Tetyana Chornovil earlier this week before she was beaten.An opposition journalist who has exposed corruption and extravagance by Ukraine’s political elite was run off the road and badly beaten by two men in a midnight attack late Tuesday.
Tetyana Chornovil, 34, survived the attack. But protesters in Kiev carried photos of her beaten face and marched on the interior ministry, demanding the resignation of Ukraine’s interior minister Vitaly Zakharchenko. Last month he ordered the violent crackdown against protesters.
Civil unrest had erupted when the Ukraine government tilted toward former master Russia and away from Europe and the EU.
Jen Psaki, a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department, said Thursday: ‘The United States expresses its grave concern over an emerging pattern of targeted violence and intimidation towards activists and journalists who participated in or reported on the protests.’
Hours before she was attached, Chornovil had posted pictures online of what she said was Zakharchenko’s home. Her story was part of her series about the extravagance of the political elite under president Viktor Yanukovich, the Irish Times said.
Chornovil receiving treatment at a Kiev hospital after the attack.Chornovil became famous last year after she infiltrated the grounds of the president’s opulent estate. She published photos of his residence with the caption, ‘Here lives the executioner.’
A dashcam in her car filmed her being chased late Tuesday night and rammed several times by a black Porsche Cayenne on a road outside Kiev. Two men then jumped out and beat her.
‘When a very, very posh car is ramming you first on the side, then from behind, then from the front you understand that they’ve been paid already for your life,’ she told a local television station.
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Richard L. Cassin is the publisher and editor of the FCPA Blog. He can be contacted here.
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