Lawyers of leader of the European Solidarity party Petro Poroshenko have filed a lawsuit against journalist Dmytro Gordon to Shevchenkivsky District Court of Kyiv, the press service of the political force reported.
“Gordon has been asked to recognize the information he has disseminated as unreliable. The usual additional requirements in such cases for the court to oblige the defendant to personally refute slanderous statements on the air of the same media outlet in which they were made are not stated,” the press service quotes the words of Poroshenko’s lawyer Illia Novikov.
“This is due to the fact that Dmytro Gordon’s apologies are not of interest to the plaintiff and can no longer change anything. Claims for pecuniary compensation for moral damage were not declared as well. The very fact of public distortion of the circumstances of the seizure and liberation of Mariupol in 2014 is of fundamental importance for society. We are ready to give the defendant an opportunity to focus on explanations on the main issues, without being distracted by the discussion of the amount of compensation,” he said.
The press service says that the capture of Mariupol by Russia-led forces took place in May 2014, before the presidential elections.
“On June 7, Poroshenko took the oath of office as the fifth President of Ukraine, and a week later Mariupol was finally liberated. There was no order for the Ukrainian army to leave Mariupol and the withdrawal of troops. Immediately after the scandalous broadcast, when many commentators pointed out to Gordon that his words were obviously false, he publicly refused to admit that he was wrong and released a video in which he claimed that he was ready to appear in court,” Novikov said.
