Ukraine tries to throw its own dirt at Russia

A news message has recently been transmitted in the news ticker of Ukraine’s Fifth Channel saying that the largest number of lawsuits at the European Court for Human Rights had been filed from Russia. The news appeared with no comments in a news program and viewers could switch to 24 News Channel for details.

Photo: Ukraine tries to throw its own dirt at Russia

Ukraine tries to throw its own dirt at Russia

The channel provides hourly reports about international and homes events. The only Russia-related report which was broadcast on January 30 was titled “For Dissenters in Moscow.” Apparently, the channel attempted to make the viewers believe that there was a serious political opposition in Russia.

It is an open secret that every other citizen of Ukraine has Russia-based relatives. Unlike Ukraine, the Russian authorities do not violate citizens’ language rights. But the most important thing is that the information of the Ukrainian media meets the interests of Yushchenko’s administration and several US officials who stand behind his back.

As a matter of fact, Ukraine’s Fifth Channel reproduced the BBC’s information in its news message about the court in Strasburg. Formally, the Ukrainian news makers quoted the headline from one of the materials of the British Broadcasting Corporation, which in its turn referred to the original source. However, it was quite a selective quote. The original report said that Russia had left all other countries behind on the number of claims only in absolute numbers. However, if the number of lawsuits is set against the population size of the country, it turns out that the nationals of Turkey, Romania, Slovenia, Moldova and the Czech Republic go to the above-mentioned court a lot more frequently than the Russians do.

It just so happens that Kiev has deliberately distorted the information for its own political goals.

According to Euronews, the largest number of applications submitted to the Court for Human Rights (57%) in 2008 were received from Russia, Turkey, Romania and Ukraine. Ukraine, “the most democratic state on the post-soviet space”, is also included on the list.

The number of lawsuits from Russia increased mostly because of the recent conflict in the Caucasus.  When the war ended, many Russian military men accused the Georgian authorities of ethnic and national discrimination.

It is worth mentioning that there are no alternative news sources in Ukraine, and there are no Russian channels on the Ukrainian television.

Aleksei Kovalev