Wartime Ukraine sees free speech flourish, defying censorship common during conflicts – MP

During the full-scale war, the level of freedom of speech in Ukraine has increased, Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, head of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Freedom of Speech, said in an interview with Ukrinform news agency.

"The level of freedom of speech in Ukraine could not remain unchanged during martial law", however, the lawmaker says, a good indicator is that in the second year since the beginning of the large-scale invasion and in the tenth year of the war, it is not the lack of freedom of speech that is being discussed, but to what extent and how it is present.

"When international media experts measured freedom of speech in Ukraine, surprisingly, even compared to 2021, the results showed an increase in the level of freedom of speech. This is a kind of response to criticism that everything is censored in our country during the war. Ukraine shows positive dynamics in this matter," Yurchyshyn stated.

He added that war is in any case a narrowing of the field of information, greater control by the state, "because we cannot allow the enemy to penetrate our information space."

On December 9, 2023, the Ukrainian parliament appointed Yurchyshyn as the head of the Committee on Freedom of Speech instead of Nestor Shufrych, an MP from the banned Opposition Platform, who is in a pre-trial detention center on treason charges.

The new head of the committee has already questioned the effectiveness of the national telethon program.