Ukraine authorities take legal action against alleged betrayers

Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers adopted a resolution on Feb. 4 to place on leave the general director of a state broadcasting concern for sabotaging renewed broadcasts of Ukrainian television and radio channels in the war-torn Donbas region. “He, and also his subordinate, have supported the broadcasting of signals of Russian television channels and those of the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics on the temporarily occupied territories,” Yuriy Stets, the minister of information policy, reported on his Facebook page on Feb. 4. A government commission was created to evaluate the actions of Oleksandr Pivniuk in ten day and the resolution asked police to open a criminal investigation based on “supporting the activity of terrorist organizations.”

The Security Service of the Ukraine (SBU) arrested on Feb. 4 a commander in the Joint Chiefs of Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, accusing him of misleading battalion fighters and provoking them to storm the Presidential Administration on Feb. 3. The commander gave the fighters false information about higher losses in the war, provoking them to protest, SBU Head Valentyn Nalyvaychenko told the Feb. 3 press conference. He also gave the pro-Russian separatists information about the coordinates of volunteer battalions in the battlefield, the SBU press center reported. The SBU also arrested an accomplice to the commander, whom Nalyvaychenko identified as a representative of the Donetsk People’s Republic terrorist organization. They were both arrested during a meeting to transfer secret information.

A Donetsk regional court ruled on Feb. 4 to hold under bail commander Yevhen Tkachuk for withdrawing 55 battalion fighters from the embattled town of Debaltseve in the Donetsk region, the 1+1 television network reported. Tkachuk was arrested on Feb. 2 and charged with failing to fulfill an order. “All the fighters that withdrew from artillery fire and bombardment from those surroundings are all as one ready to take up arms and return,” he said. “But not on such conditions, without any hardware, without anything,” said Oleh Potaychuk, another commander interviewed in the television news report.

Zenon Zawada: It’s encouraging to see the government tightening the screws of its military operation and pursuing those suspected of betraying the Ukrainian state in its war with the Russian Federation. Yet in all such cases, without examining the evidence, it’s hard to say whether the government is truly pursuing criminal suspects or if it’s engaged in politicking. For instance, the politically connected Stets gained his own newly created ministry recently, a controversial decision considering the government’s tight finances, and now has to justify his new authority to the public. In the case of the Feb. 3 protest, it could have been a genuine expression of grievance by battalion fighters. Ultimately, the true test of the government’s effectiveness is whether it will gradually gain or lose the public’s trust, based on whether its actions are genuinely aimed at the common good. So far, the government has a long way to go in that sphere.