One of the men who savagely beat lawmaker Tatyana Chornovol in a horrifying attack partly caught on her car’s dash-cam was sentenced to five years in prison on Oct. 25.
Boryspil City Court of Kyiv Oblast found Ihor Kornilov guilty of causing grievous bodily harm with intent to murder Chornovol during the attack, which occurred amid the EuroMaidan anti-government protests.
Choronovol was working as a journalist and civil activist at the time. While driving from central Kyiv to her home in Borispol on the outskirts of the capital on the night of Dec. 25, 2013, her car was forced off the road by another car. She was then dragged from her vehicle and savagely beaten by two men.
Pictures of Chornovol after the attack, with a badly swollen, bloodied and bruised face, and the shocking dash-cam footage of the initial stages of the incident posted on the Internet soon after the attack caused outrage in Ukraine and around the world,
The attack on Chornovol came hours after she had published an investigative article on the property of then General Prosecutor Victor Pshonka and Interior Minister Vitaliy Zakharchenko. Chornovol was hospitalized with a broken nose, bruises and concussion.
Kornilov’s lawyer, Valeriy Bunyak, said his client would appeal against the sentence.
“Our position is that, Ihor Mikhailovich (Kornilov) isn’t guilty, so obviously, we’ll appeal,” Bunyak said.
The sentence for Kornilov is one of very few handed down by the Ukrainian courts to the perpetrators of attacks on EuroMaidan protesters, over 100 of whom were killed during the revolution between December 2103 and late February 2014.
The case of journalist Vyacheslav Veremiy, who was beaten and fatally shot on Feb. 19, 2014 after he tried to take a picture of armed men, is still being heard in court. One suspect, Yuriy Krysin, was initially found guilty of hooliganism on Dec. 22, 2017, and given a four-year prison sentence, with two years suspended.
Only after a series of public protests was Krysin re-sentenced to five years in prison on June 14, 2018. His defense has appealed against the sentence, and the next hearing of his case is scheduled for Nov. 9.
The Chornovol case is also far from over, with two more suspects awaiting trial. Another suspect in the case has evaded arrest so far.
