On 24 July 2023, a court in Moscow published information on a defamation lawsuit filed by Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, who demanded that Russian journalist Elizaveta Osetinskaya fully remove a recent Youtube video interview with human rights defender Olga Romanova. In the interview, Romanova claimed that Deripaska owned two private military companies, similar to Wagner, the infamous company involved in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and founded by Yevgeni Prigozhin. In his lawsuit, Deripaska claimed that this information is false, also demanding that Romanova officially deny her claim on Twitter. According to The Bell, a Russian independent online media founded by Osetinskaya, the Russian billionaire argued that private military companies are illegal in Russia, and that “citizen P.” (which The Bell claims is a reference to Prigozhin) earlier managed to prove in court that he had been defamated by claims that he had founded a private military company.
UPDATE: On 13 November 2023, a lawyer for Deripaska said that the billionaire withdrew his lawsuit after Osetinskaya agreed to remove the fragment of her interview in which Romanova mentioned his alleged private military companies. According to Osetinskaya, she only needed to cut ten seconds from the two-hour interview with Romanova.