Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
Lawyers from the “Svoi Liudy” (Bihus.Info) project helped activist and head of the civic initiative “Holka” and defender of Bilychanskyi Forest Iryna Fedoriv win a lawsuit against former mayor and leader of the New Faces party, Volodymyr Karpliuk. The Supreme Court saw no grounds to review the case and denied Karpliuk’s request to open proceedings on his cassation appeal.
The Supreme Court upheld the appellate court’s findings that Iryna Fedoriv’s publication was merely an expression of opinion, criticism, and informing the public about important events. Karpliuk’s complaint was unfounded.
The legal process lasted since 2024. Karpliuk went to court over Iryna Fedoriv’s authored column “How Dubinsky’s ‘canned goods’ dragged out the case concerning Bilychanskyi Forest” on Hlavkom, which discussed the possible involvement of the ex-mayor and his New Faces team in the destruction of Bilychanskyi Forest.
Karpliuk insisted that the publication contained false facts and harmed the reputation of his party, and he also demanded a retraction of the information alleging a connection between his political force and former People’s Deputy from Servant of the People, Oleksandr Dubinskyi.
In the first instance, at the Irpin City District Court, Karpliuk’s suit was partially granted, with the court finding only the information about the possible involvement of the New Faces party in the pillaging of Bilychanskyi Forest to be unreliable.
But at the Kyiv Court of Appeal that decision was fully overturned and Volodymyr Karpliuk’s claim was dismissed.
Iryna Fedoriv herself noted that losing in the first instance was predictable: in her observation, similar cases regularly end the same way.
She drew a parallel with another case against her brought by Servant of the People MP Oleksandr Horobets, who also won in the local court but was defeated on appeal, and whose complaint the Supreme Court deemed insignificant.
Recall that any journalist or activist can contact the “Svoi Liudy” project for legal advice or lawyer support via email at [email protected].
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Верховний Суд відмовив Карплюку у справі проти захисниці Біличанського лісу". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Bihus.Info.