Ukraine Will Blacklist Websites That ‘Undermine Ukrainian Sovereignty’
Rally in support of Novorossiya in Moscow, June 11, 2014. Source: Artem Tkachenko, CC BY-SA 3.0.
Ukraine's Ministry of Information Policy is preparing a list of websites that “undermine Ukrainian sovereignty” as part of an effort to uphold the country's new information security doctrine, signed on February 25 by President Petro Poroshenko.
Information Policy Minister Yuriy Stets said at the March 2 press conference that “in the coming two weeks, I would like [Deputy Minister Dmitry Zolotukhin] to present to an expert council at the Ministry of Information Policy, composed of media experts and public officials, a list of sites that should be blocked.”
Emblem of the Ministry of Information Policy of Ukraine
The policy appears to target the dissemination of pro-separatist and pro-Russian information: according to a statement released by the Presidential Administration, the policy was introduced “first of all with a view to counter the destructive information impact of Russia in conditions of hybrid war unleashed by it.”
Stets said that websites like Russian Spring and Novorossiya, which are associated with pro-Russian movements that erupted in Ukraine in the spring of 2014 and an imagined separatist state in eastern and southern Ukraine, respectively, would be added to his ministry's black list.
The Ministry of Information Policy will not be solely responsible for blocking the websites, however. Stets said Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) and an expert council would analyze his ministry's suggestions, though no protocol currently exists. “We are finding a mechanism by which they will be blocked in the near future,” Stets said.
Stets suggested that his ministry would collect information about sites it believes should be blocked and then send it to a court for an official decision, emphasizing that the expert council reviewing sites to be blocked would not act as a state censor.
Ukraine's new information security doctrine empowers the Ministry of Information Policy to monitor mass media and the internet to detect information that is deemed illegal in Ukraine—including that which poses a threat to Ukraine's national security.
This post is part of RuNet Echo, a Global Voices project to interpret the Russian language internet. All Posts · Read more »
11 comments
In a time of war there are measures for war.
I wonder if VK is on that list.
John Robertson, why don’t you use your outdated Apple Mac whose hard drive is filed with .jpg files, log into your account as moderator of Expatua under the name “Fraucha” and immediately disband the pack of stooges that cyber-bully others. There are a lot of lists John. Lists you don’t want to be on. Don’t find out the hard way that your penchant for video games and flirting with women by posing as a photographer make you an expert on anything. It’s plain as the nose on your face, and on that nose there is a small scar on your left side slightly off center. When Charles Carver returns from Colorado, hopefully you will be smart enough to let him know his ass has been booted from Expatua. Don’t embarrass yourself in Bila Tserkva or the San Francisco Bay Area. P.S. Rhonda misses you; Why don’t you call her?
It’s called state censorship. Look it up!
I wonder if Ukraine Rada is on that list, it does most to undermine Ukraine sovereignty…
Ukraine is at war with its own ppl. One side is supported by the West, the ather with Russia. We cant expect objectivity in information from ANY side.
It’s called state censorship. Look it up!
I wonder if Ukraine Rada is on that list, it does most to undermine Ukraine sovereignty…
It is imassible to break ties between 2 neibours. Only this year, Ukraine imported 200 million tons of coal from Russia. I wonder wat the blokaders are doing, bloking trains and roads that go from their own country, while leting Russian trains pass freely.
The internet shouldn’t be blocked by any government Not Australia not the US not China Russia and not here either.
These comments seem to be propaganda battleground.
India should also ban Muslims from entering into country https://www.gkexams.com