Most of all - in the category "obstruction of the lawful professional activity of journalists".

In Ukraine, 122 cases of violation of freedom of speech were recorded since the beginning of 2017. This is reported by the Institute of Mass Information (IMI) with reference to the monthly monitoring "The Barometer of Freedom of Speech".

For the same period in 2016, IMI experts recorded 129 cases of violations of freedom of speech.

According to the information of the IMI, if we consider together with the occupied territories of the Donbass and Crimea, the number of violations since the beginning of the year is 132 (for the same period 2016-154).

The greatest number of violations for 6 months of 2017 was recorded in the category "obstruction of the lawful professional activity of journalists" - 42 cases (in the same period of 2016 - 46 cases).

The second place in terms of the number of violations was the category of "restrictions on access to public information". Since the beginning of the year, 17 cases of violations related to access to information were recorded, and during the same period in 2016, 9 such cases.

Among the top three, the number of violations also included threats to journalists (14 cases), but the number of threats significantly decreased compared to the same period last year (24 cases).

In general, in the first half of 2017, cases of violations of freedom of speech occurred in 20 regions of Ukraine. More violations occurred in Kiev and the region - 30 cases, in the Poltava region - 12 cases, and in the Odessa and Mykolaiv regions - 9 cases respectively.