Russian cassation court upholds ruling satisfying Evgeny Prigohzin’s lawsuit against Meduza
A court of cassation upheld the Moscow City Court’s ruling on oligarch Evgeny Prigozhin’s defamation lawsuit against Meduza and editor-in-chief Ivan Kopalkov.
Human rights lawyer Sergey Badamshin, who is representing Meduza and Kopalkov in the proceedings, informed the Telegram channel “Pravozashita” about the ruling on Tuesday, September 28.
In May 2021, the Moscow City Court ordered Meduza to retract an article about Prigozhin within 10 days and pay him 80,000 rubles in compensation for damages (about $1,100 by today’s exchange rate).
The co-defendants in the case, Dovod editor-in-chief Ilya Kosygin and journalist Maxim Shevchenko, were also found guilty of defamation and ordered to pay 80,000 rubles in compensation each.
The Moscow City Court’s decision overturned a previous district court ruling that threw out Prigozhin’s lawsuit against Meduza back in February.
The lawsuit was filed over a Dovod interview with Maxim Shevchenko, who was heading the Communist Party (KPRF) faction in the Vladimir Region’s legislative assembly at the time. In the interview, Shevchenko commented on another defamation lawsuit filed by Prigozhin, in which he was a co-defendant alongside Alexey Navalny and Lyubov Sobol, among others.
In its publication, Dovod attached a hyperlink to a Meduza article from June 2016 to the following comment from Shevchenko: “He [Prigozhin] is a twice-convicted felon, one of the charges is for involving minors in prostitution.”
