4 September: the Kyiv headquarters of Inter TV, a major Ukrainian broadcaster, suffers an arson attack. (с) RIA Novosti. All rights reserved.Watching a video of journalists running for their lives amid choking smoke in a building set ablaze in Kyiv is horrifying. It is even more chilling to realise that some of these people are colleagues and close friends you have known for years.
We would disagree on many political issues, but it is still shocking to see where the exercise of freedom of speech in post-revolutionary Ukraine can lead you. At the same time, the increasing violence against Ukraine’s journalists brings powerful voices at home and abroad together in the expanding uprising against Soviet mentality, which has plagued the country for the last 25 years.
Culture of impunity
This Sunday, usually a very busy day for the Inter team producing the country’s most popular weekly news show, ended with one person suffering spinal injuries and dozens escaping a building set ablaze by far-right paramilitaries.
