Radio Liberty claims they did not cancel program by ATR journalist Osman Pashaev

The Director of the Ukrainian office of Radio Liberty Maryana Drach in her comment about the statement claims that Radio Liberty did not cancel the broadcast of discussion on the topic of the national autonomy of Crimean Tatars, but simply postponed it because Muzhdabaev "failed to provide a timely rationale statement for the debatable topic." She also mentioned several cases of cooperation of Radio Liberty with the Crimean Tatar journalists, assistance to the channel ATR which was driven out of Crimea by Russian authorities, and that a program with a discussion on a similar topic was aired on December 31, 2015.

She also added that the comments of Volodymyr Prytula, the manager of the project "Krym.Realii", about which Muzhdabaev complained as something that constitutes limitation of the freedom of expression are "his private opinion", because "Prytula is now on vacation."  These two incidents – the Facebook comments of Prytula who tried to silence the journalist and the fact that the journalist’s program was cancelled on the next day "should not be banded together". Maryana Drach also asked the colleagues from ATR to "respect our in-house standards and rules of work".