, wrote on her Facebook page that security forces briefly knocked the radio station’s live broadcast off the air. She wrote that the soldiers gathered 30 journalists in a conference room for questioning and searched their mobile phones, including their contacts and messaging applications. Pictures from the raid Semchenko posted on Facebook showed military vehicles outside the building and security forces wearing armor and facemasks searching journalists’ bags. The Ukrainian TV station Hromadske reported that 80 officers with machine guns participated in the raid.

“When a military prosecutor sends elite forces with machine guns to raid a radio station’s office and search its journalists’ mobile phones for contacts and text messages, there can be but one interpretation: This is an attempt at intimidation and a serious threat to press freedom,” CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon said from Paris. “We call on Ukrainian authorities to cease harassing Radio Vesti journalists and to cease violating the integrity of their communications with sources.”

[…]

Today’s raids came days after CPJ’s Simon and Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Nina Ognianova on July 12 launched in Kiev a special report on the July 20, 2016, murder of investigative journalist Pavel Sheremet, who worked at Radio Vesti at the time of his death. Ognianova and Simon met with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on July 11. At that meeting, Poroshenko reiterated his commitment to bringing those responsible for Sheremet’s murder to justice. He also said the Ukrainian investigators would soon hold a press conference to make the results of their investigation public, according to a statement on the presidency’s website. 

Ukrainian Chief Military Prosecutor Anatoliy Matios said that the raid on Vesti was simply part of the probe into Klymenko.

— James Miller