New details surfaced in the case of activist Kateryna Gandziuk, who was murdered in 2018, that suggest top officials’ possible involvement in the assault.
Oleksiy Levin, a suspect in the criminal case on the assassination of Gandziuk, said the deputy governor of Kherson Oblast Yevhen Ryshchuk had tried to hire him to “punish Gandziuk in some way” for “poking her nose everywhere” and cramping his business. A video with Levin saying it in a conversation with an unknown man was obtained and published by Slidstvo.Info, a Ukrainian investigative journalism project. Levin fled Ukraine weeks after the attack in July and reportedly remains abroad.
Ryshchuk told Slidstvo.Info this conversation never happened. In February, Ryshchuk was interrogated by authorities investigating the case, but not arrested.
Gandziuk was attacked with acid in her hometown Kherson in July, and died in hospital three months later. She was a deputy mayor of Kherson and a prominent anti-corruption activist.
Gandziuk’s murder triggered a nationwide uproar. Under public pressure, investigators have named eight suspects in the attack and arrested six of them. Gandziuk’s family and friends have been insisting that several top officials from Kherson were behind the attack on her. One of them, Vladyslav Manger, head of the Kherson Oblast Council, was arrested and released on bail. Others were Kherson Governor Andriy Gordeev and his deputy, Ryshchuk. All denied their involvement, except for four suspected perpetrators of the attack that remain in custody.
“Ryshyk came and said: ‘I’ve got a sensitive issue to you. There is Kateryna Gandziuk, she must be punished somehow, by dousing her with feces or something. I’m ready to pay well for this. I said I was keeping out of such things and asked what his interest was. He said: ‘I need to do (business), she is hindering me, poking her nose in everything,” Levin says in the video.
Levin said that he didn’t agree to attack the activist and didn’t believe Ryshchuk was involved in the actual attack on Gandziuk. He added though but that he was “100 percent sure” that Gandziuk was hindering Ryshchuk’s business activities with her activism.
The video was given to Slidstvo.Info after the journalists presented on March 25 their investigative documentary about the case, called “Gandziuk: A Systemic Murder.” The movie is currently screening in Kyiv cinemas. It will be released online with English subtitles on April 3.
Levin has not been interrogated by investigators, Slidstvo.Info noted.
The SBU security service suspects Manger and Levin of organizing the killing together, with Levin serving as a middleman between Manger and the perpetrators.
In their film, Slidstvo.Info say that Ryshchuk, along with Manger, could be involved in unlawful arson of 600 hectares of local forests – an issue constantly raised by Gandziuk.
Slidstvo.Info published materials from an SBU investigation from December 2018 noting that cases of forest arson in May 2018 were reportedly planned by Ryshchuk and the head of the oblast’s forestry department, Viktor Tyshchenko, while Manger’s subordinates secured the areas. Under the scheme, illegally felled timber was to be transported to saw-mills controlled by Ryshchuk and Tyshchenko, as the document reads.
Slidstvo.Info concluded that both Manger and Ryshchuk could have a motive to attack Gandziuk.
According to Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, the investigation has certain evidence about Ryshchuk’s involvement in the cases of arson, but not enough to issue charges against him.
