One of the issues listed on the agenda of the meeting conducted by the Committee of the Verkhovna Rada dealing with freedom of speech and information policy issues was a proposal to dissolve the National Committee for Public Morality Protection. Apart from the task force, the members of the Committee were also invited to attend the meeting and define the significance of their contribution, by giving explanations in person.

However, in spite of the fact that the Committee is comprised of reputable people (headed by Vasyl Kostytsky, with prominent Ukrainian public figures and celebrates such as Bogdan Beniuk, Volodymyr Zasukhin, Danylo Yanevsky, Yury Pavlenko and Petro Chupryna to be mentioned among 29 committee members) and ardent speeches pronounced by its representatives who called themselves “the unified Ukrainian battalion in the information war” and “volunteers protecting information”, the parliamentarians resolved to support the idea of dissolution.

In the MPs’ opinion, the Committee founded in 2009, when Yulia Timoshenko headed the government, has functions that look similar to those that other numerous government agencies perform and, actually, it does not perform any. The parliamentarians believe that the country cannot be the source of public morality; otherwise it will be one of the types of censorship. In this connection, having acknowledged undoubted moral authority possessed by all members of the Committee, without exception, the task force said it is expected that they will continue contributing to the protection of public morality in Ukraine, however, as a civil society organization.

Moreover, the parliamentarians noted that the Committee’s members should not overestimate the role they play in the information war, because these are journalists, first of all, who are real soldiers, and unlike the members of the National Committee for Public Morality Protection they cannot boast of being financed by the government in the amount of 3 million hryvnias annually.