A fake statement for the police, an AI-generated video, dozens of posts with slander, and no suspects. Last summer, Olena Mudra, a well-known investigative journalist from the Transcarpathian region, became the main target of a large-scale discrediting campaign after her publications about the disputable construction of a wind farm.
Several weeks later, NGL.media found significant clues that could lead to the campaign organizers and sent them to the police via a journalist. Yes, the law enforcement agencies didn’t manage to find anything in half a year.
Meanwhile, the police have still been carrying on the investigation regarding Olena, which was initiated pursuant to an evidently fake and anonymous charge. And recently, the Ministry of Energy gave the green light to the scandalous construction.
This investigation has become possible thanks to the financial support from the participants of the NGL.media community, who have access to special content and possibilities.
Last July, the Transcarpathian police received a letter with serious accusations against Olena Mudra, a journalist, and Oksana Stankevych-Volosianchuk, an ecologist. The author of the letter, a man called Marik Fedirko, accused both women of embezzling tens of thousands of dollars, which they had allegedly received as a grant to conduct “an ecological LGBT-meeting” in the mountain valley of Runa, but organized nothing.
The envelope with accusations against Olena Mudra and Oksana Stankevych-Volosianchuk (a photo by NGL.media)
The evident absurdity of these accusations didn’t stop the Uzhhorod district police department from commencing a criminal investigation into alleged fraud against the journalist and the ecologist two days later. By the way, this case is still ongoing.
Meanwhile, if the investigators made at least slight efforts in half a year, they could have confirmed at least the facts discovered by NGL.media in several days. Firstly, a person named Marik Vasyliovych Fedirko doesn’t exist in Ukraine. Secondly, there is an office in Kyiv at the specified return address. Thirdly, the author of the letter calls himself a coordinator of an NGO “LGBT Aktiv Ukraine”, yet there is no such organization either.
A letter to the police is just one part of the attack, coordinated against Olena Mudra. Outright slander was disseminated via dozens of websites with doubtful reputations and in Facebook via the account of Marik Fedirko, which has over three thousand subscribers. Instead of a real photo, the owner of this account uses the picture of Flavio Silva, a Brazilian, which is proven by the services of facial recognition.
Olena Mudra directly associated this campaign with her work on the protection of the Carpathians from the construction of wind farms.
“Psychologically, the attack caught up with me at the end of last year. I really felt tired and disgusted by everything that had happened. But now, after psychotherapy sessions, I have my resources again,” said the journalist to NGL.media. “To endure this situation with minimal losses, and, more importantly, not to fall out of my profession, I relied on the support of my loved ones, the journalist community here and abroad, and the organizations working with human rights, focused on the persecution of women. After all, such attacks are the risks of our profession; one should be ready for them.”
In addition, the Wind Parks of Ukraine company MC Wind Parks of Ukraine LLC is controlled by Eduard Mkrtchan and Maksym Efimov, intending to build wind farms in the mountain valley of Runa, brought two suits against Olena Mudra. Both suits are related to the protection of business reputation and contain demands for recovery of UAH 50 thousand in moral damages. One suit was left without any consideration by the court, because the complainant submitted this application. As for the second suit, it was partially satisfied The court of the first instance deemed two separate phrases from the post of the NGO Code 21, founded by Olena Mudra, to be invalid. The court decreased the recovery of the moral damage from UAH 50 thousand to UAH 20 thousand. The ruling is not valid yet, now it is appealed.
“The aim of the claimant and those behind the persecution campaign is to make me cease talking, to refuse from this topic,” Olena concludes.
Of course, the Wind Parks of Ukraine deny any involvement in the discrediting campaign against the journalist.
A finished foundation for the wind farm in the mountain valley of Runa, July 2025. To estimate the scale, pay attention to a human figure (a photo by NGL.media)
Since the persecution hasn’t stopped, Olena Mudra went to the police, and on June 28, 2025, they started the official investigation into the fact of interference with the journalist’s practice. Almost eight months have passed since that time, but the police still have not been able or willing to find out the things that are not hard to find.
A letter from Perechyn
It is actually possible to establish the mastermind behind the campaign against Olena Mudra. NGL.media decided to focus on physical clues rather than the digital ones.
The paper letter with the accusations against her about embezzling grant finances was sent to the police on July 1, a few days after her addressing the police regarding the persecution. The letter was sent from the post department in the Narodna square in the town of Perechyn, near the building of the town council. There are many video cameras in the square which could help identify the sender.
However, it proved difficult to access the video. At first, Ivan Pohoriliak, the head of the Perechyn town council, promised to give us a copy of the video for that day. Together with his deputy, we even started choosing the cameras necessary for the analysis. But suddenly, the mayor came back and decided to inquire why we needed it. As soon as he found out our reasons, he changed his mind and prohibited his deputy to give us the recordings.
NGL.media journalists and the deputy mayor of Perechyn look through the recordings of the street surveillance cameras (a photo by NGL.media)
The video recordings from the surveillance cameras are kept by the town council for only one month. As July was coming to an end, NGL.media immediately passed the information about the existing recording to the journalist’s lawyer. She made an official request to the town council and the police to obtain this video in her client’s interests.
On July 30, the Perechyn town council refused to give the video recording, saying that the recording contained “the images of third parties”, thus it required their written consent, or a court ruling, or an investigator’s order. The police satisfied the lawyer’s request about obtaining the video only on August 5, and only two weeks later, on August 19, they officially addressed the town council. The response was predictable – after 30 days, the recordings from the surveillance cameras are automatically deleted and cannot be restored.
In other words, the town council and, personally, the mayor of Perechyn, Ivan Pohoriliak, knew about the need to keep the video recording but did nothing to protect it. The key evidence has been destroyed.
Mysterious Orysia B.
This is not the only clue found by us during our investigation. NGL.media managed to find out the mobile phone number of the sender, used to send a registered letter from the post office. In Telegram, this number is set as Orysia B., and there is a bouquet of roses instead of an avatar.
“Orysia” didn’t pick up the phone and didn’t reply to the messages in the messenger. We noted that the phone was mostly used in the evening – that’s when two blue ticks appeared near the sent messaged, so they had been viewed. We made several attempts to provoke the recipient to answer us, even suggested a delivery of flowers, yet with no results.
There was only one time, as we were returning from the Transcarpathian region, that “Orysia B.” answered the call, but she cut it immediately. She didn’t respond anymore, and some time later just turned the phone off.
At the request of NGL.media, the analyst of Molfar Intelligence Institute analysed this phone number. According to their data, the Telegram account was probably created in July 2024, and is a member of only one chat, Perechyn-Uzhhorod. No other social networks or messengers are related to this number, except Telegram, which proves that this phone was not used for personal purposes.
The sender of the letter could have been found by the data of the card, used to pay for the services of the post office. The journalist’s lawyer asked the police to request this data from Ukrposhta, but the investigators haven’t yet obtained it.
Half a year with no results
The press service of the Transcarpathian police verbally informed NGL.media that they are still waiting for the results of the expertise on the ordered posts against Olena Mudra. This expertise should establish whether these materials contain any calls to persecute the journalist or interfere with her work.
In Mudra’s opinion, the police don’t know, based on whose report they initiated the case against her, and haven’t even interrogated the owners of the websites where slander was published. The questions of who published these materials and pursuant to whose order are still not answered.
As of the moment of publishing this article, the Transcarpathian police refused NGL.media’s request for their extended comments regarding the case investigation.
This story is far from being the first or the last one, but it is a good illustration of a common trend – while investigating crimes against journalists, journalists have only themselves to rely on. Even when there are specific clues, even when there are video recordings, if there is no political will, there will be no investigation.
Meanwhile, the construction of the wind farm, consisting of 30 wind-driven generators in the mountain valley of Runa, which was why this story started, received the green light from the government. And it is merely a beginning of a large-scale project, within which the Wind Parks of Ukraine intend to build 334 wind-driven generators in the Carpathian mountain valleys.
Oleksandra Hubytska with the involvement of Natalia Onysko and Maryana Verbovska, editor Oleh Onysko, translation Nelya Plakhota, cover Viktoria Demchuk
