Kyiv police have claimed there is no evidence to back allegations that this week's death of an organizer of rallies in support of jailed former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko was a murder.
Ruslan Bahmut, 36, apparently killed himself by falling off a high floor in an apartment building in Kyiv.
“On August 29, information appeared on the Internet under the headlines ‘Organizer of Rallies Ruslan Bahmut Murdered in the Capital.’ The Public Relations Department of the [Kyiv police authority] hereby states that, at 9:25 a.m. on August 28, the duty unit of the Desniansky District [Police] Department received a report through the special line 102 that the apparently dead body of a man was lying near Building 81/1 on Honore de Balzac Street,” the police authority said in a statement.
Police who arrived at the scene identified the man as Bahmut, who had lived on the fourth floor of the building, it said.
“In examining the body on the site of the incident, medics found no trace of violent death but came to a preliminary conclusion that [the body had] multiple fractures that are typically caused by falling off a high altitude,” the statement said.
A subsequent forensic examination confirmed that Bahmut had been killed by bone fractures and damage to internal organs that are normal effects of such a fall. No other fatal injuries were found, the authority claimed.
It said Desniansky police were investigating Bahmut’s death.
Ukrainian Internet newspaper Ukrayinska Pravda cited Vitaliy Cherniakhivsky, coordinator of the Forum for Saving Kyiv civil campaign as saying on Bahmut’s page in one of the online social networks that Bahmut “was thrown off the landing on the 16th floor of a building by unidentified criminals.”
Ukrayinska Pravda said Bahmut was known as an organizer of pre-financed rallies and demonstrations. He regularly posted notices about such events in social networks, according to the newspaper. He organized demonstrations outside the Pechersky District Court in Kyiv during ex-prime minister Tymoshenko’s trial, the paper said.
