The tsunami of disinformation against Russia coming out of the U.S. government climbed higher yesterday with an announcement by the U.S. State and Treasury Departments of sanctions against four Ukrainians, two of whom are members of the parliament for supposedly being agents of a Russian destabilization campaign inside Ukraine. “In advance of a potential further invasion of Ukraine, Russian intelligence services, mainly the Federal Security Service (FSB), a U.S. sanctioned entity, have been recruiting Ukrainian nationals in key positions to gain access to sensitive information,” the State Department statement declares. “The FSB leverages these officials in an attempt to create instability in Ukraine. In close coordination with the Government of Ukraine, the United States is working to identify, expose, and impose costs on these actors in order to foil these influence operations.”
The four individuals targeted “act at the direction of the FSB and support Russia’s destabilizing and dangerous influence operations, which undermine not just Ukraine but also the fundamental principles of democracy.” The two MPs, Taras Kozak and Oleh Voloshyn, are members of the Opposition Platform—For Life party of Viktor Medvedchuk. Kozak, in particular, ran three broadcast channels, including 112.International, that were targeted for shutdown by Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy a year ago with the approval of the National Security and Defense Council. Medvedchuk, already previously sanctioned by the U.S., has been under house arrest since sometime last year. According to the State Department, Kozak “used the media platforms he owns both to denigrate senior members of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s inner circle and amplify false narratives around the 2020 U.S. elections.” According to the Treasury Department release, another one of Kozak’s “crimes” under the direction of the FSB was to “falsely” accuse Zelenskyy’s inner circle of “mismanagement” of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In other words, the Biden Administration has joined Zelenskyy’s own campaign against the political opposition in Ukraine in the name of “defending democracy.”
It should be noted that the EU criticized Zelenskyy’s shutdown of the three broadcasters owned by Kozak, last year. On Feb. 3, 2021, a spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell issued a statement saying that while Ukraine had the right to protect itself from threats to its territorial integrity and from disinformation, “this should not come at the expense of freedom of media and must be done in full respect of fundamental rights and freedoms and following international standards.”
