UKRAINE’S coup regime has approved a law giving the state sweeping powers to control the media.

The Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU) broke the news on Monday that billionaire President Petro Poroshenko had ratified the legislation passed on February 25.

The “doctrine of national informational safety” law is intended to stop the “dissemination of information prohibited in the Ukraine” and “threats to national interests and national security in the information sphere.”

It also decrees that a minimum 75 per cent of TV and radio programmes be in the Ukrainian language — a new attack on the rights of the large Russian-speaking section of the population.

The KPU said there was no doubt that the law was “in line with the ‘decommunisation laws’ and the barbaric initiatives of the Institute of National Remembrance.”

Institute director Volodymyr Viatrovych is a public apologist for World War II nazi collaboration force the Ukrainian People’s Army and was instrumental in drafting the 2015 anti-communist laws.

The KPU warned that, under the new law, “any critical publication in the newspaper or online, sharp speech on television or radio, statement in book or expressed personally” could be interpreted as a “threat to national security.”

Yesterday, the National Bank of Ukraine warned that the ongoing blockade of the industrialised Donbass region by neonazi militias — backed by Kiev — was harming the economy.

The bank said it had revised its economic growth forecast for 2017 down from 2.8 per cent to 1.9 per cent after Mr Poroshenko made the embargo official last week.

The Donbass republics responded to the blockade imposed in February, following a failed offensive against their territory, by nationalising dozens of major businesses.