The sole Ukrainian-born pol on City Council will be given a prime speaking slot at the New York state Republican convention Tuesday, The Post has learned.
The GOP also blocked a pro-Kremlin Russian-American TV station — NTV — from obtaining media credentials to cover the convention, which is being held in Garden City, LI, party officials said.
The double whammy means Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will take center stage at the convention, where Republicans will show support for the under-siege democratic nation.
The locally elected city councilwoman who was born in Ukraine, Inna Vernikov, told The Post on Sunday that her message to convention-goers will be, “Let Freedom Ring!
“Ukrainians are a freedom-loving people,” she said. “They want to be free in a democracy. We were not looking for a fight.”
Vernikov, 37 — who describes herself as a “Ukrainian-born American Jew” — was raised in Chernovitz under Soviet rule and came to New York in 1996, when she was 12.
“This is a very dark moment in our history. Vladimir Putin has always been a power-hungry tyrant,” Verkinov told The Post.
“But he has completely lost his mind,” said Vernikov, who represents southern Brooklyn neighborhoods with large Ukrainian- and Russian-born immigrants, many of them Jews.
“Men, women and children are dying in a senseless war. I think Putin wants to bring back the Soviet Union,” she said.
But she said the Ukrainians will never bow to a tyrant after tasting freedom.
“The way the Ukrainian people are fighting back is inspiring. They’re not going to give up. They love their homeland. They love democracy, they love freedom,” the councilwoman said.
She recalled food rationing growing up under Soviet rule as a child — and said Ukrainians don’t want to go back to that.
Meanwhile, state GOP Chairman Nick Langworthy said he won’t allow pro-Putin propaganda to infiltrate the convention, thus the ban on NTV.
“New York Republicans proudly stand with the people of Ukraine and will not allow our convention to be used as a Putin propaganda tool,” he said.
GOP spokeswoman Jessica Proud had pressed the journalists for the name of their outlet when they requested media credentials.
After some back and forth, the journalists finally admitted that they worked for NTV.
“Please be advised that NTV’s credentials for this event have been denied,” Proud said in the e-mail thread forwarded to The Post.