The BBC and Ukraine
A reader has kindly notified me about a complaint he’s just sent to the BBC. He felt that TNE readers may be interested. It concerns the one-sidedness of the BBC’s coverage of the situation in Ukraine - where the Russians seem only to be referred to as villains. In a similar way that the BBC presented no counter view to the ‘lockdown is the only policy response to Covid’ the Russians = bad & Ukrainians = good narrative is all-pervasive. In this context the reader’s complaint is interesting. Here it is:
The following article is currently on the BBC News website: (Ukraine war: Tortured for refusing to teach in Russian).
It describes alleged instances of Ukrainians being forced to use the Russian language against their will.
My complaint relates to the total failure of the authors of the article to point out the irony of this happening, when it was the Ukrainian parliament which passed legislation discriminating against Russian language speakers in 2019, legislation which required 90% of TV and film output to be in Ukrainian.
It also required applicants for public sector appointments to be Ukrainian speakers. As this Reuters article from April 2019 points out, it has always been common practice for Ukrainians to speak both languages and switch from one to another in their everyday dialogue.
Thus it has been Ukrainian nationalists who have weaponised the whole language issue, as evidenced by the standing ovation and triumphalist singing of the Ukrainian national anthem when this discriminatory legislation was passed during the dying embers of the Poroshenko presidency.
Not only do the authors fail to give proper context to the whole language issue, they also omit to report that following the retaking by Ukrainian forces of territory previously occupied by Russian troops and/or separatist groups, completely innocent academics and teachers who happened to be expert in Russian language and culture have been branded "collaborators".
I am concerned that the unbalanced reporting of this topic may lead the reader to conclude that the very many real atrocities carried out by Russian forces are merely more evidence of highly partial reporting.
The Ukrainification of eastern Russian speaking/ethnic Russian part of Ukraine has been an untold story extending to schools, media, people's names, street names, religion, job applications., dress.
The people's side of the story needs told (as opposed to either government's account). Normally we would call for a referendum/border poll---in this case though, we will only accept the result if its the one we want and so will both sides. I do wish we would stop spending zillions on sending arms when our own people are struggling and try for a diplomatic/political solution.