In the early hours of July 31, a message appeared on the outer wall of the Kherson City Council: “The killers of Katya Gandziuk will be punished.”
That message — likely spray painted — was intended to draw attention to the one-year anniversary of the fatal attack on Kateryna Gandziuk, a local anti-corruption activist and Kherson city official. It was put there by her friends and fellow activists.
On July 31, 2018, Gandziuk was doused in a liter of sulfuric acid as she left her home in Kherson, a city of around 289,000 people located around 550 kilometers to the south of Kyiv. She died in a Kyiv hospital three months later.
Gandziuk was a member of the Kherson Oblast Council who publicly accused high-ranking local officials of profiteering from illegal timber smuggling. A year later, the organizers of the attack have not been arrested. Meanwhile, a group of friends and activists have been calling for justice in her murder.
On July 31, they carried out a series of demonstrations at the oblast police headquarters and at the houses of suspects in Gandziuk’s killing. They gathered outside and burnt flares, graffitied walls and posted photos and videos of their demonstrations on their Facebook page.
A message saying “The killers of Katya Gandziuk will be punished” appeared – likely spray painted – on the outer wall of the Kherson City Council on July 31, 2019, the one-year anniversary of the fatal attack on local activist Kateryna Gandziuk. (Who Ordered Katya Gandziuk? / Facebook)
The top suspect in the killing Vladyslav Manger, the head of the Kherson Oblast Council. He was released from detention on bail of nearly Hr 2.5 million ($93,600) for the time of the investigation and continues to serve at the Kherson Oblast Council.
The middleman who communicated the order to the attackers is suspected to be Oleksiy Levin, a former aide to Mykola Stavytsky, a member of the Kherson Oblast Council and former adviser to Manger. He has been put on the wanted list and is reportedly hiding abroad.
Another suspected intermediary is Ihor Pavlovsky, a former aide to Mykola Palamarchuk, a lawmaker in the Ukrainian parliament. Pavlovsky was arrested but then placed under house arrest because of his poor health. He was spotted at a football match in Odesa on July 28.
On June 5, the five men who planned and carried out the attack on Gandziuk were handed down jail sentences. The group received a payment of $5,000 for the attack.
Kherson native and Donbas war veteran Serhiy Torbin, 42, was identified as the coordinator of the attack and was sentenced to six years and six months in prison. He recruited four of his acquaintances to carry out the crime.
Mykyta Hrabchuk, 24, who threw the acid on Gandziuk, received a six-year prison term. Two other abettors, Volodymyr Vasyanovych, 25, and Vyacheslav Vyshnevsky, 29, were sentenced to four years each in prison.
Viktor Horbunov, 28, who procured the acid but was not present at the moment of the assault, was sentenced to three years in prison.
The court took into consideration the fact that the five men had earlier pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. Prosecutors also changed the charges against them from murder to physical assault that caused the death of the victim.
According to Ukrainian law, the time they spent in detention will be doubled and counted toward their sentence.
Viktor Gandziuk, father of the slain activist, said that he had requested and been granted a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky. The meeting was “encouraging,” he told BBC Ukraine in an interview published on July 29.
Manger also requested a meeting with Zelensky on June 20.
During his election campaign before he became president, Zelensky appealed to his rival, then-President Petro Poroshenko, to “arrest the killers of Kateryna Gandziuk.”
On July 31, Viktor Gandziuk published a post on Facebook (warning: link contains graphic photos) marking the one-year anniversary of the attack.
“It’s already been a year. The executors received laughable sentences. Those who ordered and organized the attack are at liberty. The investigation is stopped. That’s our country,” he wrote.
