Ukrayinski Novyny news agency to file lawsuit against authors of website Myrotvorets

Ukrayinski Novyny Ukrainian news agency will demand that leaders of website Myrotvorets bear responsibility for disclosure of personal data of journalists accredited in Russia.

This is said in the agency’s statement.

“Four Ukrainian correspondents were among the journalists whose personal data had been made public. Among them are correspondent of the Ukrayinski Novyny agency Khrystyna Butko and UNIAN news agency correspondent Roman Tsymbaliuk, famous for asking Russian President Vladimir Putin pointed questions at press conferences,” the statement reads.

Ukrayinski Novyny news agency believes that Myrotvorets website violated the law by publishing the personal data of journalists, slandering them and jeopardizing their lives, calling them “collaborators with the aggressor country.”

“I have not seen greater idiocy. Are people, who worked in Moscow in difficult circumstances and under serious psychological pressure, trying to identify Ukrainian position and oppose Russian propaganda, ‘collaborators with the aggressor’? Has Roman Tsymbaliuk, who called Putin aggressor in a live television broadcast, also collaborated with him? Myrotvorets will have to bear responsibility for slander,” Dmytro Kuzmin, the editor-in-chief of the Ukrayinski Novyny news agency, said.

He believes that such actions of Myrotvorets disservices Ukraine before the western allies and play into the hands of Russian propaganda.

“Without any doubts, Moscow was the happiest with the actions of website of Anton Herashchenko. This will allow Russia once again point to the inadequacy of some of the representatives of our government. Foreign journalists will not stop to go to Russia while Ukrainian ones may think whether they should further try to defend our interests or just honestly do their work in Moscow, not laying themselves open to attacks in their homeland,” Kuzmin said.

As reported, website Myrotvorets published the updated list of foreign journalists who cooperated with Russia.

Website Myrotvorets became at the center of the scandal on May 10 when it published the lists of journalists who had been accredited in the “DPR.” The lists contained the personal data of journalists working for BBC, Reuters, AFP, The Independent, Ceska televize, CNN, Bloomberg, Aljazeera, AP, Liberation, ITAR-TASS, RT and other media outlets.

After a barrage of criticism from journalists and human rights defenders, as well as after launch of criminal case against the website’s volunteers, the leaders of Myrotvorets said they closed the project.

Later, the web resource resumed its work and updated the list of journalists.

Head of the EU Delegation to Ukraine Jan Tombinski believes that publication of the data of foreign journalists, who were working in the occupied Donbas and were accredited by the unrecognized local authorities, would damage the reputation of Ukraine.