Two men attacked and beat Deputy Economy Minister Yulia Klymenko along with her family, Klymenko wrote in a Facebook post today. Meanwhile, the suspected attacker denied her account of the events.
Klymenko said that the beating occurred in the parking lot of the Artak Hotel on May 6 in Pereyaslav, a scenic town 95 kilometers south of Kyiv.
According to the Facebook post, Klymenko was driving around the area with her husband and children, when they got lost and drove into the Artak’s parking lot in order to turn around.
From there, Klymenko wrote, a Nissan Patrol drove into the lot, blocking the two cars.
After waiting for less than a minute, Klymenko said, one of the men in the car began to honk loudly, before “flying out of his car and beginning to push and beat my son through the car’s open window, screaming obscenities and threats.”
Klymenko, her husband, and son then left the car, she said. The Nissan’s second passenger then got out, and began to “actively join in the beating.”
“I want to describe the results,” Klymenko wrote, “my blue-violet-green right arm with bruises, shredded clothes, my husband’s broken nose, numerous scrapes, bumps, and bruises on my son’s head, whose head was beaten on the concrete curb, a bruised shoulder, numerous black eyes, scratches and cuts along the whole body, and also the psychological trauma of the young kids, who witnessed it all.”
Klymenko pointed the finger at the owner of the Artak hotel, though she wouldn’t name him. According to the deputy minister, the Nissan belonged to a hotel owner, who instigated the attack.
She added that she spent five hours at the local police station, and that a criminal investigation had been opened into who led the attack.
Speaking to the Kyiv Post, Pereyaslav resident Atom Avdalyan who owns the hotel denied attacking Klymenko or her family members. He said the conflict was provoked by Klymenko’s son, who “began to scream and curse” at him.
“She [Klymenko] screamed at me, ‘I am a deputy minister, I will have you jailed,” he said adding that he filed a complaint with the police.
The local police declined to comment in a phone call with the Kyiv Post. The office of Kyiv Oblast police spokesman was unavailable to comment on Sunday.
