KIEV, October 17. /TASS/. The Ukrainian authorities are delaying an investigation into the attack on the Inter TV channel, because its perpetrators are well known to them, one of the channel’s owners, Sergei Levochkin, has said.
"The current authorities are not taking any actions to effectively investigate the attack on Inter, because they know only too well who carried out the attack and that these people are close to the Ukrainian Interior Ministry’s senior officials," he said in an interview with Segodnya.ua published on Monday.
According to Levochkin, the government is covering up the criminals. The arson "was a pre-planned terrorist attack for political reasons," he noted. "We are waiting for the prosecutor-general’s report on the implementation of the presidential orders to investigate the arson and the result of the investigations by the Ukrainian Security Service," he added.
Another owner of the channel, Dmitry Firtash, said a few days ago that the Inter studio had been set ablaze because the TV channel criticized the authorities.
In early September, a few dozen people wearing camouflage and masks staged a picket near one of the Inter buildings in Kiev. They began burning tires in front of the entrance, broke into the building and set the studio on fire. The Ukrainian police detained eight suspects who were later released. A few days before these events, Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov publicly denounced Inter’s "anti-Ukrainian stance" calling on Ukraine’s Security Service to expel deputy director of the National Information Systems company, which is responsible for production of Inter’s news programs, Russian citizen Igor Shuvalov, from the country.