The Sosnovsky District Court of Cherkassy sentenced in absentia the former commander of the Luhansk branch of the Berkut special police unit Valery Kostenko to four years in prison for dispersing demonstrators and beating up journalists during the Euromaidan events. A message about this appeared on the page of the “Advocate Advisory Group” on Facebook.
According to the organization, we are talking about an episode of confrontation between demonstrators and security forces in January 2014, when protesters seized the lower floors of the Cherkasy city administration and demanded the resignation of local authorities at the “people's veche”. In a few hours, the police recaptured the building and detained several dozen people.
In court, eyewitnesses to the events stated that after the dispersal, the security forces beat and mocked the captured protesters and press staff. They were unhappy with the verdict and regarded the behavior of the security forces as sadism. “At the beginning of the process, we insisted on additional qualifications – torture and opposition by peaceful assembly. But they did not change the indictment, ”said one of the victims.
It is noted that Kostenko himself is currently on the wanted list. With the outbreak of the war in Donbass, his unit went over to the side of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic (LPR). Some of the former law enforcement officers are fighting as part of special forces.
Earlier, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office promised to complete an investigation into the main episodes of the events on the Maidan by the end of 2021. Difficulties in its implementation are associated, among other things, with the increase in the number of suspects. In particular, their number only in the case of the shooting of protesters and security officials on February 20, 2014 in Kiev tripled.
