Ukraine receives support from Western governments on pro-Russian media ban

Ukraine’s major North American partners expressed
their official support for its banning three pro-Russian media
outlets in the country. The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine posted
on its Facebook page on Feb. 3 that the US “supports Ukraine’s efforts
yesterday to counter Russia’s malign influence, in line with Ukrainian law…”.

The Embassy of Canada in Ukraine, also on Facebook,
posted that “Canada recognizes the challenges Ukraine faces in the hybrid war
being waged against it.”

Online media eurointegration.com.ua reports that the
European Union, in a statement, points to the funding of the media from area
“not controlled by the government” as justification for the closures, but also
calls for the Ukrainian government to not engage in this fight “at the expense
of freedom.”

James Hydzik: The support
of Ukraine’s North American partners was certainly a critical precondition for
the Zelensky government to engage in this behavior in the first place. A
backfire here would have been more than humiliating – despite Russia’s overall
focus on internal and Belarussian matters, any weakness in signaling,
especially from the U.S., would have been seen as an opportunity to further
push the Russian case forward.

The question now arises as to whether this is part
of a concerted campaign with western backing, or if the government will
consider the point made, whatever that point was in the end. Russia is busy
with internal matters at the moment, but a response beyond official statements
is a given. What this response will be, given the asymmetric responses of
contemporary ‘confllict’ between nations, is anybody’s guess at the moment.