(Ukrainian Weekly) Russia’s timeworn orchestrated efforts to denigrate Ukrainian identity and culture were on full display this week when a judge convicted the head of the country’s only state-run Ukrainian literature library located in Moscow for “extremism.”
A municipal court on June 5 in the capital gave Natalia Sharina, a native Muscovite and ethnic Russian, a four-year suspended sentence for “inciting national enmity or hatred.”
Ostensibly, it was because a banned book authored by a Ukrainian nationalist was found at the library. Ms. Sharina insists the book was planted at the library, which was established in 1989 during the twilight of the Soviet Union. […]
Closure of the Ukrainian library and subsequent persecution of its chief librarian is “symbolic,” said Olexiy Haran, a political scientist and professor at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
“Moscow wants to show that it is fighting ‘nationalism,’ it’s about propaganda to discredit Ukraine internally and partially to the foreign audience,” he added. […]
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