Lawyers for the fifth President, the leader of the European Solidarity party, Petro Poroshenko, announced that the first libel suit against Dmitry Gordon will be filed in the near future.
As the lawyer Ilya Novikov noted during a briefing at the Interfax-Ukraine agency, this is a statement by Dmitry Gordon on May 7 on the air of the Savik Shuster’s Freedom of Speech program.
“On May 7 this year on the air of the talk show“ Freedom of Speech ”, the famous journalist Dmitry Gordon released some words that should have consequences. It was he who stated and did so in the form of a statement that the fifth President of Ukraine Poroshenko “entered into a criminal conspiracy with Putin and ordered the Ukrainian army to leave Mariupol as part of this criminal deal,” the lawyer explains.
“Dmitry Gordon has a long history of commenting on the policies of the fifth President. Nobody disputes his right not to love Poroshenko and talk about it. However, we are talking about abuse of freedom of speech, ”says Novikov. The lawyer noted that libel, even if it is accompanied by the words “I think”, “this is my opinion,” and then not an opinion, but a statement follows, does not enjoy immunity.
“We announce that in the near future, in the coming days, as soon as all the necessary formalities are completed, the first such claim will be submitted on behalf of Petro Poroshenko to Gordon, demanding that the dissemination of this statement be declared unreliable,” said lawyer Novikov.
“Dmitry Gordon will have the opportunity to express his opinion on this matter. If he believes that this is still an opinion, and not a statement, he can say about it – that he does not know about it reliably, but he thinks so. He will have the opportunity to report what evidence he has, if any. I think they are not there,” Ilya Novikov noted.
“One way or another, it will be possible to give an explanation not in the format of a talk show, which has little to do with anything, but in the format of a formalized judicial procedure. This has been going for a long time, and obviously this moment has come. We chose this way to communicate it publicly because Gordon is a public person. And the issue of freedom of speech is an important issue. And abuse of freedom of speech is an integral part of it. And we need to talk about it out loud,” Ilya Novikov emphasized.
