FBI Serves as a Conduit for Ukraine’s Censorship Campaign – Ted Galen Carpenter 7/24/23

Source: Antiwar.com

The U.S. government has long tolerated and excused Ukraine’s authoritarian behavior even as Washington and its NATO partners have lavished financial and military aid on Kyiv. Evidence has now emerged, though, that the US national security apparatus has actively assisted Volodymr Zelensky’s regime to undermine the Constitutional rights of Americans. CNN notes damning revelations in a new report from the House Judiciary Committee. “The committee says SBU [Ukraine’s top security agency] sent the FBI lists of social media accounts that allegedly ‘spread Russian disinformation,’ and that the FBI then ‘routinely relayed these lists to the relevant social media platforms, which distributed the information internally to their employees in charge of content moderation and enforcement.’”

Ukraine has an obvious interest in trying to suppress any criticism of its policies – especially news stories and analyses that undermine the narrative that the Russia-Ukraine war is a crucial front in an existential global struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. However, it is both shameful and alarming for the FBI to assist such efforts by a foreign government to chill debate. Yet that is what is happening. The FBI apparently is a collaborator with Ukraine, serving as a conduit and facilitator for Kyiv’s overseas censorship efforts….

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