Hundreds of protesters on March 20 demanded the release of jailed civic activist Serhiy Sternenko in front of the President’s Office in Kyiv.
The protesters clashed with the police, burned the doors of the President’s Office and a sign that reads “President of Ukraine” and broke windows of the building.
They also threw flares into balconies of the building, painted much of the facade with slogans and swear words, and exploded firecrackers in front of the President’s Office building to celebrate Sternenko’s birthday.
The protests were triggered by what many saw as an unfair verdict reached with procedural violations and political motives by a controversial judge.
Odesa’s Primorsky District Court on Feb. 23 convicted Sternenko and another activist, Ruslan Demchuk, of kidnapping, robbing and torturing Serhiy Shcherbych, a member of Odesa Oblast’s Kominternivske District Council, in 2015.
They were sentenced to seven years in jail and confiscation of half of their property. Sternenko denies the accusations.
Viktor Poprevych, the judge who issued the verdict, does not meet integrity and ethical standards, according to a conclusion made by the Public Integrity Council, the judiciary’s state-sanctioned civic watchdog, in 2017.
Protesters vanadlize the President’s Office on March 20.
Sheremet case
The protesters also demanded releasing Andriy Antonenko and “other political prisoners.”
Antonenko, Yulia Kuzmenko and Yana Dugar were charged in 2019 with murdering Belarusian-born journalist Pavel Sheremet in Kyiv on July 20, 2016. Critics of the investigation see the evidence against them as very weak, with the main alleged proof being forensic gait analysis — something that cannot be primary evidence, according to forensic science guidelines.
In January EUobserver, a Brussels-based English-language publication, published an alleged audio recording implicating the Belarusian KGB in Sheremet’s murder. The suspects’ defense attorneys argued that the new Belarusian evidence refutes the official version since there is no evidence of any links between their clients and Belarus.
Protesters burn firecrackers in front of the President’s Office on March 20.
Other demands
The demonstrators also demanded that the National Security and Defense Council impose sanctions on ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s former deputy chief of staff Andriy Portnov, “who is de facto running Ukraine’s judicial system through Zelensky’s deputy chiefs of staff Oleh Tatarov and Andriy Smyrnov.”
Smyrnov has praised Portnov as a “highly professional lawyer,” and a photo of both of them standing together in 2018 has been published. Tatarov also used to be a lawyer for Portnov, who has led a massive public relations campaign to have Sternenko jailed.
Tatarov was a lawyer for Olesya Kuznetsova, the wife of Ivan Kuznetsov, the man who attacked Sternenko and died after being injured by him on June 15, 2018.
He was a top police official under Yanukovych and was investigated over alleged persecution of EuroMaidan protesters. Tatarov is banned from holding any state jobs by the 2014 lustration law on top Yanykovych-era officials.
Tatarov was also charged by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine with bribery in December but prosecutors have effectively buried the case.
Another demand by the demonstrators is to fire Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova, whom they accuse of fabricating the Sternenko case. Avakov and Venediktova deny such accusations.
