SIMFEROPOL - Former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych's son of the same name was buried at a military cemetery in Sevastopol on March 2, a staff member of the administration of Sevastopol's Nakhimov District where the cemetery is located told Interfax.
“The funeral was held at around midday today. Whether Yanukovych Senior attended, I don’t know, the territory of the cemetery was encircled by security guards, no one was allowed in. Some attendees arrived at the ceremony in cars with tinted windows,” the administration official said.
The decision to bury Yanukovych Jr. at the final resting place of Russian soldiers and officers who fought in the 1853-1856 Crimean war is due to the circumstances surrounding his death, the official said.
“According to eyewitness accounts, he died while rescuing other people: he helped all passengers get out of the vehicle, and could not do the same himself,” the source said.
Interfax does not have an official confirmation of this information.
The death of Yanukovych Jr. in Russia was earlier announced by Anton Heraschenko, an advisor to the Ukrainian interior minister, and a spokesperson for Ukrainian parliamentarian (Opposition Bloc) Nestor Shufrych.
For its part, the Baikal search and rescue squad told Interfax that there was no one named Yanukovych in the vehicle which fell under the ice on Lake Baikal in the Irkutsk region on March 20. Among those rescued were four Ukrainians; the driver was a local resident. A source in regional emergency authorities told Interfax said the driver’s name was Viktor Davydov.
A spokesman for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, Yevhen Perebyinis, said that Ukraine has yet to receive a reply from Russia to the enquiry it sent last Sunday regarding the death of the former member of the Ukrainian parliament.
Viktor Yanukovych Jr. was born on July 16, 1981 in Yenakiyeve, Donetsk region. He served several terms in the Ukrainian parliament. In 2010 he was appointed the honorary president of Young Regions, a Ukrainian political youth organization, and from 2012 served as the First Vice President at Ukraine’s Automobile Federation (AFU).
