Missing and presumed dead, Dmytro Bulatov, the leader of AutoMaidan has been found alive more than a week after he stopped answering his mobile phone and vanished without a trace.
News website TSN reported Bulatov as saying he had been beaten and tortured and had his ear cut off by men with Russian accents before being dumped in the countryside near Boryspil, a Kyiv suburb. He was found in a village house after someone opened the door on which he was pounding, Channel 5 reported.
Batkivshchyna lawmaker Yuri Stets first posted on his Facebook
page at 8:30 p.m. that the 35-year-old activist was found, but provided few
details, including whether he was alive. Then 1+1 TV journalist Olha Kosholenko
at 10 p.m. posted a picture of Bulatov on her Facebook page, showing his face scarred
and badly beaten, and clothed in blood-soiled attire.
He is reportedly receiving medical treatment in a private medical clinic in Kyiv.
Communication broke off with Bulatov late on Jan. 22 on the
eve when more than 15 activists of AutoMaidan, a roving protest-on-wheels, were
ambushed in Kyiv, beaten and detained by law enforcement personnel reportedly accompanied
by hired thugs.
Police have provided no information about the conduct of
their search for Bulatov after his wife filed a missing person report on Jan.
23. This led to suspicions of foul play, as was the case with EuroMaidan
activist Yuri Verbytsky of Lviv who was kidnapped from a hospital on Jan. 21
and found dead in a forest outside Kyiv the next day.
The convoy of vehicles that Bulatov marshaled became a thorn
on the side of authorities. Initially the group started to visit the residences
of Ukraine’s leaders deemed responsible for violence against EuroMaidan protesters,
including President Viktor Yanukovych’s lavish residence. The group then
started patrolling Kyiv’s streets to defend the outer perimeter of the area of
Independence Square from paid-for-thugs and other infiltrators. They also help
supply EuroMaidan with fuel and produce.
On Jan. 16, parliament passed a set of laws that appeared specifically
designed to punish the AutoMaidan activists. It forbade convoys of vehicles
that numbered five or more, and criminalized the blocking of residences with prison
sentences up to six years.
Kyiv Post editors Mark
Rachkevych and Christopher J. Miller can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected].
