IFJ Says Kiev's Ban on Russian Media Apps Will Only Draw Attention to Their Information

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 11th September, 2020) Ban on applications of Russian media on the territory of Ukraine will only increase the interest of the audience in the information they disseminate, Timur Shafir, the secretary of the Russian Union of Journalists, Vice President of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), said on Friday.

Earlier in the day, Apple notified Rossiya Segodnya international news agency about the Security Service of Ukraine's (SBU) demand to remove mobile applications of all brands of the agency from the Ukrainian segment of AppStore. Earlier the same day, all apps of Russia's state-run broadcaster VGTRK were removed from AppStore at SBU's request as well.

"The fact that Apple fulfills the SBU requirement is Apple's obligation.

The question is not so much to the company, but, in fact, to the security service, which once again acts in such a way that restricts citizens of their own country in the right to receive information other than the one given to them every day and every hour exclusively by Ukraine or the Western European media," Shafir said.

According to the expert, practice shows that "such prohibitive measures, wherever they take place, never lead to positive results."

"It is impossible to restrict people from desire to receive information, compare sources and draw their own conclusions. And the more the SBU advocates to ban Russian media, the more it will increase the interest of a large number of audiences in them," Shafir said.