Moscow expects adequate reaction to Ukrainian MP’s stunt — human rights envoy

World June 06, 2014, 20:28

Ukrainian MP Oleh Lyashko, an ex-presidential candidate and the leader of the far-right Radical Party, was reported to push a Russian TV group out of the Verkhovna Rada building

MOSCOW, June 06. /ITAR-TASS/. Moscow expects an adequate international reaction on the Ukrainian lawmaker Oleh Lyashko’s attack on reporters working for the Russian VGTRK state broadcasting corporation, Russian Foreign Ministry’s Human Rights Commissioner Konstantin Dolgov said on his Twitter account on Friday.

“We have watched a recent video footage of Viktorya Syumar (deputy secretary of Ukraine’s Council for National Security and Defense) in Washington’s Atlantic Council non-governmental organisation (NGO),” he wrote. “We are confident that if the American NGOs go on with judging the developments in Ukraine’s Southeast by the information like this, truth will dash past them.”

The Russian human rights envoy said that in Syumar’s opinion “oppression of Russian speakers’ rights in the south-eastern regions of Ukraine is a Russian propaganda myth.”

“Mortar shelling and bombings of kindergartens and schools, shooting of the wounded in hospitals are probably the same, too,” he said. “Syumar promised a really democratic way out of this - just to cut off the Russian television channels. She says the Ukrainian (channels) will be enough there.”

“These fabrications along with the attack of the Verkhovna Rada’s radical MP Oleh Lyashko on the VGTRK TV men and previous abduction of the LifeNews reporters by the Ukraine’s special services and cutting off the Russian channels are but elements in the same vicious chain.”

“We count on an adequate reaction to these facts by the international human rights organisations, including OSCE’s envoy on media freedom and leading profile NGOs,” he said.

Earlier on Friday, Ukrainian MP Oleh Lyashko, an ex-presidential candidate and the leader of the far-right Radical Party, was reported to push a Russian TV group out of the Verkhovna Rada building.

As the VGTRK TV holding’s press service said, first, Lyashko demanded an ID and Rada accreditation from the reporter Alexander Balitsky. Then the MP said: “You are deprived of the accreditation!” and screwed up the accreditation card. Next, he demanded that the cameraman and the Russian reporters leave the building, the press service said.

Lyashko accused the Russian reporters of being spies.

“Despite the objections of the Russian TV men, who said the lawmaker had no right to force the reporters out as they were accredited, Lyashko called a fool the person who issues accreditations to the Russian media crews,” the press service said.

Finally, Lyashko pushed out the Russian reporters from the Ukrainian parliament shouting “Shame!” and “Get out!”, the press service said.

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