You're reading: Former Rada deputy Yermak dies in traffic accident

Anatoly Yermak, a former SBU colonel and parliament deputy, died on Tuesday when the VAZ sedan he was a passenger in collided head on with a MAZ truck traveling in the opposite direction

eling in the opposite direction.

The accident occurred on the Zaporozhia-Mariupol highway near the town of Pologi, Zaporizhya oblast, as Yermak was returning home to Kherson from his mother’s funeral.

Interior Ministry officials in Zaporizhya reported on Wednesday that the accident occurred at 17:45 when the Zhiguli spun out of control on the icy highway and plowed into the truck. The 31-year-old truck driver was not hurt. Yermak’s 23-year-old son Oleksandr survived the crash and was hospitalized, but the driver of the sedan, Yermak’s older brother Mykola, perished.

Yermak, an outspoken critic of President Leonid Kuchma, was elected in 1994 and 1998 to the Rada, where he worked closely with Oleksandr Omelchenko to investigate allegations of corruption among government officials.

Yermak, 47, ran unsuccessfully for re-election in March 2002 as an independent candidate from Zaporizhya’s 84th single-mandate constituency, placing fifth in the race.

A member of the Ukrainian Republican Party Sobor, Yermak worked as an assistant to Omelchenko, a member of Yulia Tymoshenko’s Rada faction, and chairman of the ad hoc commission investigating the murder of journalist Georgy Gongadze.

Yermak will be buried on Saturday at the Bajkovy Cemetary following a 10 a.m. memorial service at the Teachers’ House in Kyiv.