Journalists fear freedom of speech will be curtailed as Kiev follows Moscow in stepping up the propaganda war, Slon.ru reports quoted by The Guardian.

Ukraine has a new government ministry. This month, the parliament voted to create a ministry of information policy that will be led by Yuriy Stets, the head of the information security department of the national guard. According to the new minister, the information war against Russia cannot be won without it. But in resorting to such measures, does Ukraine not risk losing its battle for democracy?

Almost no one in Ukraine doubts that Russia is waging a propaganda war. The Russian actors Mikhail Porechenkov and Ivan Okhlobystin have become notorious [for supporting the separatists], and Ukrainians approve of the fact that their popular Russian TV serials were recently banned. But the idea that the government should oversee the information sphere was not universally welcomed. It had to be forced through parliament, with deputies called upon to vote on the composition of the cabinet as whole rather than individual ministers.

Journalist Mustafa Nayyem best described the circumstances surrounding the creation of the press ministry, saying: “We have not seen the details and we do not know what sort of monster we are creating”. Despite many abstentions, the law was passed.

The deputies had cause to be cautious. Under the terms of its creation, Stets’s ministry will receive wide powers to influence the media: officials will formulate and implement a “state information strategy” and take measures to protect citizens from “partial, ill-judged and unreliable information” and from manipulative technology. Its purview extends to registering media outlets and defining professional standards.

But Stets will wield carrots as well as sticks. His department will coordinate “state aid for the media” and attract investment in order to create a “national information product”.

What exactly hides behind this vague formulation is a matter of guesswork but Ukrainian activists are already tipping the ministry for a corrupt future. They are far more worried, however, by the prospect that freedom of speech in Ukraine might be curtailed.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has warned of this threat, as have the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, journalists from Sumy Oblast and their colleagues from Kirovohrad, who organized a demonstration. It is easy to understand their feelings. A similar ministry existed in Ukraine under former president Leonid Kuchma. Its time was marked by the death of the journalist Georgiy Gongadze.

Kiev insists, however, that the creation of the ministry is as essential as it is timely. “The main function of this ministry, as far as I am aware, is to prevent an attack on Ukraine from an assailant”, said the president, Petro Poroshenko. He is echoed by a bevy of functionaries and deputies.

“A year ago, I proposed that a ministry of propaganda be created”, said Sergey Kaplin, a deputy from Poroshenko’s bloc. “It would simply destroy separatism as a phenomenon as soon as it appeared in [Ukraine]”. Stets promises that his department will be dissolved as soon as the war ends.

There is something to be said for their line of reasoning. One way or another, the Russian media has played a notable role in plunging Donbas into crisis: recall the inflammatory articles by Darya Aslamova, for instance. It is no accident that immediately after seizing the regional administration in Donetsk, the separatists took control of the TV towers.

You used to be able to defend Russian media in Ukraine by appealing to the need for pluralism but now, after Russian state TV presenter Dmitry Kiselev broadcast stories about boys being crucified and slaves distributed among the national guard, that is no longer possible. What is more, the scale of the Russian propaganda campaign is exercising Nato and Kiev is obliged to support its western allies.

But in combating aggression from abroad, Ukraine risks curtailing press freedom at home. Encroachments have already occurred. The ministry of defense recently tried to limit journalists’ access to the “zone of anti-terrorist operations”, insisting that they be accompanied by soldiers. Fearing a scandal, the ministry later rescinded the order, or at least postponed it, but it left a bad taste in the mouth.

An incident involving journalist Dmitry Mendeleev also springs to mind: he wrote an article [accusing] government bodies of selling weapons on the commercial market at time of war. Poroshenko himself asked the general prosecutor to deal with the journalist’s “subversive activity”.

There are fears, therefore, that the ministry of information policy is being created not so much to combat an external enemy as to suppress internal opposition. If that is indeed the case, Ukraine will drift off in the same direction as Vladimir Putin’s Russia. While accusing the Kremlin of propaganda, Kiev is itself trying to create a hermetically sealed sphere of information. It is not hard to imagine how destructive the consequences might be. But the question is, does it have any real alternative?

It is no secret that Russia’s propaganda machine is much more effective than Ukraine’s. Even under former president Viktor Yanukovych, the authorities didn’t manage to control the media: the opposition press stirred up rebellious sentiment and it all ended with the fall of the regime.