The Lutsk District Court has dismissed the claim by ex-prosecutor Vadym Venislavskyi and his daughter Anastasia against the Investigative Journalism Center Syla Pravdy. The plaintiffs demanded a retraction and takedown of several articles they viewed as defamatory and claimed that the team had illegally shared their personal photos.
The ruling was passed on 22 September 2025, Syla Pravdy reports.
The case has been in progress for almost two years. As reported earlier, the plaintiffs filed the lawsuit against Syla Pravdy back in October 2023.
The lawsuit concerned two investigations:
- into a tender held between the company Spetskomuntech and Anastasia Venislavska’s boyfriend, Dmytro Buliuk, for the purchase of a used garbage truck by the municipal enterprise Lutskspeckomuntrans;
- into the company run by Buliuk making multi-million deals for road repairs in Olika village.
The plaintiffs claim that the reporting concerning Spetskomuntech, co-founded by Anastasia Venislavska, was inaccurate and that the negative response to it by readers caused the plaintiffs moral damage.
The plaintiffs demanded the retraction and takedown of of four articles featuring their last name from the media outlet’s website, as well as news stories, YouTube videos, and social media posts.
Syla Pravdy was represented in court by the director, Yuriy Horbach, and Oksana Maksymeniuk, media attorney with the Institute for Regional Press Development. They argued that all the reported information was fact-based and taken from the following sources:
- state procurement system Prozorro;
- the Unified State Register of Legal Entities and Individual Entrepreneurs;
- the social media pages of the persons involved, which were public at the time.
The court found that the articles by Syla Pravdy that mention Venislavskyi’s family are not in violation of the law.
“The court passed not only a legal but also a fair ruling. The ability to report on abuses of office, ask uncomfortable questions, criticize officials and monitor how public budget funds are spent is freedom of speech. This is not the journalists’ whim but a sign of a healthy civil society and a democratic state. I am grateful to the court for protecting these basic rights, and to my colleagues who continue to do their job honestly despite pressure and lawsuits,” said Yuriy Horbach, director of the Investigative Journalism Center Syla Pravdy.