Local municipal council official Kateryna Gandziuk was hospitalized in a serious condition after an acid attack on July 31, in the city of Kherson 450 kilometers south of Kyiv.
According to the police, the assault happened at 8.30 a.m. local time as the woman was exiting the entrance hall of her apartment block.
“An unidentified male aged 20-25 walked out towards her from bushes holding a container with liquid,” police said, commented on the case.
“The unknown man splashed the liquid, allegedly an acidic substance, into the woman’s face and vanished after that. The injured person was hospitalized.”
Later in the day, Kherson regional hospital anesthesiologist Igor Ravelev told the 112 news channel that Gandziuk had sustained severe chemical burns to some 30 percent of her body, notably her head, face, arms, and chest.
Early on Aug. 1, local police published security camera footage showing the suspected assailant just moments before the incident.
According to journalist Sergiy Nikitenko, the attack could be connected with Gandziuk’s recent conflicts with Ukraine’s State Service of Transport Security. Gandziuk is also widely known for criticizing the police authorities in the Kherson Oblast, local media say
Earlier, on June 18, Nikitenko himself was attacked and beaten in Kherson. No-one has been charged for the assault.
Masi Nayyem, a Kyiv-based social activist and lawyer, wrote on his Facebook page on July 31 that he had “no doubts” that the acid assault on Gandziuk was instigated by “local pro-Russian forces like thug Kyryl Stremusov, who is a socialist from the party of Ilya Kiva,” a notorious former Interior Ministry advisor who currently leads the Socialist Party.
Nayyem added that he was sure that the Kherson police “would not carry out a proper investigation into the case.”
Stremusov denied that he was involved in the incident in a post on Facebook on Aug. 1.
The police initially classified the acid attack case as hooliganism; however, on the afternoon of July 31 , Larysa Sargan, the spokeswoman of Ukraine’s prosecutor general, reported on Facebook that the incident had been reclassified as “inflicting non-accidental severe injuries aimed at intimidating the victim.”
“All of the law enforcing agencies of Kherson Oblast – the prosecutor’s office, the security service, and the police – are working jointly to promptly solve this crime, ” Sargan said.
