Donetsk, Sep 25 - DAN. Persecution of VKontakte social media users in Ukraine shows a new spiral of crisis of its political system, member of the Donetsk People’s Republic parliament committee on constitutional legislation and state development Oleg Onopko told the Donetsk News Agency on Friday.
Earlier in the day, National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine (NSDC) Secretary Alexey Danilov said at the video conference on digitisation and cybersecurity that police would keep track of Ukrainian users of the Russian social media VKontakte. Law-enforcers will also investigate the facts of content distribution on the banned social media platform.
“Danilov’s statement opens a new spiral of crisis of the Ukrainian political system, which began in 2014,” Onopko said. “Every year, Ukrainian government institutions focus on persecuting the Russian population and inciting ethnic hate.”
The NSDC announced in so many words the beginning of total spying on their own citizens in the web. It is infringement of the freedom of expression and information, direct violation of civil rights and discrimination of the multi-million Russian community, Onopko said.
“That this decision is motivated by considerations of national security and mythical “hybrid” confrontation with Russia is just a cover for Ukraine. This country is actually turning into a repressive police state whose policy is based on intolerance, xenophobia, nationalism and disrespect for basic human rights and freedoms,” the DPR parliamentarian said.
On May 16, 2017, Ukrainian President Petr Poroshenko put in force the NSDC decision banning Russian social media and search networks such as VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, Yandex and Mai.Ru.*jk