The deputy and former journalist Kostiantyn Usov took an offense at the Kryvyi Rih TV company, the ex-regional deputy Oleksandr Ponomariov – at the Zaporizhia newspaper, the head of the C14 Evhen Karas – at The Vesti newspaper, and the media mogul, deputy Yevheniy Muraev – at the journalist Aider Muzhdabaev. In total there were 17 lawsuits from politicians against journalists in January.
Gay scandal in Kryvyi Rih
Kostiantyn Usov, People’s deputy and an ex-journalist, an ex-special correspondent for the ТВі TV channel and an ex-criminal columnist of the Kommersant Ukraine newspaper filed a lawsuit against the municipal enterprise of the TV and radio company “Rudana”, which belongs to the Kryvyi Rih city council.
It all started with the fact that the Kryvyi Rih “Gay Alliance” organization decided to hold “KryvbassPride-2018”. Politicians who look upon this with different eye decided to use this event for their own benefit. Thus, according to the deputy, there appeared a fake Facebook-page called “For Usov. For European Kryviy Rih”, and on this page – a message allegedly from the politician himself, in which he expressed support for gay pride. The news about this also appeared on municipal media: newspapers and the TV channel “Rudana”.
In my opinion, there are very strong homophobic sentiments in the city, so any involvement of the politician in the LGBT movement can ruin his reputation. Kostiantyn Usov himself denied his support of the gay pride and even made a video appeal, in which he said: “The Vilkuls and their Pavlov have launched a major informational campaign on this. They have come up with a gay pride in Kryvyi Rih themselves, and now, for some reason, they are trying to engage me to it. I am a person of traditional values, a person with a traditional family and I have never planned to either participate in the march of sexual minorities or, moreover, organize it. Vilkul’s servants created this newsworthy event themselves, they invented this gay parade themselves, organized the signatures’ collection against gay pride, registered a petition on this topic and considered it themselves. Such couples as Vilkul and Pavlov have the right to live next to normal people, but I do not want our children to become “Vilkuls”. He also added that he would sue “the deputy Pavlov and the Vilkul’s TV and radio company ‘Rudana'”.
The court accepted the appeal and opened legal proceedings in a civil case on the claim to the municipal enterprise of the TV and radio company “Rudana” on the protection of honor, dignity and business reputation, a refutation of misrepresentation. The first meeting was held on January 10, but the TV and radio company itself refused to comment on the details of this case. We could not get a comment from the deputy himself.
Like Zhelezyaka Planet
Many people remember how someone added to the lubricant of the robots from Shelezyaka planet in “The Mystery of the Third Planet” cartoon some diamond powder, and they broke. A similar story happened in Ukraine, but, instead of robots, there were our tanks.
People’s Deputy Oleksandr Ponomariov filed a lawsuit against “Saturday Plus” LLC, which publishes a newspaper with the same name in Zaporizhia. Among defendants, he also mentioned the journalist Iryna Dubchenko, who is the author of this publication.
This story began with the fact that on February 7 last year, a deputy from the “Fatherland” union Serhii Sobolev charged the people’s deputy from “People’s will” (and in the past – the head of the Berdyansk branch of the Party of Regions), Oleksandr Ponomariov with sabotage. According to him, the company “Agrinol”, which is a part of the sphere of influence of Oleksandr Ponomariov, was involved in the purchasing lubricants for tanks. Serhii Sobolev also said that there is a court decision according to which the officers of the Ministry of Defense, who were in collusion with the special and intelligence services of the Russian Federation and business entities (and in particular “Agrinol” Company), starting with 2016 supplied low-quality lubricants for Ukrainian military equipment, which led to the bringing out of operation of more than 20 tanks. The deputy added that “when the SBU detected this shady deal, which, incidentally, includes marked bills that were given as a bribe to the representatives of the Ministry of Defense in Slovyansk, Donetsk Oblast, when on January 27, 2017, a warehouse of 350 tons of this oil burned down. So they tried to cover the traces”. More details about this complex scheme can be found here.
Of course, almost all Ukrainian media have written about this case, and among them, there is the Zaporizhzhian Saturday Plus. And the author of their article was a journalist Iryna Dubchenko. “The subtext of my article was as follows: the people’s deputy-separatist earned money, and our army met huge losses,” she said, “and he was very offended and filed a lawsuit against me.” A journalist believes that a deputy is suing her, just because he doesn’t like her.
At the moment, this article is not available on the publisher’s website, so it is impossible to find out what the deputy was offended about. But Iryna is sure that she is right: she simply reported what Serhii Sobolev had said, as well as the SBU and the Ministry of Defense. “We will not make negotiations with Oleksandr Ponomariov, that’s up to the court,” she said. “If all the facts released to the public by Serhii Sobolev are not confirmed, then I will apologize in public.”
Ex-editor-in-chief of the newspaper “Saturday Plus” Bohdan Vasylenko says that he has sold his share of the publication to the deputy of Zaporizhia Regional Council from “Ukrop” political party, the entrepreneur Artur Hatunok, who in September 2017 bought 50% of the publication. The journalists of “Saturday’s Plus” state, that the amount of the claim from a people’s deputy is 120 thousand hryvnias. Phones of the deputy were silent, so he did not succeed in confirming this information. The last meeting on this case took place in Zhovtnevyi district court of Zaporizhia on January 16 this year.
Oleg Sentsov’s scandal
Non-party and non-factional people’s deputy (but former “regional” member) Evheniy Murayev filed a lawsuit against the journalist and deputy director general of the ATR channel Aider Muzhdabaev. It began with the fact that on July 7, 2018 Murayev on the air of the 112 Ukraine TV channel said, “Sentsov can be taken differently. On the one hand, he is a person who prepared arsons and explosions, he is a terrorist for some part of the population. But for the nationalists, he is probably a hero. Time will sort the things out and will show who is right and who is wrong.”
Aider Muzhdabaev reacted on his Facebook page: “How can you sit with this criminal in one studio? How can you make ratings for Putin’s loudspeaker in Ukraine? How dare you to create the illusion of the audience that this is like a normal media you can trust? After all, you know perfectly well that this is Russian propaganda. It’s a shame, you help Putin to seize Ukraine.”
We haven’t managed to find this post on Muzhdabaev’s Facebook page, but there is another one of October 31, 2018, and it’s even more radical:
“Murayev, the Kremlin agent, the open enemy of Ukraine, for Russian money creates in Ukraine a “party”-clone of notorious Kremlin movement “Nashy”, a party of Putin’s lap-dogs – informers, provocateurs, assaulters, executioners’ assistants. I see no reason to discuss something here. Murayev is a scum, there is no need to watch or listen to him. He just needs to be taken somewhere in the Kharkiv region, to the kerbside, and physically thrown into the Russian world, to his ancestors.”
Aider Muzhdabaev himself does not know anything about a lawsuit from Yevheniy Murayev and said that he would be able to give some comments only after the first hearing in court. And it happened on January 30, 2019. All phones of Yevheniy Murayev were silent for a long time. In my opinion, it is possible to predict to a large extent that Murayev went into litigation with Muzhdabayev’s unproved statements, as if he was a “criminal”, “Kremlin’s agent”, “an open enemy of Ukraine”, who “for the Russian money creates a “party” in Ukraine – a clone of notorious Kremlin movement “Nashy”.
Murayev wanted one hryvnia from a journalist
By the way, Evheniy Murayev has already won one court against Ukrainian journalist. Hromadske radio’s journalist Iryna Romaliiska has lost the court to a people’s deputy in a case regarding his visit to the State Duma in 2014. Earlier, she reported that Murayev allegedly visited the State Duma of Russia in September 2014, and authorities of the Ministry of Internal Affairs sued him. The list of Ukrainian deputies who went to the State Duma was posted on social networks, Russian media and the “Ukrinform” newspaper also published news about this. The adviser of the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Zorian Shkyriak gave the information about the criminal case against deputies who went to Moscow. Evheniy Murayev seemed to be in the list, too, but the court found out that in fact Murayev was not there, and ordered Iryna Romaliiska to refute both statements.
“The aforementioned information is considered to be false and violates the honor, dignity and business reputation of Murayev,” the journalist read out the refutation set by the court.
Incidentally, Yevgeniy Murayev asked for 1 hryvnia as token compensation for non-pecuniary damage, but the court denied it.
By the way, media lawyer Viacheslav Yakubenko says that the amount of a claim today depends directly on the court fee, which is necessarily paid in favor of the state and is 1% of this amount. So, anyone who wants to receive, for example, one million hryvnias of compensation, is obliged to pay 10 thousand hryvnias himself. In this case, if the lawsuit is filed to a media and to a journalist, it is necessary to pay 20 thousand hryvnias. If the plaintiff loses the court of the first instance, then in the second instance the amount of the court fee will already be 150% of the claim, so demanding huge compensation from the media has now become unprofitable.
However, huge compensation from the media is not so rare abroad. In June 2017, the Australian court sentenced Bauer Media to pay $ 4.56 million Australian dollars ($ 3.66 million) as the journalists of this company slandered Rebel Wilson, an actress. They wrote that Rebel is “a liar,” who “fabricated almost every aspect of her life,” including age, education, and the origin of her name.
“A partner in crime” or not?
People’s Deputy, Secretary of the Committee on the Prevention and Counteraction of Corruption Dmytro Dobrodomov and “Savik Shuster Studio” LLC got a lawsuit from the former head of the Internal Security Department of the State Fiscal Service, Yurii Sheremet. This happened after Dobrodomov, on the air of Savik Shuster’s program, said that the official “fits under the lustration”. Later, Dobrodomov in his blog called Sheremet “a partner in crime” of the SFS ex-head Roman Nasirov, who was tried for theft of 2 billion hryvnias.
Dobrodomov in his blog showed the facts, allegedly pointing to the involvement of Yurii Sheremet with corruption, “In Sheremet’s declarations of 2013 and 2014, the pointed salary of 230 thousand UAH per year. His wife for two years earned a profit of 50 thousand UAH. But last year, she bought a new BMW X5 made in 2016 which costs about 60 thousand dollars. Father of the former SFS head Vitaliy this year bought an apartment over 160 м² in the residential area “Novopecherskyi Dvir”.
The official sued “Savik Shuster Studio” LLC and Dmytro Dobrodomov in July 2016, but litigations have still been ongoing, and one of them was on January 18, 2019.
Politicians are being in litigations with journalists more often these days. The most explosive are:
Yevhen Karas and “SICH – С14” public organization against “Visti Mas-Media” LLC.
Serhii Pashynskyi against “1+1” Media Group.
Vadim Rabinovich against “INTER” joint-stock company.
Here is the full list.
Unfortunately, when it comes to lawsuits, our politicians and journalists keep silence. For example, “Visti Mass-Media” LLC stated that all the details regarding Yevhen Karas’s lawsuit can be found out only during the trial, Studio 1+1 did not respond to the request at all, Vadim Rabinovich did not want to discuss this topic, and Serhii Pashynskyi’s phones were unavailable and he was offline for many days.
Who is to blame: politicians or journalists?
Are journalists really responsible for what politicians are accused of – the encroachment on honor, dignity and business reputation, as well as the distribution of false information? Since politicians sometimes win such processes, this is really true.
Media lawyer Viacheslav Yakubenko once himself was a journalist and was in litigation with the head of the administration of the President of Ukraine. He says that the main reason for claims is an abuse of misrepresentation, which is distributed, for example, through social networks. A journalist, wanting to publish a sensation sooner than others, does not check this information, and later it turns out to be fake. In addition, during the trial, the judge is always interested, whether the accused politician had his word? If the politician has spoken out (or has abandoned it), then the probability that he will win the trial goes to zero. “The practice of the European Court of Human Rights shows that this discharges a journalist from future liability,” said Viacheslav Yakubenko.
But politicians and officials also lose media trials. Thus, the head of the Izyaslav Region administration, a deputy of the regional council Borys Yatskov failed to prove in court that the journalists of the regional newspaper The Podilski Visti, publishing the information from his electronic declaration, spoiled his honor, dignity and business reputation. In the article “Rich Wives of ‘poor’ officials”, besides the facts from Yatskov’s declaration for 2015, there was an only value judgment.
Dolyna City Council lost the suit to newspaper The Narodne Slovo. Oleksii Hora described in his article the situation with the social protection of ATO veterans in the Dolynskyi rayon. The journalist wrote that the city council did not allocate funds for the treatment of veterans of the war in the east. That’s turned out to be true.
So, when the journalists write the truth, no matter how unpleasant it is for a politician, and they do not exaggerate, do not add of themselves, then they will always win.
Text by Oleh Shynkarenko
