You're reading: Speaking Ukrainian may have gotten Donetsk volunteer killed

Speaking Ukrainian in Ukraine can sometimes be life-threatening.

After more than a week in a coma due to a severe beating, Artem Miroshnyshenko, a prominent activist and volunteer in the frontline city of Bakhmut in Donetsk Oblast some 713 kilometers southeast of the capital, died on Dec. 5. 

“Please stop donating, Artem died…” The activist’s brother, Serhiy Miroshnyshenko, wrote on Facebook on Dec. 6. He found out about the tragedy only a day after it occurred, as neither doctors nor investigators informed him about his brother’s death.

Media reported that the 36-year-old activist, who had helped the Ukrainian military and wounded soldiers since the beginning of the war with Russia and regularly participated in pro-Ukrainian actions, was beaten for responding in Ukrainian to an attacker on the evening of Nov. 29. 

The suspected killer is Mykola Barabash, a 16-year-old student at the local college of education who also practiced mixed martial arts. Barabash’s accomplice, a 17-year-old previously convicted of robbery, watched the attack from nearby. Both were drunk.

At the same time, police have another version of the events that does not link the attack to Miroshnichenko’s pro-Ukrainian position. According to Yaroslav Mezhennyi, head of the Bakhmut police department, the attacker simply wanted to practice his fighting skills. As a result of the “practice,” Miroshnichenko’s skull was fractured and he died from his injuries.

However, many dispute that explanation of the attack.

“When the police say it was an accident and he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, I don’t believe it this. It was done because of his pro-Ukrainian position,” the activist’s brother told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. 

Some activists want Miroshnychenko’s murder to be openly discussed as a hate crime to prevent similar attacks from happening in Ukraine. 

“Silence about this murder will provoke further attacks on those who speak Ukrainian or engaged in volunteer activity,” activist Pablo Ostrovsky wrote on his Facebook page.

A criminal case is pending in Artyomovsk City Court, and on Dec. 2 the court placed Barabash under house arrest as a preventive measure. 

During the case hearing, Judge Oleksandr Lyubchyk asked if Barabash needed a translator from Ukrainian to Russian. The suspect’s lawyer said that he understands Ukrainian but would only answer in Russian, Bakhmut’s public portal reported on Dec. 3.

“I do not know of a single case where someone was beaten and killed for speaking Russian. But I know a bunch of cases where people were beaten when speaking Ukrainian and were killed, as Artem now,” said Zoya Kazanzhy, an adviser at Ecomm Communication Consulting in Kyiv.