The Podilskyi District Court of Kyiv dismissed the lawsuit by the Dnipro City Council Secretary Oleksandr Sanzhara against Slidstvo.Info, who featured him in a journalistic investigation. The ruling was passed on 30 March 2026, Slidstvo.Info reports.
In the lawsuit, Sanzhara requested that the journalists’ actions be declared unlawful and the team be ordered to publish his response to the investigation, which revealed that the official used a private jet potentially worth over $100,000 for business trips to Europe. According to Slidstvo.Info, the jet in question is a 2002 Piper 28-161 Warrior, which was listed in Sanzhara’s property declaration.
The journalists’ lawyer, Oksana Maksymeniuk, said that the plaintiff had demanded they publish his comment on the investigation, which contained value judgments, despite the investigation already featuring extensive comments by him.
She added that Sanzhara considered the news outlet’s refusal to do so to be illegal even though the law does not require it, since the right to reply only applies to misleading — that is, inaccurate or incomplete — information.
“In our opinion, the court weighed the arguments presented by the defendant. With new media laws being passed, journalists should be more responsible when receiving comments from persons featured in their investigations. At the same time, it is worth noting that the right to reply only applies to misleading information, namely information that is inaccurate or incomplete,” explains media lawyer Oksana Maksymeniuk.
She considers this lawsuit to be an instance of SLAPP, i.e. an attempt to put pressure on journalists, since the plaintiff filed two similar motions contesting the video and the article.
In October 2025, Slidstvo.Info and OCCRP reported that the aircraft declared by Sanzhara had been making regular flights around Europe.
According to their data, in recent years, these flights have coincided with Sanzhara’s trips abroad ordered by his boss, Borys Filatov. The journalists identified a total of four such trips by the official, amounting to 61 days total, over the past year and a half.