The jail sentence against civic activist Serhiy Sternenko has galvanized large-scale protests all over Ukraine, including clashes with the police in Kyiv.
The protests were triggered by what many saw as an unfair verdict, reached with procedural violations and political motives by a controversial judge.
Odesa’s Primorsky District Court on Feb. 23 convicted Sternenko and another activist, Ruslan Demchuk of kidnapping, robbing and torturing Serhiy Shcherbych, a member of Odesa Oblast’s Kominternivske District Council, in April 2015. They were sentenced to seven years in jail and confiscation of half of their property. Sternenko denies the accusations
Sternenko and his supporters have accused his political enemies – Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s deputy chief of staff Oleh Tatarov and Odesa Mayor Hennady Trukhanov – of fabricating the case.
The Sternenko verdict dealt a blow to the Zelensky administration’s pro-Ukrainian credentials even after it imposed sweeping sanctions on pro-Kremlin lawmaker Viktor Medvedchuk and his allies.
Legal experts, lawmakers and anti-corruption activists pointed to the verdict as a symptom of Ukraine’s corrupt judiciary.
“The verdict against Serhiy Sternenko became possible exactly because we have not managed to carry out a high-quality judicial reform after the EuroMaidan Revolution,” Halia Chyzhyk, a legal expert at the Anti-Corruption Action Center, wrote on Facebook. “The head of (the judicial) mafia’s hydra is the High Council of Justice. We can cut off this head only by firing all corrupt officials from the High Council of Justice and changing the rules for its members’ selection.”
Even a number of lawmakers from Zelensky’s own Servant of the People party made a collective statement condemning the verdict and calling for genuine judicial reform.
“The Sternenko case… is an indicator of the highest possible distrust in the judiciary,” they said. “This distrust is just… The judicial reform of 2015-2019 has not fulfilled its key tasks – trust in the courts and their decisions has not been restored.”
“The choice of the judge – an explicit supporter of Stalin and a person who expresses his political sympathies and is incapable of being unbiased in the case – inevitably causes indignation,” the lawmakers continued.
Turbulent years
When the alleged kidnapping took place, Sternenko and Shcherbych represented opposite views during a turbulent time in Odesa’s history. Local activists feared that Russia could take over Odesa like it took Crimea and Donbas. Violent clashes between pro-Ukrainian and pro-Kremlin protesters led to 48 people being killed on May 2, 2014.
Sternenko took part in the 2013-2014 EuroMaidan Revolution, which ousted ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, and was the head of the Odesa branch of the Right Sector, a nationalist group in 2014 to 2017.
Shcherbych, on the contrary, used to be a member of the pro-Kremlin Rodina (Motherland) party and participated in the AntiMaidan, an organization of pro-government thugs who acted against EuroMaidan protesters.
Currently Shcherbych is a member of Trukhanov’s Doveryai Delam (Trust the Deeds) party.
Essence of the case
The prosecutors argue that Sternenko’s guilt is proven by the alleged victim’s testimony, a witness and cellular traffic data according to which Sternenko and Demchuk were located in the area where the alleged kidnapping took place. They also cite a medical report on injuries allegedly caused to Shcherbych and an expert assessment according to which the rubber bullet that he gave to the police could have been shot from Sternenko’s traumatic pistol.
One of the problems, however, is that the alleged witness of the kidnapping has not testified in court, and Shcherbych also refused to come to court hearings.
Another problem is that the statute of limitations for the kidnapping charges has expired, and the judge used Shcherbych’s claim that Sternenko took Hr 300 from him to convict him on robbery charges, which have a longer statute of limitations.
This reasoning has triggered indignation from civil society since Hr 300 is not seen as sufficient motivation for such an act.
Sternenko also said that searches at his house were conducted without his lawyer, and he was prevented from contacting him.
Viktor Poprevych, the judge who issued the verdict, does not meet integrity and ethics standards, according to a conclusion made by the Public Integrity Council, the judiciary’s state-sanctioned civic watchdog, in 2017. The Primorsky District Court did not respond to a request for comment.
Specifically, Poprevych has helped to whitewash drunk drivers, including a top judge, and issued a ruling that exempted judges from filing asset declarations, according to the Public Integrity Council. He has also acquitted police officers charged with torturing people and set miniscule bail for the head of the Victoria children’s camp, where a fire killed three children due to negligence in 2017.
Poprevych has written many of his rulings in Russian, and about 2000 of them have not been published at all, which constitutes violations of Ukrainian law.
Moreover, Poprevych failed to declare a car and his wife’s apartment in Ukraine’s Russian-annexed Crimea, the Public Integrity Council said.
In 2009 Poprevych also installed busts of Stalin and Lenin next to his house in Donetsk.
Previous trial
Sternenko has also been on trial in a separate case.
On June 15, 2018, Sternenko was assaulted on the street by two men. After they fought, one of the attackers ran away and died from his injuries.
The case has attracted a lot of public attention, with many pro-Ukrainian media and activists saying Sternenko acted in justifiable self-defense and pro-Russian media portraying him as a murderer. In June, he was charged with murder – an accusation that he denies – and put under house arrest.
In January Sternenko was released from house arrest in the case.
Apart from this episode, Sternenko was also assaulted in Odesa three other times in 2018 to 2020. The attacks remain largely uninvestigated, and their organizers have not been identified.
Conflict with Trukhanov
Sternenko has powerful enemies who are able to influence the law enforcement system.
Specifically, he has consistently criticized Odesa Mayor Trukhanov’s alleged corruption and accused him of organizing assaults on him. Trukhanov’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
According to the materials of the case into the June 15, 2018 assault, Sternenko met several people on the eve of the attack. Sternenko said they included Oleksandr Podobedov and Vitaly Posuvailo and accused them of organizing the assault on Trukhanov’s behalf. They were not available for comment.
Podobedov has been investigated and interrogated in the case but has not been officially charged. He has been accused by local activists of organizing pro-government thugs known as titushki.
There have been assaults and murder attempts on at least 14 activists in Odesa under Trukhanov. Some of the activists directly blame Trukhanov and his alleged partner Vladimir Galanternik for the attacks — a charge that they deny.
Tatarov’s role
Another influential heavyweight who has clashed with Sternenko is Zelensky’s deputy chief of staff Tatarov, who was a top police official under Yanukovych and was investigated over alleged persecution of EuroMaidan protesters. Tatarov’s lawyer Oleksandr Kuzmenko declined to comment, and the President’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.
Tatarov was a lawyer for Olesya Kuznetsova, the wife of Ivan Kuznetsov, who assaulted Sternenko and died after being injured by him on June 15, 2018.
In 2019 Tatarov asked the Security Service of Ukraine to charge Sternenko with premeditated murder and an assassination attempt on two people, an article that stipulates up to a life sentence, according to documents published by the Slidstvo.info investigative show. Sternenko was charged with murder in June 2020 when rumors about Tatarov’s future appointment to Zelensky’s office were in full swing, and Tatarov became a deputy chief of staff for the president in August 2020.
“Currently Tatarov is in charge of all law enforcement agencies at the President’s Office and is capable of influencing prosecutors and investigators in any criminal case,” Maksym Kostetsky, a lawyer and former legal advisor at Transparency International Ukraine, said on Facebook.
Tatarov also used to be a lawyer for Yanukovych’s ex-deputy chief of staff Andriy Portnov, who has led a massive public relations campaign to have Sternenko jailed.
Tatarov was charged by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine with bribery in December but Venediktova’s prosecutors have effectively buried the case.
Clash with Avakov
Sternenko has also regularly organized rallies for the resignation of Avakov, who has been mired in corruption scandals.
Responding to a request for comment, Avakov’s spokeswoman Natalia Stativko told the Kyiv Post that it was up to a court to rule on the Sternenko case.
In March 2020 Avakov met with Venediktova to discuss the Sternenko murder case despite the fact that it is being investigated by the Security Service of Ukraine, not the police.
According to official testimony, Abzal Baikumashev, one of those who assaulted Sternenko in 2018, had arrived in a car belonging to Ruslan Forostyak, an aide to Dmytro Golovin, then head of Odesa Oblast’s police department, which is subordinated to Avakov. Forostyak and Golovin denied being implicated in the crime.
Venediktova’s role
The prosecutors of Venediktova, a Zelensky loyalist, led the case against Sternenko. The Prosecutor General’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.
Even before the murder charges were announced, Venediktova said in April 2020 that Sternenko would be charged “in any case,” prompting accusations that she was biased against him.
Andriy Radionov, who was formerly the chief prosecutor in the Sternenko case, said in 2020 that the charges against Sternenko were “unfounded, non-objective and biased.” He said that he refused to sign the charges and had formally complained about pressure on him by Venediktova in the Sternenko case. Venediktova denied pressuring him.
“A seven year sentence for Serhiy Sternenko is not about justice,” the Anti-Corruption Action Center said on Feb. 23. “It’s revenge on a person who has been a thorn in the side of the police, politicians, state officials and property developers in Odesa. And currently he’s a thorn in the side of those who see Ukraine as a Russian colony and can’t accept the fact that Odesa is part of Ukraine. The Prosecutor General’s Office has again played into the hands of this gang.”
