MOSCOW - The Moscow Red Cross intends to collect 170 million rubles from 18 Ukrainian and U.S. media outlets in a libel lawsuit, Russian Red Cross Moscow city department chairman Igor Trunov said.
“We are filing a libel lawsuit against 18 U.S. and Ukrainian media outlets based on collected evidence and a linguistic assessment with the Moscow Savyolovsky Court and demand 170 million rubles in favor of the Red Cross,” Trunov told Interfax on Jan. 14.
He said the media outlets had distorted materials released at the December 25 press conference pertaining to the Moscow Red Cross’ humanitarian convoy for Luhansk.
In addition, Trunov has appealed to the Russian Investigative Committee to open a criminal inquiry under part 2, article 280 (public extremist appeals), part 2 article 128 (slander) and article 319 (insult of a person in authority) of the Russian Criminal Code.
“We have also lodged a petition with the Russian Prosecutor General and Roskomnadzor (the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media) requesting to limit the access to online extremist resources of the aforementioned U.S. and Ukrainian media outlets,” he said.
