Police initiated case over obstruction of journalist of 112 TV channel

Police initiated a case over "obstruction to journalist’s activities" of the correspondent of the 112 TV channel on Maidan Nezalezhnosti. This was reported by the Ukrainska Pravda website with reference to the press service of Kyiv police.

According to the journalist, he allegedly witnessed the Maidan security stopping some man, who was trying to pull down posters from the Maidan New Year tree, and then detaining and punching him.  The journalist tried to record this on video on his tablet, masked men told him to stop filming. He presented himself as a journalist, but they pushed him out and tried to take the tablet away. All this was said to be recorded on the tablet’s camera. 

This incident was registered by Shevchenkivsky rayon department of the Chief Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine in the city of Kyiv. The rayon department’s investigation department has initiated a criminal case under article 171 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine ‘Impeding lawful professional journalism activities’. 

Based on the journalist’s statement, a criminal provision was started over bodily injury to an unidentified man.

Earlier this month, the 112 TV channel, which is said to be connected to the Minister of Internal Affairs Vitaly Zakharchenko, reported that the Maidan security assaulted a female volunteer. 

 No other channel was able to contact this volunteer; no information about the fund she represented was found – according to the opposition MPs, it does not exist. 

The Maidan commandant Arsen Avakov in his then conversation with Ukrainska Pravda said that he believed all such claims and cases to be nothing but the shenanigans by the authorities to discredit Maidan.