Thread by @olgatokariuk

Several thousand people protested in Kyiv today against Covid vaccination and restrictions for unvaccinated people. They also demanded the release of Ostap Stakhiv, one of the leaders of anti-vaccination movement in Ukraine, who was arrested last week 🏮
📷 @herKrieger

Stakhiv was arrested in Lviv last week. He faces from 5 to 10 years on charges of undermining public health and plotting to overthrow the constitutional order. Ukrainian special services SBU earlier accused him of having links to Russia.He said his arrest is politically motivated

Stakhiv is one of the most prominent figures in Ukrainian anti-vaccination movement. He had more than 90k followers on his Facebook page, which was recently taken down due to numerous reports of disinformation shared there. He still has 65k subscribers on YouTube, 25k on Telegram

An investigation by @ukraine_world revealed he also controls dozens of groups on Viber messaging app targeting Ukrainian regions, where hundreds of Covid-related and anti-vaccine disinformation posts are shared daily. 77k people are members of these groups ukraineworld.org/articles/infow…

The organisation he created is called 'Human Rights' and its supporters claim their rights have been infringed by the government's restrictions on unvaccinated people. At today's protest, there were a lot of their flags and slogans

Another interesting feature of today's protest was that there were placards mentioning an organisation called Terra Freedom, which previously appeared at anti-vaxx protests in Moldova and in Kyiv on Nov 3. Its founder ran as a candidate with pro-Russian party in Moldova elections

Some other suspicious things observers noted: Ukrainian flags were held upside down by some participants of the protest. Also, a QR code on the placard of these ladies, when scanned, leads to the website of Putin's United Russia party 🙄

Anti-vaccination sentiment in Ukraine is widespread, with only 25% currently vaccinated against Covid with two doses. Mortality rate is one of the highest in the world, although numbers of hospitalizations and deaths are decreasing. Still, 595 people died in the last 24h

While a lot of anti-vaccination sentiment is homegrown and many people who participated in the protest today consider themselves Ukrainian patriots, there is a huge amount of Covid vaccine disinformation, connected to Russia. This is yet another threat to Ukraine's stability.
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