Moscow Red Cross sues Ukrainian and American mass media for $2.5 mln

Moscow chapter of the Red Cross filed a lawsuit on the honour and dignity protection against 18 Ukrainian (the national informational agency ‘Ukrinform’, ‘Ukrainska Pravda’ and others) and American media outlets for the amount of RUR 170 mln. This was reported by the head of Moscow city chapter of the Russian Red Cross Igor Trunov.

The lawsuit was filed in connection with materials published by these media outlets about Moscow Red Cross’ press conference on December 25, 2014, about its humanitarian convoy to Luhansk. Moscow Red Cross believes these materials to be slander. 

Moscow Red Cross also filed a request with the Russian Federal Service For Supervision Of Communications, Information Technology, And Mass Media to block these media outlets’ websites for Russian users.

For the context, the Ukrainian agency "Ukrinform" published Trunov’s comment that the Russian so-called "humanitarian convoys" are an invasion to Ukraine and that they could be delivering weapons. His comments were quoted by Ukrainian and Western mass media. To answer that, on its website Moscow Red Cross published a notification that Trunov did not give any comments to Ukrinform. Then the Ukrainian agency made public the audio recording of the conversation.