More than 1,000 activists and members of the public attended a rally and memorial vigil for Ukrainian anti-corruption campaigner Kateryna Gandziuk late on Nov. 4, 2018, who died in hospital earlier that day. Gandziuk was 33.
The activists, who gathered outside the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, demanded that police find who ordered an acid attack on Gandziuk on July 31. The attack resulted in severe burns to 40 percent of Gandziuk’s body. The activist had been hospitalized in Kherson and then in Kyiv since the attack.
Members of the public held placards and lit candles in memory of the activist, who was noted for exposing corruption in her native Kherson.
Police have arrested five people in connection with the attack, which has now been reclassified as a contract killing. The five are former members of a paramilitary unit connected to the nationalist Right Sector organization, police have said. However, no information about who might have ordered the attack on Gandziuk has been given.
Gandziuk refused to cooperate with police in Kherson in investigating the attack, saying she believed that they were involved.
Police in the city initially classified the attack as “hooliganism,” but after a public outcry reclassified it as “attempted assassination.” It was reclassified again as a “contract killing” after news of Gandziuk’s death broke.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, reacting to the news, released a statement on Nov. 4 calling on police to find and prosecute Gandziuk’s killers.
Ukrainian civil activists have suffered a spate of attacks recently, with more than a dozen being targeted in Odesa alone this year. Police have made little progress in most of the cases, and none of those who ordered the attacks have been identified or prosecuted.
