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The Tribunal for Putin (T4P) global initiative was set up in response to the all-out war launched by Russia against Ukraine in February 2022.

Oleh Shynkarenko answers the President

10.08.2010    source: singing-foot.livejournal.com
“The problem is not that the regime listens too much to the abuse of bloggers, but that it absolutely fails to listen to the entirely constructive criticism of independent journalists”

On Saturday blogger Oleh Shynkarenko posted an entry on his blog in response to Friday’s letter from President Yanukovych. He stresses that what a person writes in his blog is not necessarily intended for the entire country. The SBU [Security Service] for some reason decided, he said, that each Ukrainian should hear about it and launched an insane advertising campaign Oleh could have done without. He says he is a writer, musician and journalist, has things without that he can boast of.

“Each citizen has the right to abuse or criticize the authorities as he wants, even threatening, and there’s nothing dangerous in that. How could my threats, if I express them in a blog on the Internet, influence the President’s safety?” 

He sees any regime as being a repressive mechanism since it has control of the police, army, secret police, and “the only thing that the people can do when the regime really gets to them is to abuse and threaten them.  He adds that President Yanukovych’s regime has already so angered many people that they’re ready for a second “Maidan” – i.e. to come out onto the squares as during the Orange Revolution.  He mentions the questionable purchases of residences outside the city and the fact of month and a half holidays in the Crimea.

“The problem is not that the regime listens too much to the abuse of bloggers, but that it absolutely fails to listen to the entirely constructive criticism of independent journalists”.  He refers to the President’s statement that the regime needs such young bloggers and asks for what. “Maybe they need some kind of excuse for their attempts to crush Ukrainian small business with taxes? Or they simply want such puppet bloggers who can be shown as a model of democracy and sent to exhibitions?”

He reiterates that they are forced to abuse the regime because it doesn’t heed well-founded, correct and constructive proposals, and warns that this will not last so very long – “those who gave you power will take it away”.

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