Ukrainian singer Anastasia Prykhodko is suing the Presidential Administration of Petro Poroshenko for using her image in a political advert without her permission.
The first hearing was supposed to take place at Pechersk District Court in Kyiv on July 23, but was postponed to Aug. 15 under circumstances that Prykhodko says were suspicious.
Prykhodko says she was held up for an hour on her way to the hearing by the police, who were checking if her car was stolen, while the hearing was postponed after the defendants did not appear in court. The singer believes that the authorities are trying to drag out the case for as long as possible.
Darya Khudyakova, a press officer at the Presidential Administration, refused to comment on the case at the moment of the publication.
Prykhodko is suing over her appearance in a promotional video for Poroshenko which surfaced online in January, uploaded by Volyn Oblast Administration. The video featured high-profile figures praising Ukraine, with Poroshenko’s name popping up in the end, and the president seemingly taking credit for Ukraine’s successes.
The video went unnoticed for a few weeks, until Prykhodko found it, and was outraged.
A promotional video for President Petro Poroshenko that surfaced in January. Singer Anastasia Prykhodko, who says she was tricked into doing the video, is seen talking 40 seconds into it. (Youtube)
She told the hosts of “Breakfast with 1+1” TV show on July 24 that she had agreed only to help in making “a social video in support and development of Ukraine, about culture.”
She said that when Ukraine’s Culture Minister Yevhen Nyshchuk asked her to participate, she had no idea it would be a political advert for Poroshenko.
The Culture Ministry’s press office later said that the piece with Prykhodko had been cut out of the advert by Feb. 19, and the issue arose due to a “communication problem.”
However, Prykhodko was not satisfied with this answer. She is now demanding a compensation worth Hr 500,000 for the unlawful use of her image and a symbolic Hr 1 for a moral damage.
The singer said she has received no formal apology from the representatives of the Presidential Administration and her complaints were initially ignored, and so she was left with no choice but to start legal proceedings.
She says she has submitted all records of her correspondence with the video authors to the court, yet the producers have deleted all of their correspondence with her.
Prykhodko was not the only figure to have said to have been deceived. Ukrainian actor and director Ahtem Seitablayev, whose work includes the movie “Cyborgs,” was also featured in the video.
As well as the singer, he said that he was told the video would be about Ukrainian social and cultural achievements, not an advert supporting Poroshenko himself. However, his stance towards the video was less combative.
“If they had turned to me (and told me that it was a political advert for Poroshenko), perhaps, I would not have refused,” he said in February.
Prykhodko first rose to fame representing Russia at the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest, following her disqualification from the Ukrainian selection for singing a song in Russian, while only Ukrainian and English songs were admitted.
She performed on Maidan Nezalezhnosti during the EuroMaidan Revolution in 2013-2014 and later declared she would never perform in Russia again, following the annexation of Crimea and Russian invasion of the Donbas.
