Last month, Germany’s Hamburg Regional Court issued a ruling that has significant implications for journalism, sanctions policy, and the standards of public accusation in Europe.
The court prohibited Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), one of Germany’s most influential newspapers, from repeating allegations it made back in 2023 about billionaire Alisher Usmanov.
The judges concluded that a number of statements in the article which had linked Usmanov to informal Kremlin influence, disputed asset transfers, and editorial interference, were not sufficiently substantiated, and therefore not allowed under German media law.
FAZ, as stated by court press service, was unable to provide sufficient evidence to support its claims. It limited itself to a condemnation of the court’s decision as a threat to press freedom, since “the criteria applied by the Hamburg court would make reporting on individual actors under authoritarian rule extremely difficult.”
The decision was notable not because courts rarely rule against newspapers (they do), but because it followed a pattern that has emerged in recent years. A growing number of European courts have ordered corrections, retractions, or bans on the repetition of allegations made during the early months of the EU’s post-2022 sanctions wave, when reporting often relied on fragile sources, intelligence assessments, or circumstantial inference rather than independently verifiable evidence.
In the FAZ case, the court also barred the further dissemination of claims originating from the late Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny that had been cited in the article. The ruling did not reassess Navalny’s political legacy, but instead focused narrowly on whether specific factual assertions could be legally sustained. The court found they could not.
This distinction matters. Courts don’t arbitrate on morality in politics, and their judgments are not supposed to settle debates about Russia, Ukraine, or the legitimacy of sanctions regimes. What they do decide, often uncomfortably, is whether an actor crossed the line between allegation and proof.
The FAZ article in question, titled “At the Kremlin’s Bidding,” was published in April 2023, during a time when European media operated under pressure to explain and justify sweeping sanctions imposed on Russian-linked wealth. In that context, claims about informal influence, asset control, or political links often carried heavy implications even when phrased cautiously. German judges later concluded that such implications, without sufficient evidence, violated personal rights protections enshrined in law.
The consequences were not merely symbolic. German prosecutors used similar allegations when opening investigations under the Foreign Trade and Payments Act. In December 2025, four years later, they closed the inquiry without filing charges, and with the case not making it beyond preliminary stages.
The Usmanov rulings are part of a broader legal pattern. Between 2023-2026, courts in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and elsewhere ordered corrections or removals in several cases involving media reporting on sanctioned individuals. In some instances, publications acknowledged errors. In others, courts imposed prohibitions backed by potential fines.
This does not mean that journalists acted in bad faith, although in some cases it could have been so. It does suggest, however, that the boundary between investigation and assumption became blurred during an extraordinary political moment — and that courts are now methodically redrawing it.
For newsrooms, the lesson is uncomfortable but important; geopolitical urgency doesn’t justify compromising evidentiary standards. For policymakers, the question is more delicate. When sanctions are justified publicly with claims later found to not be substantiated, the credibility of the framework is at risk.
None of this implies that courts are rewriting history or absolving anyone of political responsibility. It does imply that, years later, Europe is entering a quieter phase of reckoning. It is one in which legal standards, rather than headlines, are determining which claims endure.
