Case is labelled ‘politically motivated’
RFE/RL
Serhiy Sternenko in an Odesa courtroom on February 23.
KYIV – Perhaps Odesa’s most visible pro-Ukrainian, anti-graft activist from the Euro-Maidan era was sentenced to seven years and three months in prison on February 23 by a court in the Black Sea port city.
Judge Viktor Poprevych of the Seaside District Court ruled that Serhiy Sternenko, 25, almost six years ago took part in abducting an openly pro-Russian local politician, beat and robbed him of 330 hrv (the equivalent of $15 then) and his cell phone’s SIM card, though not his actual phone.
Mr. Sternenko pled not guilty while calling the allegations politically motivated, and was sentenced on only the battery and robbery charges because the five-year statute of limitations on the kidnapping charge had expired.
Following the ruling, Mr. Sterenenko and a co-defendant, Ruslan Demchuk, were immediately taken into custody. Half of Mr. Sternenko’s property was also ordered to be confiscated.
Mr. Sternenko, who promised to appeal the verdict, is a trained lawyer and former head of the Odesa branch of Right Sector, a right-wing paramilitary group that rose to prominence during the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, which resulted in the kleptocratic, pro-Kremlin, former president Viktor Yanukovych abandoning office for self-exile in Russia.
In the evening after Mr. Sternenko’s sentencing, protests supporting him erupted in at least 15 regional capitals, as well as at the Ukrainian consulates in Warsaw and Chicago. They called for his release, for reform of the judicial system, the firing of unruly judges and the resignation of Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova.
In Kyiv near the presidential office building on Bankova and Hrushevskoho streets, clashes between the backers of Mr. Sternenko and combined National Guard and police forces led to 24 arrests, all of whom were eventually released. Law enforcement authorities reported that 27 National Guard and police officers were injured during the rift, including some with burns to their eyes.
Mr. Sternenko’s advocates include rights groups, members of parliament from the opposition party Holos, former acting Health Minister Ulyana Suprun and a non-profit group that is seeking justice for Katya Handzyuk, a civic activist who was killed after exposing corruption in her hometown of Kherson.
Non-stop protests in support of the jailed activist were scheduled to begin at noon on February 27. Human Rights Center Zmina, the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group (KHPG) and the Ukrainian branch of the Helsinki Union have all described the kidnapping case against him as “dubious” and say this and three other criminal cases opened against him are “politically motivated.”
According to the prosecutors’ and police version of events, Messrs. Demchuk and Sternenko had set up a meeting with local politician Serhiy Shcherbych in late April 2015 when they allegedly abducted, beat and robbed him.
The alleged victim had recently been elected to a district council with the staunch pro-Russian Rodina party and was due to be sworn in as a deputy on April 30, 2015. Mr. Shcherbych would later join the mayor’s Trust in Deeds party.
The day after his alleged abduction on April 25, police say the victim filed a report accusing the then two Right Sector members of the crime, although Mr. Shcherbych had been hospitalized following three apparent shock pistol wounds, having been apparently beaten. Mr. Shcherbych allegedly gave testimony to police outside the hospital and investigators never visited the basement where he was allegedly temporarily held during his abduction.
Yet the two suspects would only be charged and detained in September 2015, nearly five months after the alleged incident. Mr. Sternenko’s lawyers noted that a lawyer wasn’t present when police searched his apartment as is required by law and the judge denied their motion to have the search stricken from evidence based on the absence of a lawyer.
Mr. Sternenko says that before the alleged abduction he had “never met or had contact” with the local politician and admitted to meeting him with Mr. Demchuk in May 2015, a month after the alleged incident, according to the judge’s ruling.
The case “basically rests solely on the testimony of the victim and only the assumptions of the prosecutor,” Mr. Sternenko’s lawyer, Masi Nayem, told Ukrainian media.
Lawyers for Mr. Sternenko also pointed out that a witness of the kidnapping in the village of Fontanka 18 kilometers from Odesa, who gave testimony in June 2015 – two months after the incident – was never present in court and hence there was no opportunity to question her.
Another lawyer for the accused, Vitaliy Kolomiyets, laughed at the amount that was allegedly stolen because, based on the prosecutors’ version of events, because the victim had allegedly been driven for about four hours, “which would’ve cost about 500 hryvnias” in gas.
Mr. Poprevych, according to rights groups, had also cited Mr. Sternenko’s negative attitude toward the political party membership of the victim as a motive for committing the alleged crime.
“The court is impartial, without giving any assessment to the circumstances…it should note that… public life in Ukraine is based on the principles of political, economic and ideological diversity,” the judge wrote. “No ideology can be recognized by the state as obligatory. There can be no racial, religious or other discrimination. The committal of a crime against a person in connection with the performance of his public duty can be regarded as discrimination.”
Mr. Sternenko was 18 when the Euro-Maidan protests erupted more than seven years ago. During that time, he took a leading role in Odesa, a city of nearly 1 million people with a multi-ethnic population that tends to vote pro-Russian. Based on Central Election Commission data, Odesa’s electorate is largely apathetic, but its pro-Russian voters are most active. The city’s mayor, Hennadiy Trukhanov, is reportedly linked to organized crime dating to the 1990s, reportedly holds a Russian passport and is corrupt – all claims he denies.
Mr. Sternenko eventually ascended to Right Sector’s leadership in the city and, after the popular uprising, he took to video blogging and attended law school in Kyiv. He would openly accuse the Odesa mayor of involvement in corrupt real-estate, construction and land deals.
RFE/RL
Protesters and security forces face off near the presidential office building on Bankova Street in Kyiv on February 23.
After his verdict was read in court, Mr. Sternenko tweeted an ironic “thank you” message to Mr. Trukhanov, as well as to Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova, the deputy head of the presidential office, Oleh Tatarov, and a “special thanks to [President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy.”
Courtroom footage following the ruling showed Mr. Sternenko calling the ruling “illegal” and he said that the verdict was “dictated from Bankova Street” in Kyiv where the presidential office building is located.
“They [the president’s office] don’t like it when we criticize them,” he added.
Lawmaker Oleksandra Ustinova of the opposition Holos party has since started a petition drive in parliament to amass the required 150 signatures to initiate a vote of no confidence in Ms. Veneditkova. The no confidence measure needs 226 votes to pass.
Calling the case “politically motivated,” Ms. Ustinova, a former anti-corruption activist, said “pro-Russian” forces are behind Mr. Sternenko’s prosecution.
She mentioned Mr. Trukhanov and Andriy Portnov, who was a deputy head of former President Viktor Yanukovych’s administration. After Euro-Maidan, the latter fled to Russia along with other former members of the Yanukovych administration and returned after Mr. Zelenskyy became president in 2019.
On his Telegram channel, Mr. Portnov has pushed for Mr. Sternenko’s conviction in the four cases against him and referred to him as a “Right Sector functionary, radical and nationalist.”
Mr. Portnov, also a former lawmaker and trained lawyer, described the verdict as an indictment of “the whole parasitic roaming radical morons and the order that has reigned in the country for the last seven years.”
Mykhailo Zhernakov of the DeJure Foundation judicial watchdog said on Facebook that Mr. Sternenko’s conviction was part of a larger campaign to discredit the values for which activists of the Euro-Maidan revolution stood.
Independent Ukrainian investigative journalism group Slidstvo published in August a report that shows that Mr. Tatarov, the deputy head of the presidential office, had in May 2019 filed a complaint to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) to have Mr. Sternenko arrested on another case currently open against him.
Mr. Tatarov is under investigation for his alleged involvement in a $2.8 million corruption scheme related to property development in Kyiv. He maintains his innocence and denies the charges against him.
Under Mr. Yanukovych’s presidency, he was the deputy head of the main investigation department of the Internal Affairs Ministry. During his tenure, he justified the use of violence against protesters during the pro-democracy, anti-corruption Euro-Maidan uprising that ousted Mr. Yanukovych. More than 100 people, mostly protesters, were killed during the uprising, known as the Revolution of Dignity.
Former Donetsk-based journalists, activists and rights groups have also questioned the judge’s impartiality in Mr. Sternenko’s case. Before moving to Odesa in 2015, Mr. Poprevych was a judge in Donetsk. In 2009, while investigating his rulings and background, local journalists discovered that the judge had a bust of Soviet leaders Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin standing in front of his single-family home in the city.
He moved to Odesa after Russia’s covert invasion of the Donbas. In 2017 he was not selected to the revamped Supreme Court after he failed to pass an anonymous written exam for one of the open seats.
In Odesa, DeJure Foundation found that he released from custody the director of a children’s camp where three children died in a fire despite the prosecutor’s argument that he would try to influence witnesses if set free.
His past asset declarations, according to judicial watchdog ProSud, show that his holdings are “hardly commensurate with the income of a Ukrainian judge.”
In one year, Mr. Poprevych didn’t declare an apartment his wife owns in Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula that Russia seized in early 2014 and a Mercedes luxury car manufactured in 2008.
Mr. Sternenko survived three attempts on his life in 2018 that he attributes to his civic activism, pro-Ukrainian stance and exposure of corruption.
The last attempt on his life took place in Odesa on May 24, 2018, near his home. His girlfriend was with him at the time. According to KHPG, “two men attacked him and delivered several knife wounds. He received [a] concussion, a deep cut to the hand and other lacerations.”
One of the two assailants, Ivan Kuznetsov, died of a knife wound from Mr. Sternenko that the latter said was inflicted as an act of self-defense.
The activist was refused police protection after the first two attacks that year and is currently charged with murder for exceeding his right to self-defense.
The other two cases against him are for rioting and beating of a police officer, and drug smuggling. He denies all the allegations and the cases are pending charges.