Yanevsky appealed against investigation’s failure to act as to incident with Yulia Mendel

On October 15, journalist Danylo Yanevsky filed a complaint to the Kyiv Solomyansky District Court about failure to act of an investigator, who did not inform him about the start of the pre-trial investigation into the incident involving the press secretary of the President Yulia Mendel. It was reported on Facebook by the editor-in-chief of “Iceland” project Serhiy Grishin on October 15.

"As of October 15, 8 days after the complaint about the criminal offense has been filed, I was not notified of the pre-trial investigation being started and did not receive an excerpt from the National register of pre-trial decisions," as the complaint reads.

As IMI reported, on October 7, the journalist Danylo Yanevskiy filed a complaint with the Police Directorate in Solomyansky district in Kyiv about the fact of obstruction of the legitimate professional activities of Radio Svoboda journalists Serhiy Andrushko and Christopher Miller by Yulia Mendel, spokesman of the President Volodymyr Zelensky

IMI reported, in September in Kyiv, the press secretary of the President Yulia Mendel pushed away the Radio Svoboda correspondent Serhiy Andrushko in order prevent the journalist from asking some questions to Volodymyr Zelensky.

For her part, Yulia Mendel noted that she had not pushed Sergei Andrushko, and added that journalists should not violate the safety of the first person.

Radio Liberty has released a full video of the incident.

On September 27, the journalist of Radio Liberty Christopher Miller and his colleague for Livyy Bereh Natalya Shimkov claimerd that they had also recently encountered similar behavior by Presidential Press Secretary Yulia Mendel.

On September 30, Media Movement and several other media representatives called on the President Volodymyr Zelensky to respond publicly to that alarming tendency, when  the staff of the President's Office made obstruction to the journalists’ work.

On September 30, several independent journalists, “Initiative 34”, demanded to dismiss the presidential spokeswoman Yulia Mendel for her "unprofessional and unethical" behavior towards the press.

On October 1, at a briefing, President Volodymyr Zelensky made a joke with allusion to that scandal involving his press secretary Yulia Mendel, asking her at the press point: "Did you push anyone, Yul, didn’t you?"

Photo credit: Serhiy Gryshin's Facebook