Ukraine's Post-Maidan Struggles: Free Speech in a Time of War

After Russia's seizure of the Crimean peninsula and military incursion into the eastern Donbas region, the Ukrainian government made significant efforts to censor Russian-language media and suppress Soviet-era symbols and communist parties that have support in eastern Ukraine. Some of these efforts have been consistent with international principles defining the balance between free speech and security. Other measures, however, not only threatened the country's democracy but endangered its national security by alienating precisely those groups in the southeast that Russia's President Vladimir Putin has been trying to divide from Ukraine.