Ukraine’s legal landscape is seeing a dangerous evolution of the tools used to exert judicial pressure on independent media and investigative journalists. The media community was recently shaken by the precedent of a court pre-emptively banning a Slidstvo.Info investigation. It would appear that crude physical obstruction is being replaced by sophisticated judicial pressure. Statistics by the Institute of Mass Information reflect this alarmind trend clearly. Despite an overall drop in press freedom violations involving physical aggression, judicial pressure is gaining momentum. As of early August 2026, IMI had recorded as many as six such cases — compared with the five recorded throughout 2025. The fact that some of the actors exerting such pressure ought to be, by virtue of their position as law enforcers and state officials, guaranteeing that journalists’ rights are respected, is particularly troubling.
The latest example of civil law being weaponised to censor facts is the lawsuit filed by a former Deputy Prosecutor General for Military Prosecution against ZN.UA and its domesic politics editor Inna Vedernikova. Experts at IMI believe that this case sets a dangerous precedent and gives rise to well-founded concerns that individuals who are, or have been, subjects of criminal law proceedings may exploit civil law provisions to push society into a blind spot, in contravention of European standards.
The claim, filed by a suspect in the so-called “hacker lawyers” case, bears all the classic hallmarks of a SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation). Abuse of rights is suggested, first and foremost, by the chosen tactic of financial intimidation. The claimant is demanding the defendants pay almost 500,000 hryvnias in legal costs, of which 300,000 hryvnias is listed as legal assistance fees (even though the claimant is a practising lawyer himself). Furthermore, the case shows signs of procedural abuse aimed at manipulating the automated case-distribution system. This so-called “judge turnabout” scheme follows a clear pattern: a claim is filed with the court, and if the system assigns an “inconvenient” judge to it, the claimant withdraws the filing immediately and submits an identical new claim before the withdrawal of the previous one is even processed. Repeating this move, along with a series of recusals, artificially steers the case towards a specific judge. This, taken alongside reports by journalists concerning the claimant’s alleged personal ties to the court’s management, prompts reasonable doubts as to the impartiality of the proceedings. Such conduct gives grounds to conclude that the parties were placed on unequal footing from the outset, in contravention of fundamental principles of law.
The claimant’s fundamental legal error lies in his attempting to obtain, within civil proceedings, an assessment on matters that are covered by criminal law. According to NABU’s investigation, which has officially confirmed the claimant’s suspect status, the lawyers had obtained unauthorised access to case files in around 30 high-profile corruption cases. Any attempt to refute these facts through a civil claim is entirely undermined by the Supreme Court’s case law. The legal position of the Joint Chamber of the Civil Cassation Court within the Supreme Court, dated 22 June 2026, in case No. 761/1004/20, deems it impermissible to initiate civil claim proceedings for the purpose of assessing details that should be proven in criminal proceedings. Such claims are not to be tried — in other words, a person’s arguments as to their innocence must be examined at a criminal law hearing, not by a civil court in a defamation dispute.
The claimant demands that the act of mentioning him by name as a suspect in a published news story prior to the conviction taking legal effect be declared unlawful. The claim cites Part 4 of Article 296 of the Civil Code of Ukraine. Such a literal application of this provision would set a precedent that runs counter to European standards on freedom of expression by disregarding a person’s status as a public figure and the public interest. ECHR case law calls for using this provision in the interest of balance, not as a total ban. A person must be protected from being declared guilty before a court ruling, but this does not mean the media should have no right to mention persons involved in socially important investigations by name in their reporting.
This balance is well reflected in the aforementioned ruling of the Joint Chamber of the Civil Cassation Court of the Supreme Court dated 22 June 2026, which stresses that protecting a person’s honour and dignity should be balanced against the need to keep society informed. This approach is fully consistent with ECHR case law, e.g. the judgment in Fatullayev v. Azerbaijan, which held that the presumption of innocence does not prohibit public reporting on criminal investigations, provided that neutral procedural language is used. It is this crucial function that reporting concerning a former senior prosecutorial official that draws on NABU’s official suspicion notices performs. Moreover, Article 30 of the Law of Ukraine “On Information” reliably exempts journalists from liability for expressing value judgments — which is, in essence, exactly what an analysis of the course of an investigation based on confirmed facts amounts to.
Beyond this jurisdictional barrier, the claim also runs into an insurmountable obstacle regarding the chosen means of legal protection. The Supreme Court, in the same ruling, held that claims seeking merely to confirm that a violation of the non-property right to the use of one’s name or likeness occurred are purely declaratory in nature. Since such claims can not, in and of themselves, put a stop to a violation or restore a right, courts must dismiss them. The claimant’s demand to simply have the publication of his name declared unlawful is therefore substantively flawed.
Experts at the Institute of Mass Information believe that these proceedings are setting an extremely dangerous precedent, particularly in view of the recent legislative initiatives seeking to restrict public communication by law enforcement bodies under the pretext of European laws. If law enforcement agencies are barred from reporting on high-profile cases, and courts prohibit the media from naming the persons involved through claims such as the one discussed above, society will find itself in an information blockade. At a time when lawyers spend years stalling trials until the statute of limitations in the case expires, legitimising this kind of judicial practice would amount to more than a mere restriction on freedom of expression: it would become a systemic tool enabling those implicated in corruption to evade any form of liability, including reputational accountability. For this reason, defending ZN.UA’s position in these proceedings is a fight for the fundamental right of the entire media community to do its job.
