Court bans issue of Kyiv Pravda newspaper

On 1 August the Economic Court banned the editorial board of the newspaper Kyiv Pravda from publishing the newspaper.

Tetyana Kotyuzhynska, lawyer for the National Union of Journalists recounts:

“The court ruling was taken in the absence of the editorial team. The latter only learned of the actual ruling by chance from the Register of Court Rulings. The ruling was at the application of the Kyiv Regional Administration and Regional Council. This is the first such case in Ukraine in my memory.  The Editor Vadim Dovhanov last year published material about a scandal over the opening of a prenatal centre.  The centre was opened and then all the equipment was returned to district and the regional hospitals. After that the editorial board stopped getting funding from the budget and now they’ve banned issue. We are preparing a statement from the National Union of Journalists and an appeal”.

The Head of the Kyiv City State Administration Press Service, Yaroslav Mazurzhevych told Telekritika that there was indeed such a ruling but it has not yet come into force.

The Chief Editor, Vadym Dolhanov calls the situation unprecedented. He says that the “raiders” in this case are the faction of the Party of the Regions in the Kyiv Regional Council and the Regional Administration.

In May the Kyiv regional authorities launched a new municipally-owned newspaper “Chas Kyivshchyny” which removed the Kyiv Pravda team from among the co-owners of the newspaper (also municipally-owned). The decision was passed at a session of the Regional Council at the end of May.

From a report at Telekritika