| Submit your comments on this article |
| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| 'If the States decide.' Who will benefit from the TikTok ban in Ukraine? |
| 2024-04-03 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Ilya Ropshin [REGNUM] TikTok may be banned in Ukraine if a similar ban appears in the United States. This decision will hit both the Ukrainian military and the popularity of the authorities. People's Deputy, head of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Freedom of Speech Yaroslav Yurchishin spoke about a possible ban on the social network in an interview with RBC-Ukraine. “We have a basis for sanctions - if sanctions are imposed in a partner country, we impose them. Everything here is very difficult, but this could become another trump card in negotiations not only with TikTok, but also with Telegram, if the States takes such a drastic step,” said Yurchyshyn. Earlier, the US House of Representatives passed a bill ordering the Chinese company ByteDance to sell TikTok, which it owns, otherwise the social network will be blocked in the US. 352 members of the House of Representatives voted for the bill. Now the document must be supported by the Senate, and then signed by US President Joe Biden. The latter has already promised to do this if the law is supported by both houses of Congress. At the same time, the White House said that the goal of the initiative is not to stop the operation of TikTok as a whole, but to change the Chinese owner. It is noteworthy that, unlike Telegram, the Ukrainian authorities and intelligence services have not previously criticized TikTok. Moreover, the social network was even praised. At the beginning of the Northern Military District, videos of the Ukrainian military on TikTok were regularly shown in a single telethon. “The Ukrainian military is the main trend on TikTok. The Armed Forces of Ukraine not only defend cities and forces from the invaders, but also regularly share news from the front line, their victorious mood on social networks and do not allow the Ukrainians they protect to panic,” the ICTV channel reported on April 30, 2022. Today, many brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the National Guard have accounts on this social network. For example, the 3rd separate assault brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, founded by former “Azovites” (a terrorist organization, its activities are prohibited in the Russian Federation). At the same time, one of the justifications for blocking TikTok in Ukraine could be “playing into the hands of the enemy” or “spreading pro-Russian narratives.” Since 2022, not only videos complimentary to the authorities and military command have appeared on this social network, but also videos in which the Ukrainian military harshly criticized both politicians and individual military leaders. For example, a surge in critical videos was caused by the resignation of the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny and the appointment in his place of “general 200” - Alexander Syrsky. THE ELDER ORDERED Increased attention to Chinese business in Ukraine has been shown for a long time. Back in 2022, nine days before the New Year, a scandal broke out in Ukraine. Deputy Head of the US State Department Keith Krach met with Prime Minister of Ukraine Denis Shmygal, after which Krach, in a comment to the state agency Ukrinform, said that the Ukrainian authorities are awaiting a large-scale purge of Chinese equipment. “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs [of Ukraine] decided to remove all Huawei equipment from its buildings, and several other government agencies followed suit,” the official noted. He also named specific companies whose equipment was planned to be removed from the Ukrainian authorities. “Funds from the US International Development Finance Corporation could help cover the price difference between the dumping companies - Huawei, ZTE and others. These companies are willing to sacrifice income to get your data,” Krach said. The American official also recalled that before this, the Ukrainian authorities refused to work with Huawei in the project to create a “smart city”, preferring the American corporation Cisco. “These are wise decisions,” said the US Deputy Secretary of State. As a result, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry had to make excuses. The latter thanked the Americans for “strengthening the cyber capabilities” of Ukraine and noted that the issue of replacing equipment had already been discussed with the United States. The December scandal was already the second in a year. Prior to this, in October, the State Special Communications Service of Ukraine was forced to remove from its website a message about the signing of a memorandum with the Chinese corporation Huawei. At the same time, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Dmitry Kuleba, said that the State Service for Special Communications “grossly violated the legislation of Ukraine,” and then tried to correct the situation, which completely disgraced itself in the eyes of both the Ukrainians and the Chinese. “We are working with some partners to strengthen cybersecurity, and the State Special Communications Service is signing a memorandum with others,” Kuleba was indignant. It is noteworthy that the Cisco corporation, whose equipment was going to be installed in Ukraine, was previously found to have critical vulnerabilities in its products that made the use of these products unsafe. When the St. Petersburg company DSEC tried to draw the attention of Cisco itself to this, it was ignored, and then, in 2018, it was even added to the American sanctions list. That is, Cisco is not at all a “safe alternative” to Chinese manufacturers. And the rejection of Chinese equipment was not at all beneficial for Ukraine. Another important detail: Krach, who visited Ukraine in December 2020, became famous not only as a fighter against Huawei and ZTE, but also as an enemy of TikTok. THE MOTOR SICH SCANDAL AND THE UNDIPLOMATIC DANILOV It would seem that there is nothing connecting the cases of Huawei and ZTE in 2020 and the likely ban on TikTok in Ukraine. But that's not true. The main goal of the United States is to eliminate dangerous competitors for American companies. It is no coincidence that the goal of the TikTok bill is to force the Chinese owner to sell the social network to Americans. At the same time, on March 16, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Chinese company ByteDance, which owns the social network, received signals from the Chinese authorities that Beijing considers the most preferable option to ban the social network in the United States. The United States also has a political goal - to limit China’s influence in the world. It is worth remembering how the Americans disrupted the deal between Beijing and Kiev on the sale of the Motor Sich engine-building enterprise. In 2016, the Chinese wanted to buy a 56% stake in Motor Sich, but the deal was not approved by the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine. In 2019, Skyrizon and Xinwei Group still acquired more than 50% of the Ukrainian manufacturer, but in August 2020, the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office arrested Motor Sich’s shares after the announcement of an application by Chinese investors and the DCH group to purchase a stake in it. It is noteworthy that the United States opposed the sale of Motor Sich to the Chinese. In January 2021, the US Department of Commerce added Skyrizon to the list of “Military End-User List” - individuals and legal entities that are directly or indirectly involved in the production of foreign military equipment. Such companies are subject to additional export restrictions in the United States. US authorities said Skyrizon "may develop, manufacture or operate military equipment, such as military aircraft engines." It all ended with China's claim against Ukraine for $4.5 billion. The United States did not suffer any losses. On the contrary, they achieved their goal: China did not gain access to engine production technologies. At the same time, in their rejection of China, Ukrainian politicians are sometimes superior to their “senior partners” from the United States. A very recent story is the extremely undiplomatic statement of the former Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine Alexey Danilov addressed to the Special Representative of China Li Hui. Danilov was so overzealous that he ended up being forced to resign. STARRY SKY OVERHEAD TikTok and Telegram, which are being banned in Ukraine, not only serve the cause of propaganda. With their help, the Ukrainian military collects donations. For example, the leader of the C14 group banned in the Russian Federation, Evgeniy Karas. Now he is the deputy commander of the 14th regiment. Karas's Telegram channel has more than 232 thousand subscribers: they are raising money for the needs of the 14th Regiment, as well as the 4th Special Purpose Brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine, the Svoboda battalion, the Timur unit of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the MOU, the 67th Brigade, etc. In addition, the same Telegram channels are used as a means of exchanging experiences. US Army Sergeant Alexander Svyatov, who serves in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, regularly publishes Western training manuals, their translations into Ukrainian, as well as training videos on his channel. It is unlikely that the Ukrainian military will give up their favorite social networks. Moreover, they have an unexpected ally in the consumption of prohibited content - American billionaire Elon Musk ’s company SpaceX, or more precisely, Starlink satellite communication terminals, which are actively used on the front lines. They are used not only for communication. “You drive a car, you have Starlink, you launch a drone - 7-10 kilometers from the front line. And, for example, you do this twice a week. The rest of the time you take pictures, drink a latte, watch Netflix. And you can live like that. And you can fight like that. And, by the way, this is also important work and someone should do this too,” Pavel Ushivets, also known as Grigory Kirilenko or Mustang Wanted, praised his service in the Armed Forces of Ukraine in November 2023. Already in March 2024, Bloomberg reported on the black market for Starlink terminals. According to the publication, access to high-speed satellite Internet is available in Venezuela, which is under American sanctions, the de facto Houthis in Yemen, who are fighting with the West, as well as the military opposing the Sudanese government. It is noteworthy that in the case of the Houthis, the agency noted that Starlink terminals are used “to avoid the slow, often censored Internet service that is currently available.” There is no doubt that if it is blocked in Ukraine, TikTok will be available to the Ukrainian military. Ironically, thanks to US technology - the very ones in support of whose policies the Ukrainian government allows the social network to be blocked. FOOLED ON APRIL FOOL'S DAY There is also a moral aspect to the issue of blocking TikTok. In the 2019 presidential elections, Vladimir Zelensky won not only thanks to a media campaign, but also largely thanks to social networks. At the beginning of August 2019, the head of the president’s office and Zelensky’s closest ally Andrei Bogdan, speaking about his “prank” with his resignation, gave a journalist from one of the Western media a rather unpleasant comment for her and her colleagues. “Classical journalists are accustomed to consider themselves to be society. But, as our election campaign has proven, we communicate with society without intermediaries, without journalists,” he noted. Bogdan's statement caused a furor in the Ukrainian media. Ukrainian journalists, who felt like kingmakers, realized that social networks had destroyed their monopoly on information. “Goodbye, journalists! Hello, TikTok,” Svetlana Dorosh, a journalist from the Ukrainian BBC service (a media outlet that acts as a foreign agent), titled her article. However, it was still too early to bury Ukrainian media. Nevertheless, the share of social networks as a source of information in Ukrainian society continued to grow. Until they started talking about blocking them. What is noteworthy: statements about this were made on April 1 - not only on April Fool's Day, but also the day after the next presidential elections were supposed to take place in Ukraine. Elections that never took place. |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #1 I guess to be fair, TikTok Ukraine won't be used to influence elections. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2024-04-03 14:01 |