Kiev's Sanctions on Russian Media Contradict European Values - Journalists Union

Ukraine's sanctions against Russian media and journalists fully contradict procliamed European democratic principles, Secretary of the Russian Union of Journalists Timur Shafir told Sputnik on Tuesday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Ukraine's fresh sanctions against Russian media and journalists have nothing to do with democratic principles and demonstrate an attempt to deprive citizens of their right to information freedom, Secretary of the Russian Union of Journalists Timur Shafir told Sputnik on Tuesday.

"It is a continuation of attempts to monopolize, usurp the citizens' right for receiving alternative information about the events in our countries. These actions have nothing to do with the European democratic principles to which the incumbent Ukrainian authorities so often commit themselves," Shafir said.

Shafir noted that the Ukrainian sanctions have become "a sad and unconstructive tradition" which would not help to solve the existing problems in the country.

"The attempts to hush up media… may last long, but not forever. The absurdity and unjustified nature of these steps are obvious for everyone, including Ukrainian citizens, who realize that a witch-hunt against Russian journalists by no means tackles the existing internal economic problems," Shafir stressed.

Earlier in the day, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko enacted the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine (NSDC) to expand the list of sanctioned Russian individuals and legal entities and to extend the duration of these sanctions.

The appendices to the NSDC decision indicate that the expanded anti-Russia sanctions list imposed by Ukraine includes 1,228 individuals and 468 legal entities, including Russian IT-companies Yandex, Kaspersky Lab, social networks VK (VKontakte), Odnoklassniki, the Mail.ru internet service and media outlets such as the Rossiya Segodnya international news agency and TV channels Zvezda, TVC, NTV Plus, RenTV and RBC.