Mediaboss Marketing

AFP on May 18, 2017, 11:45 pm

Ukraine delays vote on religious bill outraging Russia

Kiev (AFP) - Ukraine's parliament on Thursday postponed a vote on a religious bill that has outraged Russia because it suggests imposing severe restrictions on the Moscow branch of the Orthodox Church.

Russia is particularly concerned about the possible seizure of its churches in Ukraine.

Several thousand worshippers of the Moscow church staged a peaceful protest outside the parliament building in central Kiev ahead of the proposed vote.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also warned on Thursday that "any actions that violate the interests of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine are unacceptable."

The draft legislation assigns a special status to religious organisations whose leadership is based in an "aggressor state".

Kiev and its Western allies accuse Russia of plotting and backing a three-year war in the east of Ukraine that has claimed more than 10,000 lives.

Russia regularly brushes aside the charge despite eyewitness reports from both journalists and foreign monitors of its weapons and troops crossing the border into the Ukrainian war zone.

A member of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's ruling party said lawmakers had failed to gather enough support to vote on the bill Thursday.

"Our faction decided that this legislation was not ready for consideration," Oleksiy Goncharenko told the Interfax-Ukraine news agency.

It was not immediately clear when the draft legislation might be presented to parliament.

The legislation would force the Moscow-based branch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to renew its registration with authorities within a three-month period and be placed under supervision.

It calls for Russian-based churches that "systematically violate Ukrainian law" to be stripped of their registration and banned.

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill said this week that the proposed bill "threatens the constitutional rights of millions of Ukrainian believers".

He added that it could also "cause a wave of violence and new seizures of churches, and escalate intercommunal conflict in Ukraine".

Kirill accused Ukraine of illegally seizing more than 40 Moscow patriarchate churches between 2014 and 2016 and warned that the proposed law would make their takeover permanent.

Ukraine is a predominantly Orthodox Christian country where most of the faithful are members of the Kiev-based branch of the church.

Followers of the Moscow patriarchate primarily live in the east while some people in the western and central regions belong to the Greek and Roman Catholic Churches.

Original post:
Ukraine delays vote on religious bill outraging Russia - Yahoo7 News

Jerusalem Post Israel News

Ukraine urged to act against general who threatened to 'destroy Jews' Jerusalem Post Israel News Vovk, who still holds a senior reserve rank with the Security Service of Ukraine, posted on Facebook: I am completely against Jews, and You are not Ukrainians and I will destroy you along with Rabinovich an apparent reference to Vadim Rabinovich, ...

Excerpt from:
Ukraine urged to act against general who threatened to 'destroy Jews' - Jerusalem Post Israel News

The headquarters of the Yandex search engine in Moscow. Photograph: Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP/Getty Images

The Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, has banned the countrys two most popular social networks, its most popular email service and one of its most widely used search engines as part of sanctions against Russian companies.

A decree by Poroshenko posted late on Monday expanded sanctions adopted over Russias annexation of Crimea and backing of separatists in eastern Ukraine to include 468 companies and 1,228 people. Among them were the Russian social networks VK and Odnoklassniki, the email service Mail.ru and the search engine company Yandex, all four of which are in the top 10 most popular sites in Ukraine, according to the web traffic data company Alexa. The decree requires internet providers to block access to the sites for three years.

Poroshenkos decree also blocked the site of the Russian cybersecurity giant Kaspersky Labs and will ban several major Russian television channels and banks, as well as the popular business software developer 1C.

In a post on his official page on VK, Poroshenko said he had tried to use Russian social networks to fight Russias hybrid war and propaganda. But Russian cyber-attacks, including its alleged interference in the French election this month, show the time has come to act differently and more decisively, he said, declaring he would shut down his pages on the networks.

Asked about the possibility of counter-sanctions, Vladimir Putins spokesman told journalists that he wasnt prepared to say but that Russia had not forgotten about the principle of reciprocity.

The sites were still working on Tuesday, but the national security and defence council said it had ordered the cabinet of ministers, security service and national bank to develop a mechanism to stop access to them. The major internet provider Ukrtelecom told the news site Novoye Vremya that it had begun the process of blocking the sites, which could take several days.

Mykhailo Chaplyga, the representative of the Ukraine parliaments commissioner for human rights, told the news agency UNIAN that blocking access to sites without a court decision is not allowed under Ukrainian law. Web industry representatives said it would take time and investment to put the ban into place, and users would be able to get around it easily. Already, VPN clients are popular in Russia and Ukraine as a means of access to sites blacklisted by the authorities.

VK, also known as VKontakte, told the Russian site TJournal that the internet by its nature doesnt have borders and promised to defend the interests of its users. Odnoklassniki promised it would find a way for Ukrainians to keep using the network.

Several Ukrainian politicians spoke in favour of the ban amid the simmering conflict with Russian-backed separatists, which has killed at least 10,000 people since 2014. One MP, Volodymyr Ariev, argued that the social media networks were a security risk since Russian intelligence has access to their data and could gather information about Ukrainian users, including state employees and soldiers.

But many internet users began ridiculing the ban almost immediately. Of more than 11,000 respondents to an online poll on the UNIAN site on Tuesday afternoon, 66% said they were categorically against the ban of VK, Yandex and other Russian sites. Another 11% said it would be easier to ban the whole internet, like in North Korea.

Some laughed that Poroshenko was withdrawing Ukraines armchair warriors from foreign social media, while others joked that Kiev had decided to ignore its transport problems by blocking Yandex and its traffic jam monitoring. By banning VK and Odnoklassniki, were basically admitting our inability to counter Russian propaganda in cyberspace, one blogger wrote in a post on the InformResist site. Many users in Russia and Belarus began listing how much they would charge to post photos to Ukrainians social media accounts.

Ukraine has previously blacklisted Russian cultural figures and films and declared the French actor Grard Depardieu persona non grata. In recent months, it has banned the American actor Steven Seagal for being a threat to national security and forbade Russias Eurovision entrant from taking part in last weekends song contest.

More here:
Ukraine blocks popular social networks as part of sanctions on Russia - The Guardian

Ukraine slapped economic restrictions on Russia's largest internet group Yandex and other popular online firms, saying it wanted to guard against cyber threats, and the Kremlin threatened retaliation.

FILE: Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko. Picture: AFP

KIEV - Ukraine accused Russia on Tuesday of carrying out an organized cyber attack on President Petro Poroshenko's website in response to Kiev's decision to impose sanctions against a number of major Russian internet businesses.

Earlier on Tuesday, Ukraine slapped economic restrictions on Russia's largest internet group Yandex and other popular online firms, saying it wanted to guard against cyber threats, and the Kremlin threatened retaliation.

"We have been witnessing Russia's response to the presidential decree that mentioned closing access to Russian social media. The website of the president is affected by an organized attack," the deputy head of the presidential administration, Dmytro Shymkiv, said in a statement.

"The situation is under control thanks to our IT-specialists and there is no threat to the work of the website," he said.

There was no immediate comment from the Kremlin.

The Ukrainian sanctions froze any assets held by the Russian businesses inside Ukraine and banned hosts there from linking to them, though the websites were all still accessible in Kiev on Tuesday.

The ban was imposed partly to protect against companies "whose activities threaten the information and cyber security of Ukraine", the Kiev government's Security and Defence Council said in a statement.

They added to a list of more than 400 Russian firms blacklisted by Kiev since Moscow's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the ensuing pro-Russian separatist uprising in eastern Ukraine.

Mail.ru Group, which owns the Odnoklassniki social network and Vkontakte, Russia's version of Facebook, said that around 25 million Ukrainians could be affected by the "politically motivated" decision.

"We have never been involved in politics. We have not broken a single law of Ukraine," it said in a statement. It said the Ukrainian market contributed an "immaterial" amount of revenue and so Mail.ru would not revise its financial plans.

Yandex also said it did not expect the sanctions to have a material negative impact on its financial results. There was no immediate comment from other companies on the list.

"SHORT-SIGHTED"

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told journalists that Moscow had not forgotten the principle of reciprocity when it came to such disputes, calling the move "short-sighted".

Many of the affected sites are hugely popular in Ukraine.

Vkontakte was the second-most visited website in Ukraine as of March, according to data cited by the Ukrainian Internet Association. Yandex, Odnoklassniki and Mail.ru were also in the top five most popular sites that month.

In comments to Russian newspaper Kommersant, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova called the sanctions a "manifestation of politically motivated censorship".

Moscow has repeatedly denied accusations from Kiev that it has been waging a "cyber war" against Ukraine. It also denies accusations that it is fuelling the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine by supporting rebels with troops and weapons.

Ukraine has also accused Russian computer hackers of targeting its power grid, financial system and other infrastructure with viruses.

Excerpt from:
Ukraine accuses Russia of attack on president's website after web sanctions - Eyewitness News

Logos of Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki social networks are seen on the screen of a payment terminal in this picture illustration taken May 16, 2017.

(Kyiv) Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on May 15, 2017, signed a decree banning public access to Russian social media platforms, news outlets, and a major search engine widely used in Ukraine, Human Rights Watch said today. Poroshenko should immediately reverse the ban, which affects such internet platforms as VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, RBC, and Yandex, and take steps to protect freedom of expression and information in Ukraine.

This is yet another example of the ease with which President Poroshenko unjustifiably tries to control public discourse in Ukraine, said Tanya Cooper, Ukraine researcher at Human Rights Watch. Poroshenko may try to justify this latest step, but it is a cynical, politically expedient attack on the right to information affecting millions of Ukrainians, and their personal and professional lives.

Ukrainian internet service providers would be required to block access to internet companies that are on a government sanctions list. The decree includes an appendix with a widely expanded list of individuals and companies under sanction in Ukraine. Experts said it would be hard to enforce.

The decree imposes a ban on access to popular Russian social media networks, such as VK (formerly VKontakte) and Odnoklassniki, both owned by the Mail.Ru Group. Alisher Usmanov, an oligarch with close ties to the Kremlin, owns stakes in the Mail.Ru Group. As of April, 78 percent of all internet users in Ukraine, or around 20 million, had a VK account.

The decree also orders a block on public access to the Russian search engine Yandex and its various services, such as Yandex.Music, Yandex.Money, and dozens of others with .ua and .ru domains. As of March, 48 percent of internet users in Ukraine used Yandex daily.

Various software programs, such as the language processing software ABBYY and accounting software 1C, used by many Ukrainian companies, have also been banned. Other companies affected are the Russian media companies RBC, Ren-TV, TNT, NTV Plus, the 1 Channel, Zvezda, Moscow 24, a Russian state news agency Rossiya Segodnya, and internet security companies Kaspersky Lab and DrWeb. Russian banks, airlines, oil companies, defense industry companies, and Crimean businesses are also affected.

The presidential decree, which enacts a decision by the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, was published on May 16, 2017. It is one in a series of measures imposing economic sanctions on individuals and legal entities with ties to the Russian government. Such sanctions include freezing of assets in Ukraine and other economic and financial restrictions; for individuals, it also means a ban on people on the sanctions list entering the country.

Ukraine Researcher

The decree expands the list of those under sanction in Ukraine to 1,228 individuals and 468 legal entities in Russia, Russia-occupied Crimea, areas in eastern Ukraines Donetsk and Luhansk regions controlled by Russia-backed separatists, and other countries. The duration of sanctions varies from one to three years.

The decree assigns monitoring the sanctions to Ukraines Cabinet of Ministers, the National Security Service, and the National Bank of Ukraine.

Oksana Romaniuk, executive director of Kyiv-based Institute of Mass Information, told Human Rights Watch that the government had not provided a valid justification for why such a broad ban on online companies was necessary. She also insisted that the decree would be hard to enforce without changing the law. Currently, only a court can order internet service providers to take action against a website. The head of Ukraines internet association, Oleksandr Fedienko, said in a media interview that Ukrainian internet service providers dont have the technical ability to block Russian social media and news websites. He also said the ban would be ineffective due to a variety of ways to circumvent online censorship.

Ukraine is a party to the European Convention on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, both of which guarantee freedom of expression, including access to information. Only restrictions that are necessary and proportionate for a legitimate purpose may be imposed, and the ban set out in the decree does not pass that test.

In the past two years, Poroshenko has signed similar decrees introducing sanctions. In June 2016, a presidential decree banned 17 Russian journalists, editors, and media executives from traveling to Ukraine. In September 2015, the government banned several hundred Russian individuals and legal entities from entering Ukraine for a year. Among them were 41 journalists and bloggers from several countries, including Russia, Israel, the United Kingdom, and Germany. In May 2016, Poroshenko removed 29 people from the list of those sanctioned.

In a single move Poroshenko dealt a terrible blow to freedom of expression in Ukraine, Cooper said. Its an inexcusable violation of Ukrainians right to information of their choice, and the European Union and Ukraines other international partners should immediately call on Ukraine to reverse it.

Continue reading here:
Ukraine: Revoke Ban on Dozens of Russian Web Companies - Human Rights Watch