This has included banning Russian books, media, and websites, as well as materials published in other countries that are deemed to contradict the state’s self-declared ‘European’ course.
The Ukrainian state has been waging a war on freedom of speech ever since the 2014 Maidan.
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Also on rt.com Russia brands liberal TV news channel Dozhd a ‘foreign agent’ over links to overseas funding from West & cash from Big Pharma firm Kiev has gone far beyond harassing opposition media and has taken to outright banning it as its first course of action. In that sense, however restrictive the Russia government’s actions may be, they pale into insignificance when compared to what has taken place recently in Ukraine. This is irritating, and off-putting, but it doesn’t prevent anyone from operating. The law requires individuals or organizations so designated to report regularly on their activities and to indicate their foreign agent status on any material that they distribute. Being labelled as a foreign agent does, it seems, have negative consequences. In the past, institutions designated foreign agents have said they have found it harder to attract advertisers, and some people do not want to work or otherwise be associated with them, fearing that it may damage their reputation or employability. The results of the move remain to be seen. In the current climate, that is enough for the state to take action. Dozhd is said to have received cash from the likes of British company StoneX Financial and the French pharmaceutical firm Sanofi. It seems, though, that the days of tolerating the foreign funding of anything political are over.
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Although the TV station has annoyed state officials in the past, it was generally felt that the Russian state found it useful to keep Dozhd alive as a means of indicating that Russia still tolerates anti-government opinions, and thereby of rejecting claims that the country lacks a free press. The targeting of iStories is not altogether unsurprising, given that the website’s exposes into organizations like oil company Rosneft may well have antagonized those in authority. Now the liberal online TV station Dozhd and the investigative website iStories have been added to the list. Among those designated foreign agents in the past few months is the Latvia-based media outlet Meduza. The result has been the official labelling of activists and opposition-leaning media outlets as ‘extremist’, ‘undesirable’, or ‘foreign agents’, legal categories which bring with them certain restrictions and obligations. It appears that a decision has been made to root this alleged fifth column out. In Russia, this is an effect of the past few years of East-West tension, which has convinced the authorities that the Russian non-systemic opposition is acting as a fifth column, seeking to destroy the state from within, backed by financial assistance from the West.
Read more ‘Register and keep working’: Russia’s ‘foreign agents’ law protects from outside meddling, doesn’t infringe on anyone, Putin says Unfortunately, this is less the case in parts of the former Eastern bloc – notably Russia and Ukraine, but also in places like Poland and Hungary, where governments are resorting to ever-tougher measures that critics say restrict press freedom. Beyond laws on libel and hate speech there is little to limit it, at least in theory.
Still, the Western press, broadly speaking, does at least enjoy a fair degree of legal freedom, even if its corporate funding – and control – is shadier. Whether such a press truly exists in the Western world is a matter of dispute. Without such a media, the accepted wisdom goes, capable of bringing errors to light and wrongdoers to account, to provide a forum to discuss solutions to national problems, a state will likely start to stagnate. In normal times, though, it’s regarded as essential for any society that wishes to prosper. In moments of extreme crisis, it might be understandable if a government decides to dispense with the ‘luxury’ of a vibrant free press.