You're reading: Activist tortured by police in video returns to EuroMaidan, talks to journalists

When a thin man dressed in a grey sweater and black pants came into the room Kyiv's Trade Union house on Jan. 24, everyone fell silent.

All attention was focused on Mykhailo Gavryliuk, a 34-year-old construction worker from Chernivtsi and a EuroMaidan activist. He vaulted to international attention after a leaked video of him being tortured by Ukraine’s riot-control police officers went viral, with two million hits already for the YouTube video.

Officers detained Gavryliuk Jan. 22 on Hrushevskoho Street. After the video surfaced the day, police released him. He returned to EuroMaidan, where he resumted his post as part of a military unit formed by protesters to protect Independence Square from police assault.

His face still covered in bruises, Gavryliuk is nonetheless happy that he didn’t suffer more severe injuries at the hands of the gang of police officers. While in good spirits, his hand still trembles when he recounts how they punished him. “You could see bruises on my body on that video. Now I’d say my body is mostly blue from bruises,” he said.

Gavryliuk says he was trying to take another protester away to safety when several riot police officers circled him and dragged with them. “They were beating me all the time, since the moment they got me,” he said. “Before they actually searched me, they were beating me on the way with some sticks and feet and then decided to check whether I have some presents for them or not, ” Gavryliuk jokes.

The officers undressed their captive, leaving him in socks, while they kept beating him.

“I was there naked on the ground and after beating and torturing me they might have decided this is not enough so they took my hands from my head and started cutting my scalp lock,” the protester said, his voice breaking.

A scalp lock has been a distinguishing haircut for Ukrainian Cossacks since the middle ages. “The knife must have been blunt, because it took them a while to cut a piece. But they again might have thought that piece was too little and cut one more.,” Gavryliuk said.

Police officers handed the naked Gavryliuk an icebreaker. “As a last performance they gave me that icebreaker, I don’t know where they got it and were making me hold it and shout ‘I love Berkut’,” he said, explaining what hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians already witnessed. “But how could I say that, who can love these beasts. I would never say that even if it means I would die.”

After that ended, Gavryliuk was finally allowed to return to the police van, but not before getting hit in the head and kicked by an officer. Another detained man shared his clothes.“I don’t know his name, but God bless him and all his family, I would probably have frozen to death if he wouldn’t have help me.” The man gave him pants, a belt and a coat. “I remember putting his clothes in that freaking cold police car. For some reason it was so cold inside or maybe I was just so cold already,” Gavryliuk recalled.

Gavryliuk was brought to the police district office, where he fainted. An officer called an ambulance and he was taken to a hospital. From the hospital Gavryliuk was taken back to Euromaidan, by Afghanistan veterans, who were keeping an eye on injured protesters in the spot.

He said he is not going to file a legal complaint. “God will judge them,” he said. If not, people will extract their revenge soon. Gavryliuk says he is not afraid of anything. He believes EuroMaidan’s anti-government protests will be victorious.

“I am not leaving until we win, no matter what happens,” he said.

Kyiv Post staff writer Daryna Shevchenko can be reached at [email protected]