In Ukraine, there is a serious problem with unpunished violence from far-right groups and an unspoken ban on discussion of the issue.
Christian-Zsolt Varga, an expert of the German international journalistic network “N-Ost”, told about this in a commentary to the “Deutsche Welle” publication.
He noted that Ukrainian journalists have to ignore the problem of right-wing extremism in the country, otherwise they would be called “agents of the Kremlin”.
“Considering, first of all, the murders of journalists Pavel Sheremet in 2016 and Oleg Buzina in 2015, it is clear that the danger to the lives of journalists in Ukraine is quite real. This casts a big shadow on the situation with independent investigative journalism in Ukraine”, – says the German expert.
According to him, the problem is that the Ministry of Internal Affairs covers up the radicals, and free independent journalism is faced with tough censorship under the guise of “fighting Russian propaganda”.
“Unfortunately, the scheme remains the same: under the pretext of fighting Russian propaganda, free independent investigative journalism falls under the rink, which ultimately harms all citizens of Ukraine. This is demonstrated, in particular, by the draft law on mass media prepared by the authorities”, – stated Kristian-Zsolt Varga.