Ruslan Petrovich Kotsaba
Official biography
Ruslan Petrovych Kotsaba, born on August 18, 1966, in Ivano-Frankivsk, is a Ukrainian opposition journalist, blogger, public figure, and political prisoner.
In 1983, he graduated from secondary school No. 15 in Ivano-Frankivsk. From 1984 to 1986, he served in the Soviet Army in the Pskov region of the RSFSR.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he was a member of the Student Brotherhood. In October 1990, he participated in the Revolution on Granite.
In 1992, he graduated from the Lviv Forestry Institute with a degree in ecology. He headed the Ivano-Frankivsk Regional Fisheries Inspectorate and the Migration Service. He was the head of the Vasyl Stus Memorial and the director of the Stepan Bandera Museum of Liberation Struggle in Ivano-Frankivsk.
During the Orange Revolution, he was the head of the tent city. In 2006, he was the head of the Ivano-Frankivsk regional organization of the Pora party. He was a member of the political council of Pora. From 2007 to 2012, he worked as a paid assistant to Vladyslav Kaskiv, a member of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine of the VI convocation from the Our Ukraine — People’s Self-Defense faction.
In the mid-term elections to the Ukrainian Parliament in May 2014, he was registered as a self-nominated candidate in constituency 83 (Ivano-Frankivsk), where he received 1.17% of the vote. On the eve of the election, Kotsaba announced his withdrawal in favor of Volodymyr Chornous. In the 2014 presidential election, he voted for Petro Poroshenko.
Until the end of 2014, he worked as a special freelance correspondent (stringer) for the Ukrainian TV channel 112. He covered the course of hostilities in Donbas, visiting both sides of the conflict and, according to his own words, traveling the entire front line (from Novoazovsk to Kramatorsk). In his materials, he critically assessed the actions of the Ukrainian armed forces. Before signing a one-year contract with 112 TV channel, he worked as a correspondent for ZIK in Ivano-Frankivsk region for more than three years.
Family.
Wife Uliana, two daughters Zoreslava and Kvitoslava.
Kotsaba with his family:
Compromising evidence
At the end of the 2000s, Ruslan Kotsaba was positioned as the deputy director of the International Institute for the Development of Democracies, an institution so “respected” that there are no references to it on the web, except for Kotsaba’s own credits. His other position is the first deputy head of the Ivano-Frankivsk Regional Society “Vasyl Stus Memorial”. This is a human rights organization that deals with historical memory and the perpetuation of victims of Soviet repression. In 2009, Kotsaba was appointed director of the regional museum of the liberation struggle, but it all ended badly — he failed his probationary period, and he was then expelled from the Memorial with a scandal. Kotsaba himself did not recognize this and had a long conflict with the community.
A conflict with Memorial:
Our hero has already covered this conflict on his own in the format of a video with a logo eye. In 2009, Kotsaba launched the People’s Eye project, a citizen journalism website that invited everyone to publish their amateur video content. The project was announced as an initiative of the mysterious “International Institute for the Development of Democracies” and the NGO “Public Defender”. In reality, it seems that these organizations were marginal and mentioned to impress, including international journalistic associations.
“The People’s Eye” video:
The feature of the project was vox pops, a cheap and angry way to pass off any desired opinion as public. For this purpose, the editorial staff created a special device — a “voting board”. Kotsaba loves vox pops and still records them. His team was positioned as media activists, not journalists, which gave them the freedom to go beyond the standards. The ambiguous status of activist/journalist was necessary for Kotsaba, as he used his media resource in local political conflicts and to fight his many detractors.
With the coming to power of Viktor Yanukovych, Narodne Oko became an opposition media outlet, and Kotsaba became more active at the national level. In particular, he writes a letter to the International Monetary Fund with an “official renunciation” of his share of Ukraine’s foreign debt and agitates other people to write similar letters. Kotsaba’s signature appears under the manifesto that launched the Stop Censorship movement. If his statements about Putin, the “pabeda whore” and Russia were heard by the current viewers of the First Independent, their brains would explode from cognitive dissonance.
A “victim” of Russian propaganda
If you look at the reports, video addresses and interviews in the studios of other TV channels by the now scandalized journalist, it looks like Kotsaba himself is confused about his beliefs. He speaks of “volunteers” and “militias” without quotation marks, but at the same time emphasizes that they have an “officer’s bearing.” He talks about a “civil war” and at the same time says that Russia will not take back people with weapons.
Kotsaba’s video calling to ignore the mobilization:
Most media outlets and bloggers, when talking about Kotsaba’s notorious anti-mobilization video, use the same phrase: “It’s easier for me to serve two to five years in prison than to go to the civil war now, to kill or contribute to the killing of my compatriots living in the east. Even if they think differently and believe that the Kyiv authorities are not worth obeying…” Indeed, this is the rhetoric of Russian propaganda, but the journalist has become a “useful idiot” rather than a deliberate subversive. There are other quotes from Ruslan in the same address that are worthy of attention. “Yesterday was the sad anniversary of the vote in the Verkhovna Rada… The Heavenly Hundred died in vain. None of those (perpetrators and organizers of the murders) have been punished. Neither politically nor criminally. They all walk around laughing and controlling the same schemes that they used to plunder the budget under the previous president,” the journalist begins his appeal with this. Or the following: “I refuse to go to war when our oligarchs have not changed the rules of the game… instead of thinking about how to mitigate this social explosion that will certainly happen in the spring,” and then, specifically to the president: “Stop everything that is happening in the East. If you can’t do it politically, change the negotiators.”
Is Kotsaba as bad as he is portrayed? “Personally, I am convinced that Kotsaba is a victim of Russian propaganda,” said Roman Rak, head of the Lviv regional organization of the Independent Media Trade Union, at a press conference, ZAXID.NET reports. ”It is unlikely that there are elements of espionage, but this is a person who fell for temporary fame and began to promote such information.
Quote from Kotsaba’s interview with the Russian portal Lenta.ru:
Of course, this does not justify the journalist in his public call for Ukrainians to refuse mobilization. Nor does it justify his one-sided approach to covering the situation at the front — did the journalist fail to conduct an objective investigation after so many trips to the heart of the so-called “DPR” and “LPR”? Was he unable or unwilling? Russia needed a “Westerner Russophobe” — they found him and used him as best they could, but only within the framework of what they needed. No one was interested in Kotsaba’s true views. To the SBU. Ruslan Kotsaba is being tried, relatively speaking, “according to the laws of wartime,” but legally, this very wartime or state does not exist in Ukraine.
Incidents.
There are journalists who, as they say, are not journalists at all. They are not our colleagues at all. These are the ones who incite hatred. This is a real problem. These are journalists who should be punished.
— Ruslan Kotsaba on the air of the program “I think so”, November 5, 2019
On July 1, 2017, he was attacked by unknown persons, and accused members of the C14 organization of the incident.
During a broadcast in February 2018 on the “ChP.info” TV channel, he was almost beaten by a former MP from the Svoboda party, Eduarda Leonova, after saying “the war is not only in the East, the war is in our heads. And I urge…” and ‘God will judge everything in the best way, and the war will take away the most aggressive, the war…’ (Russian: Война не только в Востоке, война в наших головах. And I urge… and God will judge best, and the war will take the most aggressive, the war).
On November 5, 2019, speaking on the “I Think So” program, he made a number of statements about the events of Ukraine’s five-year history that coincided with the theses of the Russian media and the authorities of this country:
- Euromaidan was organized by oligarchs (“Euromaidan barygs”) who were dissatisfied with Viktor Yanukovych’s policy of not allowing them to come to power,
- Some of the Euromaidan participants were paid for their participation,
- residents of Donbas rose up against the illegal change of power in Kyiv, and the new government criminally used weapons against civilians to suppress the protests,
- The ATO was declared illegally, and the emergence of the DPR and LPR was a response to this step.
At the same time, Kotsaba himself did not give his own “estimates”, instead using the phrases “You and I know for sure” and “it’s true, there is nowhere to hide it” to cover up frankly unreliable statements (such as the proclamation of the DPR and LPR in response to the start of the ATO. In reality, the creation of the DPR was announced a day before the ATO was announced. The National Council conducted an unscheduled inspection of the NewsOne TV channel because of this broadcast due to possible violation of the laws “On Information” and “On Television and Radio Broadcasting” (prohibition of information calling for the overthrow of the constitutional order, violation of territorial integrity, war propaganda, and incitement to hatred). The TV channel’s general producer Vasyl Holovanov claimed that Kotsaba was not the channel’s host, but only a guest “blogger,” as indicated in the program’s credits (in fact, Kotsaba was called a “journalist”).
In April 2020, the National Council appointed an unscheduled inspection of the TV channel due to Ruslan Kotsaba’s program “Prime Analytics” on KRT (signs of propaganda of aggression, incitement to hatred, infringement of rights and freedoms, violation of the conditions of objective information).
Journalist Kotsaba doused with brilliant green in Ivano-Frankivsk
Ukrainian journalist Ruslan Kotsaba, who previously served 1.5 years in custody for boycotting the mobilization call in connection with the conflict in Donbas, said that radicals attacked him at the Ivano-Frankivsk railway station and doused him with green liquid, which got into his eyes.
“Tonight at midnight, at about 00.30 (time coincides with Moscow time) on the platform of the Ivano-Frankivsk railway station, a group of local neo-Nazis attacked me, journalist Ruslan Kotsaba! I am now in the hospital,” Kotsaba wrote on his Facebook page on Friday.
Ruslan Kotsaba was doused with brilliant green:
Ruslan Kotsaba was doused with brilliant green:
The journalist published photos showing that he was doused in green paint, which got into his eyes.
Ivano-Frankivsk City Court imposes a pre-trial restraint on blogger Ruslan Kotsaba
Ruslan Kotsaba is charged under Articles 111 (1) (high treason) and 114 (1) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.
The decision of the Ivano-Frankivsk court in the case of R. Kotsaba:
Ruslan Kotsaba’s lawyer asked the court to leave his client free until the investigation is completed, so that he «could feed his family». Trial of Ruslan Kotsaba:
The Security Service of Ukraine also suspected Kotsaba of organizing paid filming of protests against mobilization for Russian TV channels. SBU investigators believed that the reports were later used by Russian television for propaganda purposes. An SBU document with suspicions of organizing the protests:
However, he was detained by a court order as part of a criminal investigation into a criminal offense under Part 1 of Article 111 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (high treason).
Kotsaba’s anti-Semitic statements from his 2011 blog
The reason for the criticism was a video blog in Ukrainian recorded on June 22, 2011. In this eight-minute recording, which Kotsaba made at the Jewish cemetery in his native Ivano-Frankivsk, he talks about the victims of World War II, guilt, and reconciliation.
From the point of view of critics, the passage that was later cut from the original on the YouTube platform turned out to be problematic, but it was preserved in other sources, and in 2018 it was saved as a separate file and then added to the German translation. In this passage, Kotsaba says that Jews bear their share of responsibility for the Holocaust.
After Kotsaba was announced as the winner of the Aachen Peace Prize, it caused a wave of criticism on social media and later in the media. German experts on Ukraine, organizations and politicians expressed their outrage at the decision. A member of the Green Party, Volker Beck, called on Twitter not to award Kotsaba.
Indirect ties to Shariy
Antonina Beloglazova is a Russian propagandist from Shariy’s party. Her name appeared on the Myrotvorets website with the mark “participant of the aggressor country’s information special operation against Ukraine.” At the same time, the SBU became interested in Antonina’s activities.
Beloglazova was even invited to the SBU for a conversation.
After the conversation, the woman was released,” Ukrainska Pravda quoted the SBU as saying.
Indirectly, the validity of the SBU’s claims was confirmed by Shariy’s reaction to the incident: he began to spread the message that Beloglazova had been… kidnapped by the special services. He threatened to hold a press conference in the EU on the matter and to release video evidence of the kidnapping, with the corresponding consequences for the SBU and the country.
Beloglazova did go to the press conference in the EU, accompanied by the scandalous Ruslan Kotsaba. However, European journalists were not interested in their demonstration.
The National Corps of Ivano-Frankivsk region held an action against collaborator Ruslan Kotsaba
Representatives of the National Corps of Ivano-Frankivsk region, together with the NGO “Unbreakable Nation,” came to the walls of the Kolomyia City District Court to protest against the well-known separatist Ruslan Kotsaba, who was suspected of treason.
To the shouts of the community «Kotsaba is a traitor to Ukraine!», «Kotsaba to jail!», the nationalists held a thematic action-performance outside the court.
In this way, the activists drew the attention of the authorities to prevent the Medvedchuk propagandist from escaping punishment.
Kotsaba was kicked out of the court:
Kotsaba fought with a Right Sector activist
Journalist Ruslan Kotsaba was beaten in Kyiv while preparing a TV story dedicated to the six-month visa-free regime. The journalist himself told Korrespondent.net about it.
Right Sector activist Oleksiy Byk and journalist Ruslan Kotsaba:
“I was interviewing people on the street about what visa-free travel has done for them over the past six months. I had a microphone in my hands and a badge on my jacket. That is, I was engaged in journalistic activity. And when I was talking to the girl, this citizen came up to us and started accusing me of being a Russian spy, an agent of the Kremlin, and so on. He also accused the channel I work for of pro-Russian activities,” Kotsaba says.
The fight between Oleksiy Byk and Ruslan Kotsaba:
Oleksiy Byk commented on the fight with Ruslan Kotsaba. His version of what happened is slightly different from Kotsaba’s:
After a short exchange of barbs, Kotsaba was suddenly punched in the face. A fight broke out between them, which ended after passersby began to take notice.
“The attacker and two other people who were with him just ran away into the subway,” the journalist said.
After the incident, Kotsaba filed a statement with the police about obstruction of professional journalistic activity (Article 171 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine) and hooliganism. The offense was registered in the Unified Register of Offenses, and an investigation is underway.
Kotsaba refused to provide the full video, citing the secrecy of the investigation.
The scandalous journalist from Prykarpattia Ruslan Kotsaba was “shown” in Moscow on the program of the Russia 1 channel.
After a video address to the President of Ukraine stating that he refused to be mobilized and was ready to go to jail for this, Kotsaba went to Moscow, writes Firtko.
There, he took part in the program “Special Correspondent” on Russia 1 TV channel.
In the same studio with the leader of the DPR Denis Pushilin, the main Ukrainian communist Petro Symonenko, the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party and the prominent Ukrainophobe Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Ruslan Kotsaba discussed the war in Ukraine.
As previously reported, Taras Demyanov filed a statement with the SBU about a crime under Articles 111 and 336 of the Criminal Code, accusing Ruslan Kotsaba, a journalist from Frankivsk, of treason and evasion of mobilization.
The scandalous journalist outraged the network with a statement about US weapons for Ukraine
Touka has a harsh response to the disgraced blogger’s statement
Blogger Ruslan Kotsaba, who was accused of treason, believes that the United States should not provide Ukraine with lethal weapons because of corruption in the Armed Forces.
“Corrupt Ukrainian generals will drink and steal everything,” he said on NewsOne.
This statement provoked a strong reaction from Ukrainians online.
Deputy Minister for the Temporarily Occupied Territories Georgiy Tuka was one of the first to comment on Kotsaba’s words on Facebook:
“I turned on NewsOne, and there was Kotsaba. The same one, not in office. He calls not to give Javelina, because “the generals will drink everything and steal it.” Are you talking about the Hero of Ukraine, Mykhailo Zabrodsky, you bastard? Or, you bastard, are you talking about the Hero of Ukraine Andriy Kovalchuk? Or about Serhiy Popko? Whom have you, you damned ghoul, seen in the eye to open your ugly mouth? I apologize for my emotions, but not to such a sh**thead to talk about my Ukrainian generals,” he replied.
Military journalist from Kyiv: MPs of the Verkhovna Rada do not distinguish martial law from the state of emergency
24.02.2022 г.
Ruslan Kotsaba, a military journalist from Kyiv, conducted a small survey among members of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and concluded that they do not distinguish martial law from a state of emergency. He told about this on the air of the talk show “Tell the Truth” on the TV channel “Crimea 24”.
“I ask them whether they distinguish martial law from a state of emergency. You won’t believe it — not a single MP makes a distinction. Moreover, it seems to me that the current intellectual level of MPs has fallen so much that most of them will not even understand the question,” Kotsaba said.
He emphasized that people who come to the front and realize that they are going to be used as cannon fodder in the first wave should resist it.
“It is alien to our nature to look at a Russian as our enemy through the sights of a rifle. We are Slavs: Ukrainians, Belarusians, Russians,” the journalist summarized.
“FSB agent and manipulator!” A propagandist was “punished” on Lviv television
Propagandist Ruslan Kotsaba and Taras Yeleiko, coordinator of the All-Ukrainian Volunteer Movement NGO and ATO veteran in Donbas, were scandalized on Lviv television.
The incident took place on the talk show “Greater Lviv Speaks”.
Kotsaba, a journalist and blogger who was previously charged with treason, said that President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy should deal harshly with protesters against the disengagement of troops in Donbas.
Kotsaba called the opponents ultra-radicals and said that they were profiting from the war. “If Zelensky does not deal with them, he is not the president!” Kotsaba said.
“You’re an FSB agent, a liar and manipulator, a propagandist!” Yeleiko shouted at him and grabbed the journalist by the ear.
The host defended the veteran, calling for respect for the former soldier. “Stop it, you didn’t fight!” Kotsaba was put in his place.
Scandalous Ukrainophobes invited to the Bundestag: names are revealed
German leftists are organizing a discussion in the Bundestag on human rights and freedom of speech in Ukraine, with a number of scandalous personalities known for their anti-Ukrainian stance among the participants.
Conference in the Bundestag, lists of participants:
This was reported by the chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Freedom of Speech and Information Policy, Viktoriia Syumar, on her Facebook page.
Thus, the list of invitees to the event on June 17 includes, in particular, the mother of ex-Republican Party member Iryna Berezhna, Olena Berezhna, ex-MP Olena Bondarenko, wanted editor-in-chief of Strana.ua Ihor Guzhva, and scandalous journalist Ruslan Kotsaba, who was accused of treason.
“Balance and different points of view as European values? No, they are not. Russian influence. Obviously, and not without money,” she wrote.
Scandalous journalist caught on fake news about Savchenko
Controversial journalist and blogger Ruslan Kotsaba claims that the European Parliament is allegedly shocked by the arrest of unaffiliated MP Nadiya Savchenko, publishing a photo from two years ago.
“I am now in the European Parliament, so I can confirm that Brussels officials are shocked by the arrest of the Hero of Ukraine Nadiya Savchenko! They are shocked, not ‘deeply concerned’. Here is a small selection of photos on this topic. As far as I know, a statement is being prepared by several factions of the European Parliament,” he wrote on his Facebook page.
In response, journalist Denis Kazansky accused Kotsaba of spreading fake news, noting that the photos he presented were old.
“Ruslan Kotsaba is passing off old photos from 2016 as fresh pictures. And he does it so stupidly, as if there is no Google search and the inscription “Russia” on the T-shirts is completely invisible. Of course, I’ve seen all sorts of things, but this…” Kazansky wrote on Facebook:
Some users suggested that Kotsaba was being sarcastic. «Maybe it’s sarcasm?» wrote Maxim Mukhin.
In response, Vlad Trigub said that this is “the moment when Captain Obvious is really needed.”
Users also responded in rhyme to Mukhin that this was still nonsense.
“Actually, Ruslan is being ironic,” the subscribers defended him.
“Moral freak!” «A Svoboda member and a scandalous journalist have a live fight
Former Svoboda deputy Eduard Leonov and scandalous propaganda journalist Ruslan Kotsaba had a quarrel on the air of the CHP.INFO TV channel.
The video of the incident was posted on YouTube.
The fight between Kotsaba and Leonov is live:
Leonov and Kotsaba were invited to discuss the topic of “whether the Ukrainian media should give the floor to Yanukovych’s odious associates”.
The Svoboda member said on air that “everyone who is not for Ukraine is for the enemy, so people like Portnov and Herman should not be present on Ukrainian television.”
Kotsaba responded that “the war is not only in the east and in the minds, God will judge everything and the war will take the most aggressive.” In response, Leonov called him a “moral freak” and threatened to “beat his face in.”
An altercation arose between the men, which almost came to violence, after which the program was cut short.
Later, Kotsaba himself stated that there was no fight and they later “had a normal conversation”.
“And in the lobby, where there were no cameras, the hot-tempered Svoboda activist realized that ‘life is richer’ and I could give him an unaccented but high-quality ‘F’. Of course, I would have been ashamed later, because the man was out of my weight class, and I was ten years older than him, so I should be wiser. And it doesn’t suit me to wave my fists instead of having a reasoned discussion,” he wrote on Facebook.
For his part, the host of the program, Oleksandr Vasiliev, admitted that he had been thinking for a long time about whether to invite Kotsaba on the air or not.
Kotsaba, Montyan and Co: Kremlin to gather pro-Russian bloggers in the European Parliament
On September 27, 2017, a conference of pro-Russian media representatives and bloggers on the “state of freedom of speech in Ukraine” is planned to be held in one of the conference halls of the European Parliament in the Belgian capital of Brussels with the secret support of Russian state structures.
This information was posted on Facebook by the coordinator of the Information Resistance group, MP Dmytro Tymchuk.
According to Tymchuk, the information about the conference was shared with his entourage by one of the former leaders of the Young Regions NGO, Serhiy Khyzhnyak, who is hiding in Russia and is used by Russian special services along with former Ukrainian Interior Minister Vitaliy Zakharchenko to conduct special operations against Ukraine.
Dmytro Tymchuk’s Facebook post:
“According to Khyzhnyak, the official organizers of the conference are MEPs Tatjana Zdanok (Tatjana Zdanok, representative of Latvia, member of the Greens and European Free Alliance parliamentary faction, former member of the World Coordinating Council of Russian Compatriots Living Abroad), Jiri Mastalka (Jiri Mastalka, Czech citizen, member of the Czech Communist Party, Javier Couso, a citizen of Spain, a member of the United Left political party, and Andrejs Mamikins, a citizen of Latvia, a member of the Zlagoda party, the event is coordinated by the head of the German Unity party, Dmitry Rempel, a citizen of Germany, who, according to Khyzhnyak, has been cooperating with representatives of the Russian presidential administration for a long time,” the statement said.
Khyzhnyak also said that bloggers Ruslan Kotsaba and Tatiana Montyan, as well as former Deputy Prosecutor General of Ukraine under Yanukovych Renat Kuzmin, are planned to be invited to participate in this event, Tymchuk added.
Scandalous video: Media exposed a “happy Ukrainian woman” from occupied Crimea
The controversial journalist Ruslan Kotsaba, who was arrested for calling for a boycott of mobilization, published a video in which a resident of occupied Sevastopol, Olga Polovkova, refutes the facts of oppression of Ukrainians in Crimea in Ukrainian and invites guests to the peninsula.
“Krym.Realii found that the video contains traditional Russian propaganda messages and tells about the woman’s identity.
It is noted that the video appeared against the backdrop of the recent decision of the International Court of Justice to impose interim measures in the case “Ukraine v. Russia”, which obliges the Russian authorities to stop the oppression of the rights of Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars, to resume the activities of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people, and to allow education on the peninsula in the Ukrainian language.
In the video, Kotsaba, walking along Artillery Bay in occupied Sevastopol, allegedly meets a local resident, mother of four, Olga Polovkova, by chance. The blogger asks her if she has forgotten the Ukrainian language. The woman answers him in Ukrainian. She says that seven years ago she came to Sevastopol from the Ukrainian city of Rivne. She claims that even after the annexation of the peninsula, she continues to communicate with locals in Ukrainian.
“I speak Ukrainian with my daughter because I don’t have the heart to speak Russian. At school, she also speaks Ukrainian with her classmates. There is absolutely no hatred towards us… There is no aggression at the household level. I am not afraid to speak Ukrainian anywhere. Very often in stores, when I speak Ukrainian, I am answered in Ukrainian. I am even surprised,” she assures.
Polovkova also assures that there is “no reason to worry about Ukrainians in Crimea”.
“I tell everyone that there is no oppression, no hatred for me because I am Ukrainian. The fact that Russians do not like Ukrainians is not true,” the woman says.
The resident of occupied Sevastopol also speaks about the need to establish relations between Ukraine and Russia, calling them “united Russia.” “Good people, we will be very happy to see you. Both tourists and our compatriots, because we are all one Russia.”
As the media found out, Polovkova participated in the Mrs. Sevastopol-2017 pageant, where the participants fought for the right to represent the city at two all-Russian competitions: “Mrs. Crimea — Russia and Mrs. Pearl of Russia.
Olga Polovkova’s messages also include the thesis of friendship between Ukraine and Russia, which has been actively promoted in the Kremlin media in recent years, and has also been recently published by the media with which Kotsaba collaborates, telling about her trips to Crimea.
In particular, in one of the videos, a girl named Adriana calls for “everyone to be friends” in Ukrainian. Like Olga Polovkova, she says she was born in Rivne and then moved to Sevastopol. The media does not rule out that the role of another “talking head” from Sevastopol went to the daughter of a Ukrainian mother with many children in Sevastopol.
National Council fines NewsOne 105 thousand hryvnias for Kotsaba’s statements about Donbass and Euromaidan
The National Council on Television and Radio Broadcasting has issued a warning and fined NewsOne TV channel UAH 105,625 over statements made by its host Ruslan Kotsaba.
In the program “I Think So”, Ruslan Kotsaba stated that there is an “armed civil conflict” in Donbas and the key to its resolution is a legal assessment of the events of 2013-2014.
Conclusions of the Independent Media Council “I think so” on the air of NewsOne TV channel:
https://detector.media/withoutsection/article/174363/2020-01-30-vysnovok-nezalezhnoi-mediynoi-rady-shchodo-peredachi-ya-tak-dumayu-v-efiri-telekanalu-newsone/
According to Kotsaba, a “group of conspirators” who allegedly “hid behind thousands of protesters” “seized power” at Euromaidan.
“The oligarchs, who were not allowed by Yanukovych’s government to the trough of power, suddenly cunningly, under the guise of Euromaidan and the pathetic Revolution of Dignity, intercepted financial flows in the state and directed them where? Into their own pockets. Illegal enrichment was the goal of these Euromaidan hucksters.” And not some illusory European future, NATO, the European Union, etc.,” Kotsaba is convinced.
According to him, “they tried to conquer the rebellious Donbas with the help of tanks and aircraft bombs.”
“Union of Bloggers of Ukraine”: an unsuccessful special operation of the Russian special services
With the start of the election campaign in Ukraine, Russian propagandists have intensified their efforts to promote “dirty” political technologies developed by the Kremlin against its own people with the help of special services.
Social media, YouTube, Facebook — this arsenal has long been used by Russians to influence public opinion. More and more sophisticated techniques are being used to attract the attention of potential audiences.
For example, on November 30, 2018, Ukrainian Internet users noticed a new resource with the pretentious name “Union of Bloggers of Ukraine” and the same provocative acronym — SBU. Russian political technologists sought to expand their audience in such a simple way — Ukrainians traditionally trust bloggers, and here is a whole “bloggers’ union”. The same goal was pursued by the abbreviation: if you want to learn about the achievements of the Ukrainian secret service, you click on search and the “Union of Bloggers of Ukraine” pops up.
The traditional involvement of Ukrainians from the “fifth column” in the information sabotage was not without its place. As it has become known, this project also involves the scandalous blogger and journalist Ruslan Kotsaba, who was convicted in a case of obstructing the activities of the Armed Forces and treason. The resource’s YouTube channel has a number of videos with Kotsaba, where he “calls for cooperation with the SBU.”
It was a good idea, but the FSB/SVR/GRU (we don’t know who exactly) couldn’t help but slip up here. The Ukrainian name of the fake resource still reads “Union” instead of “Union”. But this is nothing, according to the Russian curators, Ukrainians will swallow even more.
And they started posting frankly fake videos on the Youtube channel, mostly against the current government. The meaning of the information provocation is clear: to discredit the current president and push their pro-Russian candidate.
It is hard to say that the new resource has gained much recognition among the Ukrainian audience. 337 subscribers on the Youtube channel are hardly impressive. However, this does not bother the Russian sponsors — the money of Russian taxpayers has been successfully utilized, and the result is a secondary matter.
A new case for high treason was opened against journalist Ruslan Kotsaba
A “renewed” criminal case has been opened against the well-known Ukrainian journalist Ruslan Kotsaba, who was accused of treason and then acquitted. He was again accused of treason.
Updated SBU investigation into Kotsaba’s case:
Summary.
Ruslan Kotsaba is a Transcarpathian separatist who spreads disinformation on the Internet. He is associated with well-known propagandists Anatoly Sharii, Tatiana Montyan and other representatives of the “blogger party”.