You're reading: Chornovol says her attackers believed she was dead as they dumped her (VIDEO)

Activist and journalist Tetyana Chornovol, who was severely beaten in the early hours of Christmas Day, says her attackers aimed to hit her on the head and thought she was dead when they left her bleeding by the side of the road. 

“I felt my nose sinking in, I felt it being destroyed under the blows,” Chornovol recalled during her interview to 1+1 TV channel. She says she did not resist, just stood there with her arms down while her attackers continued to hit her. She said they must have believed she was dead, and that’s why they left her lying by the road.

Chornovol was beaten on Dec. 25, when she was traveling home to a Kyiv suburb by car. She said she noticed she was being followed, and thought she was going to be arrested. But then the car that chased her started to ram into her vehicle, and she realized it was an attack, she said.

Chornovol is starting to recover after the attack, which is currently investigated by the police. She has been staying
in a private Kyiv hospital since her attack and undergoing treatment
for her injuries, including concussion of the brain, a broken nose
and damage to her face.

Asked how she feels, she
said “more or less.” Doctors say her state is “satisfactory”
but she needs two more months to fully recover, 1+1 reported in their evening news program on Jan. 5.

“I cannot sit in front
of the computer, when I start to read text, I get dizzy, I have some
sort of an emotional problem – somehow I get excited very
quickly,” Chornovol said.

She said her state has
improved compared to New Year’s Eve, when she had “crazy
headaches that no pain-killers could help.”

Chornovol described some of the circumstances of her attack, which was partially recorded by a video register installed in her car. The parts of the recording released by the opposition show how an off-road vehicle rams into Chornovol’s car as she drives home. She remained silent during the attack.

Tetyana Chornovol on Jan. 5, almost two weeks after an attack.

“I was very
concentrated, I was – to a large extend – trying to survive,”
she explained. “The events developed so that it was clear it was an
ordered attack.”

She attempted to
escape in her car, and then by foot, but her attackers caught up with
her and started beating her up – mostly on the head and on the
temples.

“I had a lot of blood in
my lungs, which means I wasn’t breathing for some time. Plus, for
some time I was out in the cold temperatures outside, and I might not
have been up after that,” she says.

The police have arrested
five suspects in Chornovol’s case, which is qualified as infliction
of bodily injuries. Her attackers can get up to 10 years in jail.
Opposition, however, maintains that this was an attempted murder of
an activist and journalist for her participation in the mass protests
that have raged in the country since late November, as well as her
investigation of corruption and luxurious lifestyles of Ukraine’s
ruling elite, including President Viktor Yanukovych and his family.

Mykola Chynchyn, head of
the Main Investigative Department said on Dec. 30 that one of the
suspects had confessed beating Chornovol.

However, she said that
there were at least two people who took part in her beating.

Chynchyn also said that
the police confiscated all available video footage from cameras
stationed along the highway where the assault took place, and is
analyzing the material.

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