You're reading: Sloviansk: Corpse found with dead body of city councilman Rybak is Kyiv university student

A 19-year-old Kyiv Polytechnic Institute student has been identified as the other corpse that was found on April 19 alongside Horlivka city councilman Volodymyr Rybak in a river near Sloviansk in Donetsk Oblast, reported the educational institute’s president Mykhailo Zhurovsky on his VKontekte social media page. 

Yuriy Popravko’s body had signs of torture and was found in
the Torets River near the village of Raihorodok outside Sloviansk, together
with Rybak’s tortured and murdered body.

“To
our great sorrow, our worst fears have been confirmed,” wrote KPI president
Zhurovsky. “A student at the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute in the Department of
Sociology and Law, Yuriy Popravko, has died tragically. His body with signs of
torture was found in the river near Slovyansk, Donetsk Oblast, together with
the body of deputy Vitaliy Rybak. We express our deepest condolences to the
family and friends of Yuriy. May his memory be eternal.”

According to Popravko’s
mother, Yaroslava Popravko, cited by Liga.net, her son had taken part in the
EuroMaidan protests that eventually toppled ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s
criminal regime.

His mother added that her son, together with friends, On
April 16 visited his girlfriend in Kharkiv. There was no further contact with
him after that. His girlfriend, Dasha, according to Ukrainska Pravda, confirmed
that he came to see her with his friends, but left the next day without providing
a destination.

Yaroslava
Popravko added that when she called her son’s phone, she was told that he had
died but that his phone was being kept to “locate friends,” Ukrainska Pravda
reported.

Ukraine’s
Security Service has
implicated Russian Military Intelligence Colonel
Igor Strelkov and Lieutenant-Colonel
Igor Bezlier of involvement in the murder of Rybak. 

Kyiv Post editor Mark Rachkevych can be reached at [email protected].