The seventh episode will examine the shutting down of oppositional media outlets in Ukraine. It will also explore the country’s “black list” — a list of names of dissenters to be eliminated.
Being a journalist in Ukraine is no joke. Over and over, we have been told that Voldymor Zelenskyy’s Ukraine is a bastion of democracy… what you likely don’t know.. is that in that so called democracy… Journalists who question the government could be faced with charges of treason.
I’m investigative journalist Ben Swann, and let me give you an example.
One of the most unknown facts about the war between Russia and Ukraine are the large numbers of civilians who have been forced into Ukraine’s military.
Ukraine’s draft, forced all males from 18 to 60 to register.
Imagine that happening in the United States. Even as Ukraine’s government reportedly refused peace talks, it required by force, all men to stay in the country and fight. And that requirement turned journalists who previously had been strongly in support of Ukraine, to question their own government and military.
One of journalists is Ruslan Kotsaba, whose experience took him from a hardline Ukrainian nationalist to an impassioned pacifist. And that change of heart, landed him in prison.
When we explain how and why… we will continue to leave Zelenskyy Unmasked.
Journalist Ruslan Kotsaba has been widely considered noble by his followers, but his calls for peace in Ukriane eventually landed him in prison. After criticizing Ukraine’s military draft, Kotsaba was arrested on charges of treason and obstruction of military operations.
He spent 524 days in solitary confinement before he was finally released, only to face renewed charges. He has since sought political asylum in the United States and resides in New York.
Ruslan: Right now, I am applying for political asylum…However, as we all know, America is the main beneficiary of this war in Ukraine. There could be some political influences on the trial that could either accept or decline my political asylum application.
Kotsaba is far from the only journalist facing persecution in Ukraine.
Journalists who opposed the official narrative have been imprisoned. Others killed.
Bentley: I was born in Dallas, Texas. I lived there when Kennedy was assassinated wealthy family, very conservative like that. But I grew up understanding why black people wanted equal rights, why young men didn’t want to get sent to Vietnam.
Russell Bentley was an American veteran who lived in the Donbass. He moved there as a volunteer, fighting for the local resistance. He retired from fighting to help spread the word of what’s really going on there.
Bentley: I’ve made a lot of good videos, and that one wasn’t even particularly interesting or effective. But it went super viral. It got like, multimillion views within the day, you know.
The video he mentions here, went so viral that it got him big attention from unexpected places.
“(KIMMEL) But not every American is on the right side. One feisty little fella from Texas went so far as to join the Russian army. (RUSSELL): I’m on the front line with the de-nazifiers and liberators of Ukraine. These guys are tough, these guys are ready, and there’s plenty of ‘em. So far, Russia has used about 10% of its military power. We’re getting ready to bring the hammer down! These guys are gonna save and liberate all the good people in Ukraine and the bad people—boom!—kick their ass! (KIMMEL) What a spunky little piglet (laughs).”
Bentley: He played the whole 42 second video on his show, and talked a bunch of shit about me, you know, a bunch of really stupid shit too, by the way.
A year after Bentley granted us this interview, he was killed while filming the aftermath of a Ukrainian attack in the Donbass. Sadly, he isn’t alone. 27 journalists have been killed since the 2014 coup, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Eighteen of these were killed after Zelensky took office in 2019. In 2021, a full 12 months before Russia’s invasion, Zelensky shut down three oppositional TV channels, claiming they were pro-Kremlin.
If you can believe it, this grim picture got a whole lot worse after February of 2022. At that point, all news channels were shut down and only a relative few were allowed to continue airing, but on a single channel, which is regulated by the government. Since then, a slew of bloggers, social media personalities, journalists and citizen journalists have been detained by the country’s secret police, the SBU.
Lira: I was arrested on April 15, 2022, by the State Security Services.
Gonzalo Lira was eventually released after his first detainment and granted us an interview. But he was reluctant to answer many of the questions we posed, out of fear.
LIRA: I don’t want to create the conditions or the excuse to lose my liberty at this time. And so I’m going to have to decline. …But I’m happy to do so once the conflict is over.
Gonzalo Lira did not live long enough to give us a second interview, or to see the end of the war. A political prisoner in Ukraine, he died in January of 2024, reportedly of pneumonia…Days before he died, Gonzalo smuggled the following note out from the hospital in which he was held:
NOTE: Tell my sister: I have had a double pneumonia (both lungs) as well as pneumothorax and a very severe case of edema (swelling of the body). All this started in mid-October, but was ignored by the prison. They only admitted I had pneumonia at a Dec. 22 hearing.
IVERSEN: So the media continues to paint this conflict about democracy, even though Ukraine is increasingly banning religions outlets, journalists.
So if you suddenly say: Yeah, but there’s all of this, all of these things going on that are very undemocratic, how do you sell that to the American people?
Now media censorship in the United States is starting to parallel Ukraine’s draconian policies, under the guise of reigning in so-called “Russian disinformation.” The Twitter files revealed that, at the behest of Ukrainian government, the FBI tried to censor journalists who complicated government narratives surrounding the war in Ukraine. According to a Congressional Report, this didn’t just happen on Twitter. Also at the behest of the Ukraine, the FBI tried to censor content on Google, Facebook, and Instagram.
Kotsaba: Both warring sides don’t like pacifists. In every conflict pacifists are viewed as an agent of the other side. For example, in Ukraine I am called “Putin’s agent.” And I think that in Russia, Russian pacifists are called Kolomoiskiy’s agent or Zelensky’s.
In an interview with the democratic socialist magazine, Jacobin, Kotsaba stated: “All opposition figures previously promoting the peaceful resolution of conflict with Russia have either fled or are in prison.” “Any thought about peace talks is perceived as playing for Putin, as the work of enemy agents.” Sound familiar? The same blueprint used in Ukraine to control opposition to the war or the silence anyone who speaks out against the escalation of it… are called Putin’s mouthpiece. We have no doubt the same attacks will be made against this series. But won’t deter us from speaking an unflinching truth. That Ukraine is no bastion of free speech or democracy. And no true journalist should be silent about it.
Next time on Zelensky Unmasked, we’ll look at political persecution in Ukraine. It’s not just journalists who aren’t allowed to stand up to Zelenskyy—we’ll explore the locking up of dissenters and the banning of oppositional political parties. As we continue to leave Zelenskyy unmasked.