Oct 5, 2020
Servant of the People MP Dubinsky devised fake news to discredit EuroMaidan.
The Kyiv Post reported on October 2, “After a wave of protests under the European Union and Ukrainian flags erupted on Kyiv’s Independence Square in November 2013, disinformation ran rampant about the motives and values of people who participated in the demonstrations. But in late December 2013, one piece of fake news particularly stood out.
A video filmed on a mobile phone on Kyiv’s central Khreshchatyk Street, right next to the protesters’ camp, showed several women who presented themselves as sex workers and said they came to Independence Square to service clients among protesters. […]
The story became memorable and was followed by a news article about thriving prostitution on Maidan and a report of the police “busting a brothel catering to Maidan protesters.”
The latest report by Bihus.Info, a Ukrainian investigative journalist outlet, published on Oct. 2, reveals the identity of the alleged mastermind behind that fake story.
A trove of emails obtained by journalists shows that a sitting lawmaker Oleksandr Dubinsky appears to have been directly involved in creating the video with sex workers as part of a larger effort to discredit the pro-European protests that ousted corrupt President Viktor Yanukovych out of power.
Correspondence dated between December 2013 and February 2014 also indicates that the campaign allegedly was paid by associates of Oleksandr Klymenko, former minister of income and taxes, who reportedly fled to Russia after the revolution.
Dubinsky is a former editor and host of the 1+1 TV channel of oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky. He was elected to the parliament last year with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s party, Servant of the People. He is known for his anti-Western stance, and conducting conspiracy theory-laded smear campaigns against pro-Western politicians and officials, as well as independent journalists.”