‘Vigilante’ Ukrainian lawmaker Lyashko gets slammed by Amnesty International report

The problem is,
from the legal point of view, his actions are no better than those of insurgents. That has alarmed human rights watchdog Amnesty International,
which on Aug. 6 issued a damning report about the lawmaker’s controversial actions.

“Oleg Lyashko is
supposed to be a lawmaker, but he has taken law into his own hands,” the report
writes. “’Glory to Ukraine, death to the occupiers’ is his rallying cry.”

Sometimes, it
seems that he takes his own motto quite literally. On May 23, at least five gunmen
from Lyashko’s volunteer battalion stormed the local government building in
Torez, Donetsk Oblast, and killed a
pro-Russian separatist while fatally maiming another in a gangland-style
assassination.

One man, Roman,
34, was shot in the head and abdomen, and was found face-down in a pool of
blood in his office when the Kyiv Post arrived on the scene. The second
man, Alexander, sustained three gunshot wounds to his neck and abdomen and
later succumbed to his wounds in the hospital. Both men appeared to have been
unarmed, local police and forensic experts at the scene told the Kyiv Post.

According to
relatives, Roman and Alexander were not separatist fighters, but merely
activists who made phone calls and prepared flyers for the movement. Mira, a
relative, described Alexander as an average man who “only wanted to live a
normal life.”

The body of Roman, a pro-Russian separatist killed by members of Lyashko’s battalion, lays face down in a pool of blood after being shot and killed. Lyashko boasted on Facebook that day that his battalion had killed the “terrorist.”

Immediately
after the attack, the lawmaker bragged of the killings on Facebook.

“Soldiers from
Battalion Lyashko ‘Ukraine’ just liquidated and released from the Colorado the
executive committee of Torez, Donetsk Oblast. Two terrorists killed, nobody
among our soldiers suffered there. Glory to Ukraine!” he wrote. Several hours
and more than 5,000 “likes” later, he deleted the post.

But the Kyiv Post
found a cached mobile version of it here.

Lyashko posted this message about killing “terrorists” in Torez on May 23. He later deleted the post.

Lyashko himself
views his work more as efficient policing, however.

“Considering
that 90 percent of the so-called law enforcers betrayed their oath, there is no
police in Donbass,” he told the Kyiv Post. “This is why we have to do this work
to document and capture criminals. If the government and law enforcers are
inactive, the patriots must act. Especially now, when Ukraine is fighting for
its independence.”

But Amnesty International
has a different take on his acts.

“Though he
doesn’t have the right to detain people, he abducts them and abuses them
verbally and physically while the camera is rolling. His and other similar
websites feature numerous video clips showing what appear to be cases of
abduction and violations of the rights to fair trial, liberty and security of
the person, and the right not to be subjected to torture and other ill-treatment,”
the organization’s report says.

In one case, on
July 7, two days after insurgents retreated from their former stronghold of
Sloviansk, Lyashko arrived in a white armored van with his convoy of cars
carrying gunmen from his battalion in tow. He pulled up to the city hall building,
used previously as the separatists’ local headquarters, and strutted inside.

Dressed in all
black clothing and an armored vest, as well as a blue and yellow armband, he
rummaged through offices and desk drawers, and gave journalists an impromptu
tour of the place.

On the stairs he
stopped a tallish man in glasses who identified himself as the head of
Sloviansk’s city council and ordered him into an office. There, Lyashko
chastised him for supporting the “terrorists” who had previously occupied the
city. Shouting him down, he ordered the man to pen his resignation as several
gunmen stood by.

The tension was
cut momentarily after Lyashko, dictating the resignation’s words to the man,
told him to write that he had chosen to leave his position of his own volition.

“You must write
it, or else people will think I forced you to do this,” a grinning Lyashko told
the man.

Today Lyashko
travels around with a well-armed and well-dressed battalion called “Shakhtarsk,”
who often feature in his photos. In a Facebook post on Aug. 5, Lyashko suggests
that members of the battalions are heroes who “have to immediately after the
war become prosecutors, judges etc., because today the system of law
enforcement and arbitration is so rotten that it deprives the country of the
future.”

Lyashko told the
Kyiv Post that officially the battalion is part of the Interior Ministry troops
and “I don’t order them around.” But in his post he had said that he is proud
of the fact that many militants in his battalion are members of his Radical
Party, which will run for parliament in the early election which is expected to
take place at the end of October.

Piggy-backing on
Lyashko’s heavy presence in the media and social networks, the party has gained
popularity at an impressive rate. Last month’s poll by the Kyiv International
Institute of Sociology even showed that his party leading the parliamentary
race, estimating it would receive some 23 percent of the popular vote.

Former political
behemoth Batkivshchyna, as well as Vitali Klitschko’s Ukrainian Democratic
Alliance for Reform (UDAR) trailed behind with 13 and 11 percent, respectively.
The poll was conducted nationwide between June 20 and July 2, and has a margin
of error of 3.3 percent.

Volodymyr Fesenko, a political consultant, calls Lyashko a “militant populist” and “an extremely talented demagogue” who rode the wave of EuroMaidan to a new level of popularity. 

“He is popular with the protesting electorate who are not happy that life is getting worse, that the situation has not changed and there is now even a war,” Fesenko told the Kyiv Post on Aug. 6.

He says Lyashko was helped out by the team of Serhiy Lyovochnkin, who allegedly thought up the symbol of his party – the pitchfork. Moreover, Lyovochkin’s Inter TV channel has given him a heavy amount of air time for years. 

Contacted by the Kyiv Post, Lyovochkin declined to provide comments about Lyashko.

Who is Oleh Lyashko?

A native of
Chernihiv, Lyashko grew up in an orphanage. A former journalist, 42-year-old Lyashko is no stranger
to controversy. In 2010, he featured in a sex scandal when an unknown person
released a video of a 1993 interrogation by a prosecutor during which Lyashko
gives a detailed account of a sexual relationship with a man called Borya.

He was swiftly expelled
from Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna faction following the scandal and became
the butt of many jokes. For years after he went out of his way to prove the
tape a farce, going so far as to post topless photographs of himself with his
wife at home, and other macho images to prove that he was not gay and had no
gay relationships.

A shirtless Lyashko poses with his wife in a photo shared on his Facebook timeline.

On top of the
scandal, that same year President Viktor Yushchenko accused him publicly of
featuring in several criminal cases related to embezzlement of public funds. He
had been sentenced to six years of prison, and confiscation of property in 1994
for embezzlement and fraud, but was released a year later and had his criminal
record erased in 1998.

Kyiv Post deputy chief editor Katya Gorchinskaya and editor Christopher J. Miller can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected].