Video footage supposedly shows Oleh Hrytsak, the son of acting Security Service of Ukraine Chief Vasyl Hrytsak, as a prosecutor at a court hearing against protesters during the 2013-2014 EuroMaidan Revolution.
The footage was provided to the Kyiv Post by lawyer Oleksandr Lemenov, an acquaintance of Oleh Hrytsak and a columnist for Ukrainska Pravda and Insider.
It is intended to prove that Oleh Hrytsak should have been fired under Ukraine’s lustration law. This legislation envisages dismissing prosecutors and judges implicated in criminal cases against EuroMaidan Revolution protesters.
Channel 5 footage appears to show Vasyl Hrytsak’s son Oleh starting from 1:14 (left) at a court hearing against EuroMaidan Revolution activists.
Oleh Hrytsak’s recent appointment as a deputy of the Svyatoshin district’s top prosecutor in Kyiv has also prompted nepotism allegations.
Olena Hiklianska, a spokeswoman for the Security Service of Ukraine, better known as the SBU, confirmed by phone that Oleh Hrytsak was Vasyl Hrytsak’s son but denied that Oleh Hrytsak was involved in EuroMaidan cases.
The prosecutor’s office of the Svyatoshin district said by phone Oleh Hrytsak was not in the office at the moment.
The footage, broadcast by Ukraine’s Channel 5 on Jan. 25, 2014, shows a man identified by Lemenov as Oleh Hrytsak and looking similarly to photos of him seen by the Kyiv Post. Oleh Hrytsak wears a prosecutor’s uniform at a court hearing against 12 EuroMaidan protesters detained during clashes with police on Hrushevsky Street in Kyiv.
They were accused of rioting and assaulting Berkut riot police and put under arrest. Channel 5 footage also shows a video of riot police officers brutally beating one of the activists.
“Half of our fellow alumni and acquaintances were talking about my article (about Hrytsak prosecuting protesters),” Lemenov told the Kyiv Post. “If it were not true, I would be taken to court. I’ve known him personally since 2006, we studied in college together.”
Lemenov wrote in a Facebook post on June 20 that, instead of being lustrated, Oleh Hrytsak had been promoted to the position of a deputy of the Svyatoshin district’s top prosecutor in Kyiv after the EuroMaidan Revolution.
Thanks to his father’s promotion to the head of the SBU, Oleh Hrytsak is likely to remain in his position, Lemenov wrote.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected]
