Dozens of activists picketed the main police office in Odesa Oblast on Sept. 24, claiming local law enforcement were refusing to investigate a series of violent attacks on critics of the city’s mayor, Gennadiy Trukhanov.
Just two days earlier, in about 200 meters from the scene of the picket, an unidentified gunman had shot Oleg Mykhailyk, a vehement critic of Trukhanov and leader of Odesa branch of Syla Lyudey (Power of the People) a civil society based political party.
Mykhailyk, known in the city for campaigning against the illegal construction, had earlier announced he was planning to run for mayor at the next elections in 2020.
Late on Sept. 22 when walking near his house he was shot once through his shoulder and chest, the bullet passing close to his heart. Mykhailyk survived but lost 1.5 liters of blood and had to be revived in hospital after his heart and breathing stopped. Activists have crowdfunded more than Hr 100,000 ($3,570) for his treatment.
It was the fifth attack on an activist in Odesa in the last five months.
“The law enforcement in our city defend the interests not of the residents, but of the city authorities,” said Igor Bychkov, the head of Syla Lyudey party branch in Odesa Oblast.
“This is terror, these are attempts to scare us,” said Sergiy Sternenko, a local activist who has been attacked for three times. During the last attack on him at the end of May, Sternenko stabbed one of his attackers to death.
Sternenko said there had been 19 attacks on public activists in Odesa over the last year, and none of these cases have been fully investigated.
The protesters demanded the authorities in Kyiv sack Dmytro Golovin, the head of national police in Odesa Oblast, and Odesa Regional Prosecutor Oleg Zhuchenko.
Mykhailyk was previously attacked in 2013 when he was hit on the back of his head with brass knuckles. Since then he had usually carried a non-lethal traumatic pistol that fires rubber bullets but wasn’t carrying it on the day he was shot.
Bychkov, who visited Mykhailyk in hospital, told the Kyiv Post that the wounded activist doesn’t remember what happened due to shock and the medication he received. He said the police have visited and questioned him on Sept. 24.
“He is very weak, but he’s already taking water and food,” Bychkov said of Mykhailyk.
Activist Oleg Mykhailyk speaks during the rally in support of Ukrainian political prisoner Oleg Sentsov. (Facebook of Oleg Mykhailyk)
The police claimed to have assigned Mykhailyk bodyguards. Golovin, the police chief, said the attack on Mykhailyk is being investigated as attempted murder with several lines of inquiry, including his public activity, disputes with builders, and personal reasons.
On the day he was attacked, Mykhailyk participated in the protest against illegal construction next to one of the city’s beaches, saying it was being done by Andriy Kislovsky, a deputy of the local council from the party of Mayor Trukhanov.
Odesa is the most dangerous city for civil activists in Ukraine. More than 10 attacks occurred all over the country in 2018 so far. By other calculations, there were about 40 attacks.
Critics link the attacks in Odesa to the murky past of the city’s mayor, who has been accused by the Italian police of having links with organized crime in 1990. Trukhanov is also being investigated by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine in connection with several corruption cases. He denies all accusations of wrongdoing.
Back at Odesa’s main police department, the activists called on President Petro Poroshenko to call a special meeting of the National Security and Defense Council to discuss the situation in Odesa.
Meanwhile, Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko announced on Sept. 24 that a special group of investigators had been sent to Odesa to investigate the attacks on activists.
