What did Kyiv's Darnytskyi court decide on Stus book?
A retrospective on the 19 October 2020 ruling that banned a book about the poet Vasyl Stus, set beside the pandemic figures reported two days earlier.
What happened in a Kyiv courtroom on 19 October 2020? The Darnytskyi District Court of Kyiv granted a lawsuit by Viktor Medvedchuk seeking a ban on "The Vasyl Stus Case", a non-fiction book by Vakhtang Kipiani. The ruling meant the publication was banned.
The decision concerned a work of journalism, and the claimant was the person who had brought the suit. The court granted his claim in full as far as the ban was concerned.
The ruling came as the country was also dealing with the pandemic. On 17 October 2020, Ukraine reported a record 6,410 new COVID-19 cases in 24 hours, according to a statement from the NSDC. It also reported 109 deaths in the same period, the highest daily toll since the pandemic began.
The two developments were separate, but they marked the same few days in Ukrainian public life: a court decision touching on publishing, and record figures in the health crisis.
