UKRAINE is threatening to ban a media site under its notorious “decommunisation” law – for showing footage of Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko.

The Ministry of Justice has summoned managers from news site GolosUA to explain their compliance with the 2015 law.

The ministry says it was alerted by the security service to the video of Mr Symonenko delivering a message on the 75th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s surrender to the Soviet Union.

The Communist Party of Ukraine said that “such censoring of the media by the authorities is unacceptable in a democratic society.”

It said GolosUA was “a free public platform for people of different political views who know how to listen to their opponents and defend their point of view.”

The party is still fighting a ban imposed following the US and EU-backed “Maidan” coup of 2014, since which it has been prohibited from standing in elections.

In the last election it was allowed to contest, in 2012, the party received 2.7 million votes and won 32 parliamentary seats

Recently, it has complained that individuals standing in local elections have been disqualified when police identified them as Communist Party members.

The 2015 law ordered the removal of Soviet-era monuments and the renaming of places named in honour of communists, and banned “positive” references to the Soviet Union or Marx and Engels and displays of communist symbols.

It also ordered that all references to the Nazi collaborationist Ukrainian Insurgent Army led by Holocaust perpetrator and war criminal Stepan Bandera be positive.