Odesa activist Oleg Mykhailyk suffered gunshot wounds in Odesa on Sept. 22. Mykhailyk is one of the leaders of self-financed and civil society-based political party, Syla Lyudei (Power of the People), and an active critic of Odesa Mayor Gennadiy Trukhanov.
The National Police has opened an assassination attempt case. No suspect has been yet found.
Syla Lyudei party has blamed Odesa local government, including Trukhanov, in the assassination attempt. City Council representatives have made no statements, and the Kyiv Post couldn’t reach them for a comment at the moment of the publication.
The attack on Mykhailyk happened late in the evening on a street next to his house in the downtown of Odesa, the local media Dumskaya reported. Mykhailyk was hospitalized and had a surgery. He is currently awake in a hospital.
Odesa National Police Chief Advisor Ryslan Forostiak said that the doctors “have been fighting for his life” all night. The bullet hasn’t damaged Mykhailyk’s heart but caused internal bleeding. The doctors plan to extract the bullet after his condition will be stabilized, Forostiak said to 112 TV Channel.
The police said they started the investigation soon after the attack.
“The relatives, friends, and associates of the victim are interviewed as well as all possible witnesses and eyewitnesses of the event,” the police statement reads on Facebook. “So far, a lot of information has been gathered. The investigators consider several possible versions of this crime, as well as its motives.”
Syla Lyudei said that the assassination attempt is “an act of intimidation on conscious Odesa citizens and the citizens of Ukraine, as well as revenge on Oleg and his associates for his active advocacy of community interests and human rights activism.”
“The shot in Oleg is the shot in all of us,” Syla Lyudei said in the Facebook post on their page.
Oleg Solontai, also a member of Syla Lyudei, said that Mykhailyk is a politician and human rights activists. He regularly participates and organizes rallies against city mayor Trukhanov.
“That is why our activists are constantly under pressure,” Solontai said to online media Ukrainska Pravda.
Igor Bychkov, an Odesa Oblast Syla Lyudei leader, said that it is not the first assassination attempt against Mykhailyk. To protect himself, Mykhailyk was carrying a weapon with him, Bychkov said.
It is not the first attack on the activists of Odesa: Vitaly Ustymenko, the leader of the Odesa branch of the AutoMaidan non-governmental group and a vehement critic of Odesa Mayor Hennady Trukhanov, was stabbed in June. Among other attacks, Kherson city council official Kateryna Handziuk was attacked with acid in July. She was hospitalized with severe burns of 30 percent of her body.
