On February 15, 2020, the State Bureau of Investigation handed over to Tetyana Chornovol, an active participant in the Revolution of Dignity, former People's Deputy, an indictment for the premeditated murder of the Party of Regions employee Volodymyr Zakharov during the events of February 18, 2014. She faces life imprisonment under Article 115 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine "Premeditated Murder". According to Tetyana, the investigation justified its accusation by the fact that she was identified at the PR office, and all the others were unidentified persons, which is why Chornovol will be held accountable.
For the human rights initiative “Pravotvorets,” Chornovol describes those events:
“There was a rally near the Verkhovna Rada, and then armed “titushki” began to kill protesters. The “titushki” were dressed in the symbols of the “Party of Regions” and, under the supervision of the “Berkut”, beat up the Maidan protesters with bats and firearms. Mariinsky Park and Instytutska Street were surrounded. And then the idea came to my mind to initiate an assault on the office of the “Party of Regions” and distract Yanukovych’s punitive detachments. There were not so many “titushki” and Berkut officers ready to kill. I wanted to use the assault to distract the attention of the killers from our surrounded people. We went to the office of the “Party of Regions”, threw Molotov cocktails to “smoke out” the office workers, the building caught fire. The assault developed very sluggishly, for more than an hour. We searched for the office workers, everyone was allowed to leave. Then the body of the only deceased engineer, Volodymyr Zakharov, was found. "The investigation has not yet determined exactly when and how his death occurred."
There is no evidence in the case of her involvement in premeditated murder or arson, there is only evidence of participation in the storming of the office. According to lawyer Iryna Kuzina, the forensic medical examination indicated both Zakharov's poisoning with combustion products and a blow to the head with a hard blunt object. The experts concluded that he received a one-centimeter deep head wound and fell from it. He then lost a lot of blood and suffocated on the first floor near the exit from the rear. Chornovol was near the building at that time, not inside. In addition, the fire technical examination ruled out a causal connection between Chornovol's direct actions and the fire that broke out during the storming.
Zakharov did not leave the burning building, because until the last moment he was busy cleaning up compromising material about the “Regionals”. The prosecution has not yet established who exactly hit him, what the reasons were, and who gave him the order to stay, but has already sent the case to court.
“The important witness with whom the deceased spoke an hour after the start of the assault was not even identified by the investigation. The investigation had no desire to interrogate the witness with whom he last spoke. The investigator later interrogated him without my presence and, as I later learned from the interrogation protocol, asked “leftist” questions. He was not interested in the circumstances of Zakharov’s death. The investigation is all against me. The main evidence in the case is a video recording in which I talk to Maidan activists that they need to bring Molotov cocktails and throw them there, and then I say the following phrase: “Then they will all run away.” Do you understand? And the SBI prescribes a motive for me – the murder of employees and guards of the Party of Regions office. This is revenge for Maidan,” Chornovol emphasizes.
As a reminder, our human rights initiative previously wrote that the investigation into the case was led by the current MP from the pro-Russian party “OPZZH” Hryhoriy Mamka, who in 2014-2016 oversaw the Chornovol case as deputy head of the Main Investigation Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. “Intentional murder” is the only article of the Criminal Code that is not covered by the amnesty for Maidan protesters. In June 2020, MPs from “Servant of the People” and “OPZZH”, including Mamka, filed a petition with the Constitutional Court of Ukraine to cancel the amnesty for participants in the Revolution of Dignity.
The Chornovol case will be considered on the merits by the Pechersk District Court of Kyiv.
"Pravotvorets" will continue to closely monitor this case and inform society about the perpetrators of political persecution against patriots.
