Odesa’s Primorsky District Court on Feb. 23 sentenced civic activist Sergiy Sternenko to seven years and three months in jail and the confiscation of half of his property.
Sternenko and another activist, Ruslan Demchuk, were convicted of the April 2015 kidnapping of Serhiy Shcherbych, a member of Odesa Oblast’s Kominternivske District Council. Shcherbych is currently a member of Odesa Mayor Hennady Trukhanov’s Doveryai Delam (Trust the Deeds) party.
Shcherbych said that Sternenko kidnapped him to extort a mere Hr 300 from him, prompting skepticism among Sternenko’s supporters.
Sternenko and Demchuk were exempted from responsibility for the alleged kidnapping due to the statute of limitations but were imprisoned on charges of robbing Shcherbych and illegal possession of firearms.
As one of the justifications for the verdict, the judge said that Sternenko has a negative attitude towards Trukhanov’s Trust the Deeds party. Odessa’s courts, including the Primorsky District Court, have routinely issued rulings favorable to Trukhanov, according to local anti-corruption activists.
Political case?
The lengthy sentence against Sternenko shocked Ukraine’s civil society as even murderers often receive smaller prison terms, and many corrupt officials escape criminal prosecution completely.
Sternenko, the former leader of the Odesa branch of the nationalist Right Sector organization, has clashed with many power brokers, including Trukhanov, Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova and Interior Minister Arsen Avakov. Ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s ex-deputy chief of staff Andriy Portnov also led a massive public relations campaign to have Sternenko jailed.
Sternenko accused President Volodymyr Zelensky, his deputy chief of staff Oleh Tatarov, Venediktova and Trukhanov of fabricating the case against him and pressuring the court.
Sternenko said that Tatarov had been a lawyer for the wife of one of the people who previously assaulted him in a separate case and had called for imprisoning the activist. Tatarov, who was a top police official under Yanukovych, was charged by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine with bribery in December but Venediktova’s prosecutors have effectively buried the case.
Zelensky’s spokeswoman Iuliia Mendel said Zelensky is not interfering in the case. The Prosecutor General’s Office and the President’s Office did not respond to requests for comment.
“A seven year sentence for Serhiy Sternenko is not about justice,” the Anti-Corruption Action Center wrote on Facebook. “It’s revenge on a person who stands up for his views. Revenge against a person that has been a thorn in the side of the police, politicians, state officials and property developers in Odesa. And currently he’s a thorn in the side of those who see Ukraine as a Russian colony and can’t accept the fact that Odesa is part of Ukraine. The Prosecutor General’s Office has again played into the hands of this gang.”
Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, a lawmaker from the Holos faction, said that he had started collecting signatures for Venediktova’s dismissal due to the verdict.
“A person who provoked a political decision in the case against Serhiy Sternenko doesn’t have a right to be prosecutor general,” he said on Facebook. “…There will be an appeal and Venediktova will be dismissed. And Trukhanov, Tatarov, Portnov and others behind this shameful verdict will be necessarily held responsible for this.”
Trial criticized
Sternenko’s defense also cited procedural violations.
Searches at Sternenko’s house were conducted without his lawyer, and Sternenko was prevented from contacting him. Despite this, evidence seized during the searches was recognized by the court as admissible evidence.
The court also recognized as reliable testimony given by a witness who was not questioned during the trial.
Viktor Poprevych, the judge who issued the verdict, does not meet integrity and ethics standards, according to the Anti-Corruption Action Center, legal think-tank DEJURE and anti-corruption watchdog AutoMaidan. The Primorsky District Court did not respond to a request for comment.
Specifically, Poprevych has helped to whitewash drunk drivers, including the head of the Odesa District Administrative Court, and issued a ruling that exempted judges from filing asset declarations, according to the watchdogs. He has also acquitted police officers charged with torturing people and set miniscule bail for the head of the Victoria children’s camp, where a fire killed three children due to negligence in 2017.
Poprevych has written many of his rulings in Russian, and about 2000 of them have not been published at all, which constitutes violations of Ukrainian law.
Moreover, Poprevych failed to declare a car and his wife’s apartment in Ukraine’s Russian-annexed Crimea, the watchdogs said.
In 2009 Poprevych installed busts of Stalin and Lenin next to his house in Donetsk.
Probes have been opened against Poprevych but the High Council of Justice, the judiciary’s governing body, has refused to fire him.
“Thanks to the High Council of Justice, people like Poprevych are jailing activists and are afraid of nothing,” the Anti-Corruption Action Center said.
Previous trial
Sternenko has also been on trial in a separate case.
In 2018, Sternenko was assaulted on the street by two men. After they fought, one of the attackers ran away and died from his injuries.
The case has attracted a lot of public attention, with many pro-Ukrainian media and activists saying Sternenko acted in justifiable self-defense and pro-Russian media portraying him as a murderer. In June, he was charged with murder and put under house arrest.
In January Sternenko was released from house arrest in the case.
Andriy Radionov, who was formerly the chief prosecutor in the Sternenko case, said in 2020 that the murder charges against Sternenko were “unfounded, non-objective and biased.” He said that he refused to sign the charges and had formally complained about pressure on him by Venediktova in the Sternenko case.
As a result, Radionov said he had been kicked out of the group of prosecutors in the Sternenko case. Venediktova and the Prosecutor General’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.
Radionov said in a complaint obtained by the Kyiv Post that Venediktova’s public statements were a threat to his independence and an attempt to unlawfully interfere in the investigation. Venediktova said in April 2020 that Sternenko would be charged in any case.
Sternenko’s lawyer Vitaly Tytych argued that, due to the prosecutor’s testimony, the whole alleged evidence against Sternenko was inadmissible. He said he would file a motion with the European Court of Human Rights, which he was sure would rule in favor of Sternenko.
Another problem is that house arrest for Sternenko was considered by Judge Volodymyr Buhil, who was accused of unlawfully trying EuroMaidan activists and denies the accusations of wrongdoing. Sternenko, in turn, was an active participant of the EuroMaidan Revolution, which he argued was a conflict of interest for the judge. However, the judge refused to be recused.
In 2018 Sternenko was also assaulted in Odesa in two other episodes.
Many activists have been attacked in Odesa in recent years, with some of them blaming the assaults on the city’s mayor, Hennady Trukhanov. The mayor denies the accusations.
