Police arrested a former Interior Ministry official who has been accused of organizing the murder of protesters during the 2013-2014 EuroMaidan Revolution.
The suspect was on the wanted list and hiding from police, the Prosecutor General’s Office reported on Sept. 20.
“Following a clearly criminal order of Interior Ministry and exceeding his authority, the suspect organized a terrorist attack and the killing of protesters,” the Prosecutor’s General Office said in a statement.
Investigators said the former official’s actions led to the deaths of three people; 14 more were severely injured and 59 were moderately injured.
The Prosecutor General’s Office did not name the suspects. News publication Ukrainska Pravda reported that according to its sources, his name is Yurii Spaskykh, a former senior official of the Department of Public Security of the main Interior Ministry Department in Kyiv.
The Prosecutor General’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.
In April 2014, Spaskykh was detained by the Russian Federal Security Service for kidnapping Andrii Portnov — an ally of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled Ukraine in February 2014 after being ousted. Portnov returned to Ukraine after President Volodymyr Zelensky won the presidential election in April 2019.
Spaskykh was released from a Russian prison in 2017 and came back to Ukraine, where he was detained by Ukrainian Security Services on suspicion of attacking and dispersing protesters on the night of December 10-11, 2013.
The case is being handled by the State Bureau of Investigation.
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About 100 demonstrators and 17 police officers were killed during the revolution, which ousted former President Viktor Yanukovych. The worst of the violence has been laid at the feet of the now-disbanded Berkut special riot police.
The EuroMaidan protests began in November 2013 after Yanukovych refused to sign the Association Agreement with the European Union choosing closer ties with Russia instead. The uprising escalated into a nationwide revolt after the riot police violently beat protesters on November 30.
