Late on Jan. 24 in Bulgaria, the local law enforcement along with representatives of Ukraine’s State Security Service (SBU) and Prosecutor General’s Office arrested Oleksiy Levin, a key suspect in the murder of Kherson activist Kateryna Gandziuk, SBU reported.
Gandziuk, an outspoken Kherson municipal official, died of severe wounds on Nov. 4, 2018, three months after an attacker doused her with a liter of sulfuric acid near her house in Kherson.
Her case sparked public outrage after the police initially arrested a random man as a suspect of the attack on her, but had to release him after the journalists proved his alibi.
In August 2018, the police along with SBU arrested five veterans of the Ukrainian Volunteer Army, an offshoot of Right Sector Battalion, as suspects of the attack. All of them later admitted their guilt and were sentenced in June 2019, getting from 3 to 6.5 years in prison. They said they were paid from $300 to $500 each for the attack.
In December 2018, Yuriy Lutsenko, then Prosecutor General, called Levin a key suspect who allegedly organized Gandziuk murder but admitted that he managed to escape abroad. According to the materials of the investigation, obtained by the Kyiv Post, one of the sentenced perpetrators of the murder met with Levin the night before being arrested.
Levin, also known under a nickname Moskal after his previous last name Moskalenko, earlier had been convicted to 15 years for killing several people along with his father. He left the prison early, in 2016.
Levin started a business in Kherson and became an assistant to Mykola Stavytsky, a member of the Kherson Oblast Council. Stavytsky, in turn, was an adviser to the head of Kherson Oblast Council Vladyslav Manger.
Oleksiy Levin (Moskalenko) is a key suspect in the murder of Kateryna Gandziuk. (police data)
Gandziuk’s friends and lawyer say Levin is an important link between those who committed the attack and those who ordered it and his testimonies could be crucial for the investigation. They believe that Manger, along with former Kherson Governor Andriy Gordeev and Deputy Governor Yevhen Ryshchuk ordered Gandziuk’s killing. All three deny their involvement.
Ivan Bakanov, head of SBU, said that Levin’s arrest should prove that bringing to responsibility all those complicit in the murder is a priority for those in power now.
“The society is waiting for the result from us and we are moving to solve this case,” he said, according to the SBU report.
Lutsenko called Levin’s arrest a “breakthrough in the case,” adding that he knew from Bakanov that the law enforcement spotted Moskalenko in Bulgaria back in July. He also said on Facebook that Stefan Balabanov, Bulgaria’s deputy interior minister, was personally supervising the search for Levin. Now Levin is awaiting extradition in Burgas, Bulgaria, Lutsenko said.
Gandziuk’s family and friends took the news about Levin’s arrest with cautious optimism.
“Is it a moment of truth? We are waiting,” her father wrote on Facebook.
Over 1.5 years since the attack, they had many reasons to lose any hope that all killers would be brought to justice.
Ihor Pavlovsky, whom they accuse of being another middleman in the murder, was arrested by the SBU in November 2018 but he spent months under the house arrest until recently, after the police and SBU arrested him in Kherson as a suspect of other crimes.
Manger, who was charged with organizing Gandziuk’s murder in February 2019, now walks free and is still heading the Kherson Oblast Council. His lawyers have recently applied to Prosecutor General Ruslan Riaboshapka, requesting that all the charges against him were lifted.
There have been no charges against neither Gordeev nor Ryshchuk in Gandziuk’s case, though her lawyer and friends are sure they are involved in it.
On Jan. 20, however, officers of the Prosecutor General’s Office and SBU conducted the searches at homes and offices of Manger, Gordeev, and Ryshchuk over Pavlovsky’s case.
