Rivne judge loses lawsuit against journalists

The Supreme Court ruled that the incriminating information about the Rivne City Court judge Oleksandr Tymoshchuk, shared in multiple journalistic reports, is not misleading or defamatory, according to the Court's verdict of April 9, 2025.

The journalist whom the judge sued, Victoria Mamotiuk, reported on Facebook that the trial had lasted for 10 years.

“We won in the first instance twice, once on appeal, and once finished in a 'draw': supposedly, the information that I published was false, but there was no need to retract it. Neither here nor there. And at last, the Supreme Court put a full stop to it and confirmed the journalists were in the right,” Victoria Mamotiuk said.

With this ruling, the Supreme Court satisfied part of the claims by Victoria Mamotiuk, who appealed to the court after the Rivne District Court and Rivne Court of Appeal ruled that some of the reports about the judge may have contained inaccurate information. The court also ordered Judge Oleksandr Tymoshchuk to pay a court fee.

Rivne City Court judge Oleksandr Tymoshchuk. Photo by Chetverta Vlada

In its ruling, the Supreme Court notes that the courts that partly sided with Oleksandr Tymoshchuk failed to take into account that Victoria Mamotiuk’s reports were about bribery in domestic courts — a topic that, in the Supreme Court’s opinion, is of public interest.

The Supreme Court also repeatedly refers to the case law of the European Court of Human Rights regarding the importance of the media and freedom of expression.

“The Supreme Court emphasizes that the news stories mention the plaintiff as a judge, and the statements used by the authors point to an illegal practice that may constitute a crime. Given the gravity of the allegations, these statements could undermine the authority of the judiciary. [...] The reasons given by the courts to justify the interference with the right to freedom of expression were not 'relevant or sufficient,'” the Supreme Court ruled.

Previously

As the IMI reported, in 2015, Oleksandr Tymoshchuk filed a defamation lawsuit against Victoria Mamotiuk, who at that time was a journalist for the online news outlet Holosno. In addition to retracting the information, the judge demanded 200 thousand hryvnias in moral damages. However, as stated in the Supreme Court ruling, the courts previously closed the proceedings in the case over the judge’s refusal to collect the compensation, and this decision was never appealed.

In addition to Victoria Mamotiuk, the lawsuit targeted the platforms on which the reports were distributed, such as the websites Vse and Holosno, former journalist Oleksiy Kryvosheyev, and ex-lawyer Liana Dynovska, who is now the director of the Rivne City Center for Social Services.

The reports that Oleksandr Tymoshchuk tried to declare inaccurate concerned the judge’s alleged abuses of office, in particular in the case of apartment fraud.

“It all started with a story where an elderly lady suddenly 'lost' an apartment. The documents disappeared straight from the judge’s hands, the apartment ended up in the hands of a realtor, and Tymoshchuk himself was far from an extra in this scheme,” Victoria Mamotiuk said on Facebook.

Judge Oleksandr Tymoshchuk has been a figure in journalistic investigations and exposés. He has been accused of bribery and other abuses of judicial office.