Lviv court returns guilty verdicts in case of 2002 Sknyliv air disaster

by Zenon Zawada
Kyiv Press Bureau

LVIV - Though it is expected in Ukraine that a man will refrain from crying in public, Bohdan Onyschak, 50, couldn't contain his tears in a Lviv courtroom on June 23.

A judge had been reading the 77 names of those who died in the Sknyliv airfield catastrophe in 2002, and had reached those of Mr. Onyschak's daughter-in-law, two sons and granddaughter.

"Onyschak, Iryna Volodymyrivna, born 1979, reason for death was severe and fatal trauma to head and internal organs; Onyschak, Oleh Bohdanovych, born 1977, reason for death was decapitation; Onyschak, Yurii Bohdanovych, born 1979, reason for death was cranial-cerebral trauma; Onyschak, Iryna Olehivna, born 2001, reason for death was a crushed head and complete brain destruction."

In his failure to suppress his crying, Mr. Onyschak's shoulders shook up and down as he bowed his head and glared at the ground, where his tears landed and ultimately evaporated.

Beside him, his wife dabbed her tears with tissues, as did more than 100 relatives of the dead and injured who filled the Lviv Appellate Courthouse on Ivan Franko Street to hear the verdict in the seven-month trial of six air force officers and pilots accused in the Sknyliv catastrophe of July 22, 2002.

Among them were the co-pilots of the doomed Sukhoi-27 aircraft, lead pilot Volodymyr Toponar and Yurii Yegorov. Miraculously, they ejected from the plane after failing to pull out of a difficult diving maneuver and walked away from the carnage physically unscathed.

They left in their wake not only the dead, among them 28 children, but also 292 injured victims in what became the worst air show catastrophe in history. (Unofficial estimates of the injured reached as high as 500.)

On June 24 a three-judge panel led by Vitalii Zahoruyka laid blame for the catastrophe upon the pilots and their commanders, determining that they were careless in handling their military responsibilities.

The court found four defendants guilty of failing to execute orders, negligence and violating flight rules.

Mr. Toponar received a 14-year prison sentence and his co-pilot, Mr. Yegorov, received an eight-year sentence. Prosecutors had asked for 15 years' imprisonment for Mr. Toponar.

The judges also sentenced the head of flight operations that day, Gen. Anatolii Tretiakov, to six years' imprisonment and his deputy head of flight operations, Yurii Yatsiuk, to five years. Safety director Anatolii Lukynykh received a suspended four-year sentence.

Determining that technical problems did not cause the catastrophe, the court acquitted Anatolii Dziubetskyi, commander of the military division responsible for the SU-27's condition, citing an "absence of actions in the crime's make-up."

That ruling was among several that surprised the courtroom audience. Another was the damages awarded on behalf of each dead and injured victim.

Most relatives weren't even aware of how the court determined the damages, and they complained the awards were relatively meager.

"Ten thousand hryvni - is that money? It's not even $2,000 (U.S.)," said Irene Reshetilova, whose grandson, a 4-year-old American citizen named Nikita Bastrakov, suffered psychological damage during the Sknyliv tragedy.

"(Relatives of) those who died received either 35,000 or 200,000 hrv ($7,000 or $40,000)," Ms. Reshetilova said. "We don't understand their grading system."

Her grandson has sleep and speech disorders that need medical attention, for which the compensation has been inadequate, she said.

"The child was lying on dead bodies," Ms. Reshetilova said. "He saw heads. It affected his mental development. I had an entirely healthy child."

The verdict was a disgrace to the Ukrainian legal system, said Stefan Kozak, chair of the Sknylivska Trahediya citizens' organization.

"Ukraine has censured itself today," Mr. Kozak said. "Today we are all on trial. The court has demonstrated that it violates the rights of victims and shields the organizers of such disasters."

The trial's conclusion was grueling for the victims' relatives. As part of the verdict, Ukrainian judicial procedure requires judges to read all the details of a crime and the injuries its victims sustained.

As a result, the judges took two days to read their verdict, describing in detail the hundreds of physical and mental injuries sustained, such as post-traumatic stress syndrome, damage to the central nervous system, depression and bodies 50 percent covered with burns.

"I'm will go out of my mind from all of this," said one woman who left the courtroom, unable to bear the gory details.

The co-pilot, Mr. Yegorov, appeared miserable when listening to the details of the dead and injured, resting his slouched head in his right hand and staring at the table underneath throughout the reading.

His colleague, Mr. Toponar, appeared indifferent, staring straight ahead. When the judges read evaluations of his conduct, he either shook his head or grinned in disappointment.

On his left sat his wife of more than 25 years, Iryna, a lawyer with a formal legal education who defended her husband throughout the trial.

When the prison sentences were read, the court was largely silent.

Afterwards, as police officers began placing handcuffs on the guilty, several in the courthouse shouted, "Strilochnyky!" - a Ukrainian slang term for those who deflect responsibility toward others.

"You are not people!" another man shouted.

In addition to prison sentences, the court assessed fines equivalent to $1.44 million (U.S.) against Mr. Toponar, $500,000 against Mr. Yegorov and $140,000 against Mr. Tretiakov and Mr. Yatsiuk.

Family members said that no prison sentence or amount of recovered damages will compensate for the fact that their families, and therefore their lives, are entirely destroyed.

"I can't imagine a suitable punishment for them," said Mr. Onyshchak of Semenivka, a village outside of Lviv, "There is not only an earthly court to judge them, but there is also God's court. And the only suitable punishment will be God's court."

While Mr. Onyschak was not present at the Sknyliv air show with his family, Oleksandra Serbyn, 35, of Stryi attended with her husband, Volodymyr, born 1966, and their two sons, Yurii, born in 1994, and Rostyslav, born in 1996.

Their family had just arrived at the airfield when Mrs. Serbyn's husband told her that he wanted to take their two sons to show them a large military plane that was left open for viewing.

She suggested that he wait and they all go together, but he went off with the children instead.

Mrs. Serbyn was only 30 meters away from them, or about 100 feet, when she started to see the plane come down and crash through trees. She and a friend immediately ducked behind the wheel of one of the planes on the ground. The plane missed them by about 16 feet.

"People were running and yelling," she said. "My children were not mutilated, but my husband was mutilated badly. I found them all, and we sent them to the morgue. I didn't go there - my friends and relatives did. In two days we buried all that was left. I had a dream the week before this happened in which I was running after my husband and telling him not to go there."

Mrs. Serbyn said she has sustained herself spiritually by attending liturgy and praying at her local Ukrainian Catholic church. She said she has wondered and struggled with the question of why God would take her family away from her.

"I thought to myself that God took my little children to himself as angels," she said. "I remember them as little angels. My husband was a good person too, and I think that God did this for a better purpose."

Given the nature of Ukrainian history, as with any tragedy or massive loss of life, conspiracy theories have been circulating.

Maria Bolisna, a resident near Sknyliv who didn't lose relatives there, wrote a religious pamphlet called "The Secrets of Sknyliv" and was distributing it at the courthouse to the relatives.

In it, she implies that former President Leonid Kuchma had ordered the Sknyliv catastrophe because weeks earlier Lviv was the site of a large "Ukraine Without Kuchma" demonstration.

Relatives of the victims directed much of their resentment toward Mr. Toponar because he persistently denied any responsibility for the crash and gave people the impression that his conscience was not bothered or affected.

To cope with his feelings of anger, Zenoviyi Halaiyko, 54, began writing poetry about the catastrophe, which killed his only son, Serhii, a creative 17-year-old who enjoyed drawing aircraft and had a particular interest in aviation.

Mr. Halaiko is among those who believe that Mr. Toponar received orders to crash the plane into the crowd.

While the judges read their verdict in the courtroom, he recited one of the verses of his poems in a neighboring hall. His body trembled in anger as he uttered the lines:

"You are not a person, Toponar,
You are death holding a scythe,
Who cut the heads off our dear ones,
These flowers with petals that never bloomed,
To whom our dear land would have given life.
Yegorov, you worthless coward!
Why did you try to save your skin?
You saw people under you,
Why did you press the catapult button?
Why didn't you take control into your hands,
When this 'ace'directed his plane at the people?
Six tons behind your shoulders!
That damned Toponar would crash the plane!
You knew!"

After listening to the judges read the first part of the verdict, Mr. Toponar told reporters outside the courthouse the day before his prison sentence was read that it was already evident that he would be incarcerated.

"I'm accused of an error in flying technique and that I lost control of the flight," he said. "The former was not proved. There are documents saying that there was no violation in the maneuver. The latter could be proved by an objective review. But it was held illegally and examined by people interested in my imprisonment."

The court's findings placed the blame on his piloting, rather than focusing on the plane's technical condition.

As part of Mr. Toponar's defense, his wife, Iryna, pointed out a hole in the plane's exterior. She argued either the plane's technical system broke or an external factor such as the hole caused the accident.

The judges based their verdict on a government commission report that drew conclusions in order to create a scapegoat, he said.

"The supervisors betrayed their subordinates," said Mrs. Toponar. "They acted inappropriately in that they decided to throw the whole responsibility of this tragedy on pilots."

It was such skirting of responsibility on the part of the defendants that upset the victims and their relatives the most.

"The pilots say they aren't responsible because they did exactly as they were told," Mrs. Serbyn said in disgust. "The supervisors say they aren't responsible because they weren't supposed to be directing those planes, but others instead. It was my little children who were not guilty of anything."

All the defendants said they would appeal their sentences. Meanwhile, the victims and their relatives said they also would appeal to the Supreme Court.

Some victims, such as Mr. Onyschak, are suing separately in order to obtain moral and material damages from the Ukrainian government. His suit goes to court in July.

However, he can't imagine any financial award restoring his life to what it was before the catastrophe.

"When my children were alive, I was in heaven," Mr. Onyschak said. "My family was wonderful. I don't know how these things can be compensated in terms of money."

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, July 3, 2005, No. 27, Vol. LXXIII

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