Sergii Gorbatuk, the top investigator in charge of cases involving the 2013-2014 EuroMaidan Revolution, said on Oct. 23 he had been fired from the Prosecutor General’s Office.
Gorbatuk, head of the department for in absentia investigations, told the Kyiv Post on Oct. 22 that President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Chief of Staff Andriy Bohdan and many other powerful people were interested in his dismissal.
Bohdan, the president’s office, and the Prosecutor General’s Office did not respond to requests for comment.
Earlier, Gorbatuk said he refused to undergo the vetting procedures that all the employees of the Prosecutor’s Office are subject to, because he thinks the procedures violate the law. The Prosecutor General’s Office said that it would fire all prosecutors who did not agree to be vetted.
The firing has triggered more concerns over the fate of investigations into the murder of 100 EuroMaidan protesters and other crimes committed during the 2013-2014 revolution.
Before incumbent Prosecutor General Ruslan Riaboshapka took over in late August, Gorbatuk and the lawyers and families of murdered EuroMaidan protesters warned that the EuroMaidan investigations may collapse due to uncertainty over who will be in charge of them.
The families and lawyers of the slain EuroMaidan protesters said in August that an ongoing restructuring of the Prosecutor’s Office had sidelined investigators and prosecutors trusted by civil society, including Gorbatuk, while officials who Gorbatuk claimed were blocking EuroMaidan cases were put in charge of the investigations.
Five years after the EuroMaidan, there are still no convictions in the murders of over 100 participants of the protests, although several police officers are on trial for the murders, and there have been convictions in smaller EuroMaidan-related cases.
Even if Gorbatuk was to stay in the Prosecutor’s Office, he wouldn’t be in charge of the EuroMaidan investigations: They were set to be passed to another agency, the State Investigation Bureau. Yet Gorbatuk could have stayed in control of them as an overseeing prosecutor – something that now is unlikely.
Reform debate
On Oct. 23, the Prosecutor General’s Office started vetting procedures according to which the office will be liquidated and restarted. Prosecutors will either be accepted into a new prosecution service or fired.
Gorbatuk told the Kyiv Post that he had not agreed to be vetted under the procedure introduced by Riaboshapka because he believes it violates numerous Ukrainian laws. He said he had applied to join the new prosecution service, however, and agreed to be vetted but only under a procedure that does not contradict the law.
Gorbatuk also said that he had been fired illegally because Riaboshapka had a right not to hire him for the new prosecution service but there were no legal grounds for firing him as an investigator from the old prosecution service. He said he would dispute his dismissal in court.
One of the aspects of vetting that Gorbatuk says violate the law is that the Prosecutor General’s Office can accept information about candidates from anonymous sources and make decisions without any confirmation of whether the information is genuine.
Gorbatuk has been in confrontation with Riaboshapka, criticizing his methods of reforming the Prosecutor’s Office in general. Before Riaboshapka’s appointment, Gorbatuk was one of the people that civic activists were naming as a desired candidate for prosecutor general.
Gorbatuk also said the firing of prosecutors and investigators as stipulated by Riaboshapka’s procedure violated the law and would only lead to the reinstatement of all those fired by the courts.
Government’s position
Riaboshapka has announced a “re-launch” of the prosecution service, and a law passed by the Rada envisages cutting the number of prosecutors to 10,000 from 14,000 and vetting incumbent prosecutors.
Riaboshapka has also been praised by civil society for firing controversial top prosecutors and for appointing reformist officials Viktor Chumak, Viktor Trepak and Vitaly Kasko as his deputies.
Zelensky also commented on Gorbatuk at a news conference on Oct. 10.
“I wondered whether there would be final results at any time in those cases,” he said. “He said ‘it will take years’. And I told him: ‘what does the president have to do to make it faster than years? Five years have already passed. What is needed? More prosecutors, more independence (for the investigators and prosecutors) or who else should you be protected from’?”
Negotiations with Gorbatuk
There has been an ongoing disagreement between the law enforcement agencies on the fate of the EuroMaidan investigations.
Gorbatuk’s unit is set to lose its investigative functions in November and will have to be liquidated. The EuroMaidan investigations will be transferred to the State Investigation Bureau.
Gorbatuk and Riaboshapka had been holding negotiations on creating a new prosecution unit that would oversee State Investigation Bureau investigators working on EuroMaidan cases.
Gorbatuk told the Kyiv Post that he had envisioned that he, his colleague Oleksiy Donsky or someone else from his team would head the new prosecution unit. However, Riaboshapka did not appoint any of them to such a position.
Riaboshapka has also proposed that the new unit be headed by Yevhenia Zakrevska, currently a lawyer for EuroMaidan protesters, Gorbatuk told the Kyiv Post. However, Zakrevska did not accept Riaboshapka’s offer because he did not meet her conditions, Gorbatuk added.
According to those conditions, Zakrevska would have recruited her own team, and she demanded that Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, who has been accused of blocking EuroMaidan cases, be fired, several sources told the Kyiv Post. Zakrevska said she would not comment on the issue on the record.
Gorbatuk said he would have been ready to work under Zakrevska if she had been appointed.
August restructuring
In August, Gorbatuk and Donsky accused then-Deputy Prosecutor General Serhiy Kiz and his protégés of sabotaging EuroMaidan cases. Donsky, an ally of Gorbatuk, was fired as the main prosecutor in charge of EuroMaidan cases at that time. Kiz did not respond to requests for comment.
While Riaboshapka has fired Kiz, Kiz protégés including Maksym Ryabenko and Viktor Mysyak are still in charge of EuroMaidan investigations.
The families of slain EuroMaidan protesters said in a statement in August that the Prosecutor General’s Office was trying to get rid of independent prosecutors and investigators, including Gorbatuk and Donsky, which would help suspects escape responsibility.
