Despite the Interior Ministry's denial that the recent beating Yuriy Lutsenko was the doing of the riot police, a video sourced by Hromadske.tv proves the contrary.
The footage shot by an onlooker on Prospekt Peremohy in Kyiv late on Jan. 10 shows several police officers, dressed in full riot gear and protective helmets, beating former minister Lutsenko with truncheons without any evident physical provocation on his side.
Another video account of events recorded him swearing at police officers, though.
Lutsenko was one of the acvtivists of AutoMaidan, a mobile offshoot of EuroMaidan protest movement, that traveled to the president’s suburban residence Mezhyhirya north of Kyiv on the night of Dec. 10. Along with others, he was trying to stop buses full of Berkut special police units that were moving in to protect the president’s residence.
Viktor Ratushnyak, deputy interior minister, said on Jan. 13 that the police has no video proof that Lutsenko was beaten by law enforcers.
“None of the videos confirm that he was beaten by law enforcers. The truth will be established after the investigative actions and the questioning of Lutsenko,” he said.
Lutsenko is one of more than a dozen people injured in violence triggered by a Jan. 10 guilty verdict against three men on charges of terrorism for planning to topple a Vladimir Lenin statue in Boryspil more than two years ago. Their defenders say the crime never took place, that the statue had already been removed and police planted evidence to convict the three men of a trumped-up charge.
A court in Kyiv’s Sviyatoshinsky district found the trio guilty and sentenced them to six years in prison – beyond the two years they’ve already spent in pre-trial detention. The verdicts against Volodymyr Shpara, Ihor Mosiychuk and Serhiy Bevza triggered the clash between police and protesters that lasted overnight until 2 a.m. on Jan. 11.
