Name: Yevheniya Zakrevska
Position: Pro bono lawyer representing families of killed Euromaidan activists
Key point: Investigating EuroMaidan crimes is a historic chance for the nation
Lawyer Yevheniya Zakrevska knows each of her 40 cases by heart. Most of them involve the murders of demonstrators during the EuroMaidan Revolution that forced ex-President Viktor Yanukovych to flee to Russia on Feb. 22, 2014.
For almost three years, Zakrevska has been representing the families who lost relatives in the revolution on a pro bono basis.
“They often motivate me the most,” Zakrevska explains during an interview with the Kyiv Post. For her clients, Zakrevska is a problem solver and their only hope that those responsible will be held to account.
EuroMaidan case
It all started three years ago, when Halyna Didych, who lost her husband on Feb. 18, 2014, got in touch with Zakrevska.
“I found out that she had some information regarding my husband’s death,” Didych explains in a phone interview with the Kyiv Post from the western Ukrainian city of Ivano-Frankivsk, where she lives. They have been communicating since then.
Zakrevska took on many more cases of the slain protesters, but the Didych case remains one of the most complicated ones.
Halyna Didych’s late husband, Serhiy Didych, was participating in the EuroMaidan Revolution when he was killed in a hit-and-run accident on Kriposny Lane in central Kyiv at the height of the protests.
The investigation found that fellow protester, Leonid Bibik, had been driving the car. He confessed but was not punished: In 2016, the court acquitted him based on a law that grants amnesty to EuroMaidan protesters. Zakrevska filed an appeal, which wasn’t yet been heard.
Before being killed in the hit-and-run, Didych was beaten up by Berkut riot police during their crackdown on Feb. 18, 2014. The case has made progress, but not much. One Berkut officer suspected of the beating was arrested on March 10, three years after the alleged assault took place.
Another suspect, Berkut unit commander Viktor Shapovalov, has been on trial for attacks on protesters since 2015. A third attacker was given a suspended sentence in 2016.
Didych is happy that she at least knows the names of those who attacked her husband. She gives Zakrevska full credit. “None of this would’ve been possible without Yevheniya,” the woman says.
However, she has little hope that her husband’s and other cases would lead to jail terms for those responsible. “We’re just trying to document history,” Didych says.
That’s what Zakrevska has been doing for the last decade.
Dream job
Zakrevska started working as an attorney in 2008, but dreamed of being a lawyer since early childhood. She not only helps her clients — her clients help her. They do so by investigating cases themselves, searching for witnesses and evidence on their own.
“It would be very difficult without them,” Zakrevska says.
In the case of the murders of 47 protesters on Feb. 20, 2014, Zakrevska represents the families of 10 of them. This is the most successful EuroMaidan-related case: the court hearings are regular and more than 100 injured protesters have testified already. The court is taking just a couple of days to analyze each murder in this case.
“It’s a pretty good pace,” Zakrevska says.
Now the additional investigative experiment is pending, according to Zakrevska, as they want to check the area again where police opened fire on protesters with the video evidence the lawyers have.
Zakrevska says that the worst-investigated cases are the earliest killings of EuroMaidan protesters: the murders of Sergiy Nigoyan, Mykhailo Zhyznevsky, Roman Senyk and Yuriy Verbytsky, which took place on Jan. 22, 2014.
Many internal police documents and videos were destroyed, Zakrevska says.
Speed of the investigation is not always the most important aspect. Zakrevska recalls an example in Lithuania, where it took 23 years to investigate the events of 1991, when Soviet troops stormed a TV tower and the radio and TV headquarters in Vilnius, which led to the deaths of 14 civilians and injuries to about 1,000 people.
Zakrevska believes that Lithuanian authorities did the right thing by investigating the assaults as one case, while Ukraine is investigating the EuroMaidan attacks in a dozen separate cases. “It would be easier for everyone, especially for the injured people, to attend one hearing instead of dozens,” Zakrevska explains.
But to follow Lithuania’s example, some of Ukraine’s laws first have to be fixed. One of those that needs to be changed is the law on trials in absentia. Its current version clashes with international law.
Another one is a law backed by the parliament in 2014 that made the changes to the country’s criminal code. One of the amendments, Zakrevska explains, decriminalizes any abuse of power that didn’t cause financial losses. “Many high-level officials managed to avoid being held to account for abuse of power thanks to this law,” she said.
Nevertheless, she believes that investigating EuroMaidan crimes is a “historic chance” for the country.
“It will be either distorted or recorded in the public memory as a set of correct judgments,” Zakrevska says, adding that Ukraine has to send as many cases as possible to Ukraine courts, before resorting to such venues as the International Criminal Court.
