KIEV, June 29 – Valeriy Khoroshkovskiy, the chief of the SBU security service and the owner of Ukraine’s largest television group, further strengthened his clout Tuesday after appointment of loyalists to a state media regulator, lawmakers said.

Khoroshkovskiy has come into spotlight over the past weeks as pressure has mounted on opposition figures and independent television stations, raising concerns over the freedom of speech in Ukraine.

But his clout may have further increased on Tuesday after the appointment of four members of the National Council on Television and Radio Broadcasting, a body that awards frequencies and issues licenses to television stations.

“The National Council now has seven people, of them five are lobbying the interests of Khoroshkovskiy’s media group,” Yuriy Stets, a lawmaker from the opposition Our Ukraine party, said.

“We’ve seen how Khoroshkovskiy can act. I think that his representatives in the council will act in the same fashion,” Stets said. “So, we can forget about independent, democratic radio and television in this country.”

Khoroshkovskiy was not available for comment on Tuesday.

Parliament, led by the governing coalition, on Tuesday voted to appoint four new members to the council: Yevhen Baranov, Oksana Yelmanova, Iryna Opilat and Mykola Fartushniy.

At the same time, the coalition rejected independent candidates nominated by civil groups.

“I think we should congratulate not only the newly appointed members of the council, but also Khoroshkovskiy, because three out of four are his people,” Oleh Liashko, a lawmaker from the opposition Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, said.

“They will be issuing licenses to opposition television channels, and, as one member of the coalition said, they will be ‘supporting freedom of speech,” Liashko added sarcastically.

The appointments come as pressure has mounted on independent television stations, including Channel 5 and TVi, which lost dozens of frequencies earlier this month after Khoroshkovskiy’s media group had recently filed a lawsuit to contest a January auction.

Days later, Khoroshkovskiy promised that his television group, Inter, will not bid for new frequencies in the future, suggesting the lawsuit had never been motivated by commercial considerations.

The lawsuit effectively disrupted expansion of the independent television stations throughout Ukraine and was the most devastating attack on media outlets since the election of Viktor Yanukovych to presidency in February.

Yanukovych, addressing the rising concerns over the freedom of speech in Ukraine, on Tuesday said that he supported the freedom of speed, but had admitted there was a problem.

“This is the problem that exists in any society,” Yanukovych said.

“It is not a secret that media outlets are formally free,” Yanukovych said. “But they are depending on owners.”

“In other words, it is clear that when we talk about democracy, many of these issues are conditional.” (tl/ez)