The young man who was shot dead on Hrushevskoho Street, purportedly by riot police during early morning clahses on Jan. 22, was a passionate pro-democracy activist named Sergiy Nihoyan.
Oleg Musiy, the coordinator of medical services for the Euromaidan demonstration, told the Kyiv Post that Nihoyan had been shot four times, including in the head and neck. He said that he did not believe the fatal injuries could have come from rubber bullets police had been using to fire on protesters over the past three days. "It is impossible," Musiy said, meaning that the bullets used were conventional.
According to inline news site Ukrainska Prada, Nihoyan was an Armenian native but a longtime resident of Dnipropetrovsk, an industrial city of more than a million people in eastern Ukraine. Other sources have reported that he was born and has lived in Ukraine all his life.
Nihoyan arrived in Kyiv to join the anti-government protests on Dec. 8.
Kristina Berdinskikh, a journalist who writes about the men and women volunteers and activists who have made the protest camp home for two months, said of the victim: “I was recommended to write about him by people from western ukraine, and they recommended him because he is a wonderful person.”
“He told me he could not watch the news calmly and when on Dec. 10 police attacked, he decided to join EuroMaidan, came to Dniptopetrovsk and could not find Maidan because there was none. So he came to the railway station and asked how much a ticket to Kyiv will cost for a student. It was something like Hr 30, so he bought it and went there. It was in early December,” Berdinskikh said.
Berdinskikh said Nihoyan’s parents at first didn’t know that he was participating in the protests. When they found out, they were worried about him.
“When they managed to get through to him, he told them he’s at Maidan. His father asked: ‘Which Maidan? In Dnipropetrovsk?’ He said, ‘No, in Kyiv.”
“I will be alright,” he told them during that conversation, Berdinskikh said.
Berdinskikh said that Nihoyan seemed to help everyone who needed anything at the protest camp on Independence Square.
“At the Maltese kitchen he was helping to cut wood, or he helped the guards – he was at it all the time,” she said.
Nihoyan spent Christmas at home in Dnipropetrovsk, but returned to Kyiv and the protest camp immediately after.
Nihoyan, Berdinskikh said, was fluent in Ukrainian, and enjoyed reciting poems in the language.
Berdinskikh said she was absolutely shocked when she heard the news of his death this morning.
“I can not hold back the tears!! Is it really that Sergei Nihoyan??” she wrote on Facebook.
