The police have closed proceedings against Zakarpattia-based journalist Olena Mudra, triggered by a letter signed “Marik Fedirko”, Mudra reported to the Institute of Mass Information.
The journalist received a written response from the Uzhhorod District Prosecutor’s Office saying that the proceedings had been closed on 14 May 2026 on the grounds of Clause 1, Part 1, Article 284 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine (absence of a corpus delicti).
“Meaning, 10 months of pre-trial investigation, extensive public coverage and parliamentary oversight efforts later, the police established that the fraud alleged by the fictitious ‘Marik Fedirko’ never occurred,” the journalist said.
Mudra added that she still did not know all the details of the case, such as whether the investigators had identified the person behind ‘Marik Fedirko’s’ Facebook page, who had mailed the statement to the police through the Ukrposhta office in Perechyn, or what this person’s motives had been.
The journalist said it was also unclear whether the police planned to open a probe into ‘Marik Fedirko’ themselves for “purposefully filing a false report on a criminal offense.”
Olena Mudra said that she had never been questioned during the entire investigation. “My lawyers filed a request to review the case files, but the police denied them, claiming that I had no legal status in the proceedings. Accordingly, we had no right to petition for me to be questioned. And the police themselves, felt there was no need, apparently,” she explained.
The journalist believes that the case was closed thanks to public coverage, support from her colleagues, and parliamentary oversight.
“It is important for me now to thank everyone, because the proceedings being closed helped me, and not just to protect my reputation from a defamation attempt,” Olena Mudra said.
Previously
On 24 February 2026, NGL.media team collected clues that could lead to the persons responsible for the large-scale smear campaign targeting the Zakarpattia-based investigative journalist Olena Mudra, who reported on the potentially illegal wind power plant construction in the Runa valley
On 9 June 2025, Zakarpattia-based investigator journalist Olena Mudra said she was being targeted in a smear campaign in the media. She believes the campaign was triggered by her reporting. She said that several disreputable media outlets had published a deceptive article with false information about her sources of income (alleging she works for Russia and Russian money) and her family.
Olena believes that these incidents are connected with her investigations into the work of LLC Wind Parks Ukraine in Zakarpattia oblast.
Olena Mudra filed a police statement on obstruction of her lawful reporting and violation of her privacy on 27 June 2025. The data was entered into the Unified Register of Pre-Trial Investigations (URPTI) on the following day, 28 June.