Ukraine jamming Russian broadcasts to 180 Donbas towns
Ukrainian Serpanok propaganda jamming system covers 180 settlements along the demarcation line in the Donbas, said Iryna Herashchenko, First Deputy Chairperson of the Verkhovna Rada.
According to her, Donbas militants have “reinforced” the TV tower with new transmitters, and 20 Russian TV channels are being broadcast to the front line settlements. However, they are blocked by the Serpanok system, which was developed by the Ukrainian military with the help of volunteers.
“They have also found a way to block the hostile FM stations… An important step under information war conditions,” Herashchenko observed.
Russia has stopped broadcasting Ukrainian media in the annexed Crimea and parts of the Donbas.
In January 2018, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed the law “On introducing changes to several Ukrainian laws concerning the temporary authorization to broadcast in the zone where the Anti-Terrorist Operation is being conducted and in the border regions of Ukraine”. The document regulates the accelerated issuance of temporary authorization for TV and radio broadcasting “in territories that are the most vulnerable to foreign negative information influence”.
Serhiy Kostynsky, member of the National Council of TV and Radio Broadcasting, said that as of October 2018, the Ukrainian stations that broadcast to the territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces and to annexed Crimea will run programs that are 75% in the Ukrainian language.
As a test, the TV channel of the multimedia foreign broadcasting platform UA/TV is being broadcast from the tower in Chonhar (Kherson province) and Volnovakha (Donetsk province) to Crimea and the Donbas respectively. In April, the broadcasting extended to the occupied territories of the Luhansk province.