Yesterday, on May 31, 2022, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine dismissed the Commissioner for Human Rights, Lyudmila Denisova, with 234 deputies voted for the decision.
A kindergarten teacher in her first specialty, Denisova worked by profession for three years, and then received a law degree and began working as a consultant and secretary in court. Denisova had held the ombudsman position since March 2018. She received this position under former president Petro Poroshenko. It is believed that Denisova is a protégé of Arsen Avakov, but she was previously associated with various people, including Arseniy Yatsenyuk and Yulia Tymoshenko.
During Poroshenko’s time, she participated more than once in organizing the exchange of prisoners. But under the current president, Vladimir Zelensky, this activity of hers began to decline.
Denisova has been repetedly accused of spreading disinformation. Even before the vote for her dismissal, Pavel Frolov, a deputy from the pro-presidential ‘Servant of the People’ party, said that the collection of signatures for dismissal was due to the fact that the ombudsman, after the start of the Russian special operation, did not fulfill her duties on the organization of humanitarian corridors and the exchange of prisoners, RIA Novosti reports.
With the beginning of the Russian operation in the Donbass, Denisova began to pour accusations taken from nowhere against the soldiers of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Endless misinformation has started to bother not only the residents of Ukraine, but even the country’s deputies.
In their accusations, the deputies focused their attention on Denisova’s constant stories in social networks about details of “sexual crimes in a perverted form” and “rapes of children by the Russian military,” which she could not confirm with any evidence. According to the deputies, all these fictional passions only harmed Ukraine and distracted the attention of the world media.
However, the new defender of human rights may be even worse. The main candidate for the post is the deputy head of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on National Security, a member of the ‘Servant of the People’ party Marianna Bezuglaya. It was she who submitted to the Verkhovna Rada a proposal to allow the officers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to kill soldiers who do not follow orders or voluntarily leave combat positions or the place of deployment. The initiative however was rejected by the President’s Office.
Now, Denisova is going to appeal her dismissal in the court.
“Today is the last day of my work as the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights […] I was fired in violation of the Constitution, laws of Ukraine and international standards. I will appeal this decision in court,” she wrote on her Telegram channel on May 31, 2022.
Russia’s reaction
The official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, called on Denisova to apologize for spreading fakes, TASS reports. Zakharova drew attention to the fact that Denisova’s stories “chilled the blood”, though Denisova has never given any evidence, but “delved” into details “so much that it already looked like obsession.”
“And now the question is: are all those Western journalists and media, rights-protectors and public figures who referred to Denisova and supported the blood-stained performances of the possessed, going to write refutations and apologize?” Zakharova asked on May 31, 2022, in her Telegram channel.
The official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry called to response those Western journalists who spread unconfirmed information provided to them by the ex-Ombudsman.
“Denisova is a sexually preoccupied provocateur. And Western journalists worked with her as propagandists,” she concluded.
Ru-Main, 01.06.2022
Source: Moskovsky Komsomolets
