Jailed Journalist Vyshinsky Calls Kiev's Charges Against Him Manipulation, Absurd Lie

RIA Novosti Ukraine portal head Kirill Vyshinsky, currently jailed in Ukraine, has labeled the Ukrainian Security Service's (SBU) charges against him a lie and form of manipulation, according to an article he released on Wednesday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 24th April, 2019) RIA Novosti Ukraine portal head Kirill Vyshinsky, currently jailed in Ukraine, has labeled the Ukrainian Security Service's (SBU) charges against him a lie and form of manipulation, according to an article he released on Wednesday.

Vyshinsky was arrested in Kiev in May 2018 on suspicion of treason and supporting the self-proclaimed people's republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in the country's east. Ukrainian authorities have refused Russian consular officials access to the journalist, citing his Ukrainian citizenship as their reason for doing so.

"To give a brief comment on the accusations of the SBU and the prosecutor's office, I'd say that they contain frank manipulations and absurd lies," Vyshinsky wrote in an article for RIA Novosti and Ukrainian news portal Strana.ua.

The journalist said that the SBU was accusing him of conducting "special information operations that would benefit Russia's interests," specifically publishing articles with an "anti-Ukrainian" bias rather than objective information.

Vyshinsky noted that during his time as head of the website between 2014 and 2018 Kiev never complained about the lack of objectivity in the publications.

"For more than four years of my work, RIA Novosti Ukraine did not receive a single lawsuit, a requirement to refute the information or an accusation of being biased. Therefore, I consider the SBU's accusations claiming that from the first day of my work I systematically and purposefully published biased and inaccurate information on the news portal unsubstantial.

There is simply no evidence of this," Vyshinsky said.

The journalist then referenced one of the articles the SBU found to be "anti-Ukrainian," which had the headline "Crimea changed time zone to Moscow time," published in March 2014.

"This is an ordinary story, narrating that after the referendum in March, Crimea switched to Moscow time. The text describes the circumstances of the transition to the new time zone and the background of the events that led to this," Vyshinsky wrote, adding that, grammatically, the text did not contain any appeals but only facts.

Vyshinsky's arrest triggered waves of condemnation in Russia and abroad. Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stressed that the journalist's continued arrest is politically motivated. The Russian Foreign Ministry, in turn, has protested his charges, urging the Ukrainian authorities to stop their crackdown on media. Representative on Freedom of the Media of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Harlem Desir, has repeatedly called for the journalist's release.

On Wednesday, OSCE Secretary General Thomas Greminger said that he intended to discuss the Vyshinsky case at a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov later in the day.