KIEV, January 17. /TASS/. Friday’s searches of the home and office of Andrei Domansky, the lawyer of the RIA Novosti Ukraine news outlet’s chief editor Kirill Vyshinsky, were linked to the 2013 case concerning wrongful alienation of property, Spokesperson for the Ukrainian prosecutor general Larisa Sargan wrote on Twitter.

"As for the searches of places belonging to lawyer Domansky. There is a 2013 case concerning the alienation of the Kiev community property through privatization at knockdown prices. Those were court-authorized searches. Information will be provided once the legal proceedings are over," the tweet reads.

On Friday morning, investigators from the Office of Ukraine’s Prosecutor General conducted searches of Domansky’s Kiev home and office. The lawyer himself is currently in the city of Kherson, where he is studying the Vyshinsky case files, waiting for a court hearing of the request to extend the journalist’s arrest.

Domansky said that his work was the reason behind the searches, which, in his view, were aimed at exerting pressure on him as a lawyer.

Vyshinsky case

On May 15, 2018, the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) carried out a large-scale operation against RIA Novosti Ukraine staff members, accusing them of high treason. The news outlet’s Chief Editor Kirill Vyshinsky was arrested. The SBU issued a statement claiming that "a network of media structures, which Moscow used for carrying out a hybrid war" against Kiev had been exposed.

Charges against Vyshinsky are particularly based on a number of the journalist’s articles dedicated to the 2014 events in Crimea. If found guilty, the journalist may face up to 15 years. However, he pleaded not guilty.

Vyshinsky, originally a Ukrainian national, obtained Russian citizenship in 2015. He addressed Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko from the courtroom, renouncing his Ukrainian citizenship and saying he considered himself to be only a Russian national. He also addressed Russian President Vladimir Putin, asking for legal assistance in his release.