KHERSON, Ukraine — As Kateryna Gandziuk left her house in this sunny southern city on July 31, she felt a splash of liquid on her head and back.
Seconds later, the clothes of the outspoken municipal official were melting and her skin was peeling. Police later determined that she had been doused with a liter of battery acid. In agony, she tore off what remained of her clothes, and passersby poured water on her wounds, saving her life.
As she lay in the hospital with 40 percent of her body covered with acid burns, police opened a criminal case: on hooliganism.
Gandziuk is known in Kherson as a whistleblower who openly criticized many influential people in this city of sailors and farming businesses with a population of 300,000, some 550 kilometers south of Kyiv.
She and her allies believe she was attacked for her long-time efforts to expose corruption. Gandziuk has claimed on Facebook that a police official had demanded a kickback from her, that regional authorities covered up the sale of illegally felled timber, and that local pro-Russian forces are still active four years since Russia started its war on Ukraine in the Donbas.
There have been at least two other attacks on activists in Kherson in the past year. But nobody has been arrested or charged in these cases, and activists say Kyiv is turning a blind eye to them in return for support in upcoming elections.
“The central authorities allowed local strongmen to profiteer from the region in exchange for the election results they promise to give,” said Gandziuk’s friend, the journalist Sergiy Nikitenko, who was beaten up in Kherson by unidentified men in late June.
“Impunity has resulted in a situation in which everybody could be in danger.”
Through public pressure across Ukraine, activists got the police to change the charge to attempted murder.
But they fear the police will never find out who ordered the attack.
Kherson municipal official Kateryna Gandziuk before she was attacked with a liter of battery acid. Her friends believe it was a result of her efforts to expose corruption in the city. (Facebook/Kateryna Gandziuk)
Investigation
Gandziuk has already undergone eight painful operations in Kyiv, and expects to have six more. The doctors are gradually removing her burned skin and replacing it with grafts of new tissue.
Under public pressure, Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko transferred the case from the police to the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU. In notes on the case that Lutsenko posted on Facebook, it was written that the attack was ordered by “law enforcement and state officials, with the help of separatist organizations.”
Moreover, police have been accused of intentionally sabotaging the investigation.
They arrested a suspect in the attack, Mykola Novikov, on Aug. 3. But he was widely believed to be a scapegoat. His sister said he had an alibi since he was not in Kherson at the time of the attack, which was later confirmed through an investigation by the Ukrainska Pravda online newspaper.
On Aug. 22, police released Novikov, first persuading him to sign a paper admitting that he was in Kherson on the day of the attack. They promised to close other criminal cases opened against him in return.
But by then investigators had identified five new suspects, all former fighters of the Ukrainian Volunteer Army, an offshoot of the nationalist Right Sector group. Two of them have won state medals for heroism in fighting Russian-led forces.
New suspects
According to the investigation, Kherson resident Sergiy Torbin, a former police officer, organized the attack and invited Viktor Horbunov, Volodymyr Vasianovych, Vyacheslav Vyshnevsky and Mykyta Hrabchuk to participate in it, telling them that Gandziuk was a “corrupt official with pro-Russian views.”
Gandziuk, however, has been consistently pro-Ukrainian since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. Gandziuk’s friends shared on Facebook a certificate of honor she received from the Ukrainian Volunteer Army, saying it proves the veterans could not have had a personal conflict with her.
Horbunov allegedly bought the battery acid used in the attack and received $300 from Torbin for it. Vyshnevsky and Vasianovych signaled when Gandziuk left her house and Hrabchuk poured acid on her. All three received $500 each. In court, Hrabchuk had injuries on his head, which could have been caused during the attack.
All except for Torbin, the former police officer, admitted to taking part in the crime.
Torbin, a sturdily built man with a grim face and wings tattooed on his hands, admitted in court that he had rented a house in Oleshky, a town near Kherson, where other members of the group lived. He said they all provided security services to local businesses.
A Kyiv Post source in Kherson said that Torbin’s group was known in a city as men who could be hired as a fighting force to resolve business conflicts.
Kateryna Gandziuk lies in her hospital bed after a man attacked her with a liter of acid on July 31. (Facebook/Masi Nayyem)
Cover up?
Despite the four suspects admitting they were paid to attack Gandziuk, the police are not investigating the case as a contract killing attempt, prompting accusations of a cover-up. Gandziuk’s lawyer and friends say Kherson police and prosecutors are trying to portray the case as a personal vendetta without a political motive, and frame Torbin as the mastermind of the attack.
If the case comes to court this way, it will make any later search for those who actually ordered the crime more difficult, said Yevhenia Zakrevska, Gandziuk’s lawyer. “The prosecutor’s office of Kherson Oblast understands this well, and that’s exactly what they want,” she said. “I’m sure they know who the real organizer is, and are trying to cover up for him.”
Spokesman of Kherson police Vitaliy Baidarov denied to the Kyiv Post that Gandziuk had conflicts with the Kherson police and said the investigation was “unbiased.”
SBU Chief Vasyl Hrytsak said on Sept. 1 that the SBU is working with the police to find out who ordered the attack.
Targets of criticism
Gandziuk, who is the chief of staff of the city council and advisor of the mayor, is known in Kherson for her blunt Facebook posts about corruption in the city.
“She often told me that if a person is a bastard she would call him a bastard,” said Kherson Mayor Volodymyr Mykolayenko.
Local police officers were among the main targets of her criticism.
In September 2017, Gandziuk alleged on Facebook that Artem Antoshchuk, who then headed the police department on investigating economic crimes in Kherson Oblast, had demanded a 3 percent kickback from the 30 percent of the city budget allegedly stolen by the municipal authorities.
“There’s no sense in complaining to law enforcement, because in Kherson everything is so rotten that every complaint, statement or investigation could be leaked for $100 to $500,” Gandziuk wrote on Facebook.
The police searched Gandziuk’s office soon after that post, and Antoshchuk filed a defamation suit in court. The court in Kherson took an ambiguous decision, where Antoshchuk wasn’t found to be corrupt, but Gandziuk wasn’t obliged to apologize for her post.
In spring, Antoshchuk was moved from Kherson to the central office of the department on investigating economic crimes in Kyiv.
Nikitenko said it was a big loss for him. “In Kyiv he’s one of many. But here he was a very influential person, he was earning huge money, getting a kickback from almost every corrupt deal,” he said.
Nikitenko believes Gandziuk’s criticism prompted Antoshchuk’s reassignment.
Antoshchuk didn’t respond to the Kyiv Post’s request for comment sent by Facebook.
Gandziuk’s conflicts
Masi Nayyem, who was Gandziuk’s lawyer in the case against Antoshchuk, argues that local pro-Russian politicians could have been involved in the attack.
In particular, Gandziuk has criticized one of Kherson’s foremost pro-Russian politicians, Kirill Stremousov.
In 2013 and early 2014, Stremousov participated in pro-Russian rallies in Kherson, then after Russia occupied Crimea he lay low. But in 2017 he started organizing rallies again, often against the city authorities or in support of the local police.
When city authorities initiated the creation of “municipal police” to keep order in the city, an idea opposed by local police, Stremousov kept organizing rallies next to City Hall until local deputies abandoned the plan, Nikitenko said.
“I think the police and SBU have a dossier on him (Stremousov) and it’s convenient for them to keep him for those needs,” Nikitenko added.
Gandziuk in her Facebook posts described Stremousov as a “pet separatist” of the police and SBU.
Stremousov now heads the Kherson branch of the Socialist Party, led by the scandalous Iliya Kiva. Kiva, who was deputy head of police chief in Kherson Oblast in 2014–2015, is an ex-aide to Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and current head of the Interior Ministry’s labor union.
Kiva is a frequent visitor to Kherson, with his portraits hanging on many of the city’s billboards.
Immediately after the attack on Gandziuk, Stremousov denied having anything to do with it.
In comments to the Kyiv Post, Kiva first lashed out at Gandziuk, accusing her of corruption, but then denied his party had any involvement in the attack.
Arson and bribes
Gandziuk has also had a long-lasting conflict with one of the richest and the most influential people in Kherson — Vladyslav Manger, the head of Kherson Oblast Council.
She often pointed out that Manger was a member of former President Viktor Yanukovych’s party and worked in 2012 as an aid to the odious lawmaker Oleksiy Zhuravko, who is now rumored to be hiding in Russian-occupied Crimea.
But in 2015 Manger headed the Kherson branch of the Batkivshchyna party — a position he had paid for, according to Nikitenko. Mykolayenko and Gandziuk left Batkivshchyna in protest when Manger took over as the local party boss.
At the local elections in 2015, Manger ran against Mykolayenko for mayor, but lost. Gandziuk headed Mykolayenko’s election team.
In 2016, however, Manger became head of Kherson Oblast Council, which Nikitenko alleges he achieved by bribing local deputies.
In early July, Gandziuk slammed in a post on Facebook the illegal logging of the forest near Oleshky, and the massive forest fires this year, which she said had been set deliberately to hide the illegal felling of timber. Gandziuk alleged that Manger and Kherson Governor Andrii Gordieiev were behind the crime.
“The minion thugs of Manger and Gorgieiev burned down 600 hectares of forest. They were supposed to burn less of it, but f*cked up and it all got out of control,” she said.
“There is a long-term conflict between Manger and the mayor’s team, which is headed by Katya (Gandziuk),” the Kherson correspondent of Day newspaper Ivan Antypenko, told the Kyiv Post.
However, Manger told the Kyiv Post that claims there is a conflict between him and Gandziuk are “fiction.” “I have no relations with her. But I feel sorry about the tragedy that happened to her, and hope she gets well soon.”
Gandziuk has also come into conflict with Ihor Pastukh, the head of Black Sea branch of Ukrtrasbezpeka, a state agency which controls the passage of transport through the city. Previously Pastukh had Gandziuk’s current post in the city council, but was fired.
Gandziuk criticized Pastukh for turning a blind eye to the trucks passing through Kherson without permission, and to the buses that carry people to Crimea without paying taxes to the local budget.
“These buses are illegal,” Antypenko said. “And it’s up to the oblast council and Ukrtrasbezpeka to arrange these routes.”
Nikitenko claimed Pastukh “gets serious income covering for (illegal) cargo transportation, getting a kickback for it.”
Pastukh wasn’t available for comment.
A passerby walks on Sept. 13 in Kyiv downtown past a wall with a graffiti portrait of whistleblowing Kherson official Kateryna Gandziuk with an inscription reading “Who ordered (the attack on) Katia Gandziuk?” Similar pictures have been painted in many Ukrainian cities in a campaign urging the authorities to find those who ordered the attack on Gandziuk. (Volodymyr Petrov)
Impunity
Nikitenko, who was attacked in June, said that after the attack on Gandziuk the police showed him photos of the current suspects, wondering if he recognized them as being among his attackers. But he believes the police are only pretending to investigate his case.
Yevhen Matkovsky, a deputy of Kherson City Council from nationalist party Svoboda who was beaten up near his house by thugs in the summer of 2017, has a similar story. The police didn’t find any suspect in his case, but after the attack on Gandziuk they started questioning his neighbors again, saying they “had been forced to.”
Matkovsky and Nikitenko don’t believe their attackers will be ever found. Nayyem, meanwhile, said the attack on Gandziuk had been expected, because nothing had been done about the previous attacks.
Since the beginning of the year, there have been at least 10 attacks on activists in Ukraine. Among them were two cases in which activists were killed — in Odesa and near Kyiv. Another activist was found hanged in Kharkiv Oblast.
“I think this is just the beginning — there will be more violence,” Gandziuk said in an interview with Ukrainska Pravda in August from her hospital bed.
“Every active person who can mobilize others is in danger.”
