On 25 August 2023, journalist Mariana Metelska announced that Technotorg, a Ukrainian company trading in agricultural machinery, had sued her for defamation for an article she published in July. In her article, Metelska claimed that Technotorg was selling spare parts, tractors and other agricultural machines produced in Russia and Belarus at a sales point near the Western Ukrainian city of Lutsk, where the journalist is based. The sales reportedly took place despite a national ban on trade with the two countries for their role in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Metelska announced that Technotorg demanded a payment of 750 thousand hryvnia (approximately 19 thousand euros) as well as a correction of the article. She added that the information about Technotorg was available on Youcontrol, a public Ukrainian database with information on legally registered companies: “this data was not invented and there were no invented facts in the article,” Metelska wrote in a Facebook post. “I consider this lawsuit to be a form of pressure on me as a journalist, and more generally on investigative journalists, so that [journalists] in Ukraine are afraid of conducting investigations,” Metelska added.
UPDATE: On 28 August 2023, a court in Horokhiv refused to accept Tekhnotorg’s lawsuit against Metelska, due to procedural errors in the lawsuit text. However, on September 20, the same court accepted the lawsuit, after Tekhnotorg deleted the procedural errors. A hearing in the case was planned for October 31.