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Viktor Lozynsky is a land baron and member of parliament who lives in Kyiv and does business in Holovanivsk, a small town in Kirovohrad oblast. Before defecting to BYuT a few years ago, he had been a member of the Party of Regions.
On June 16, 2009, MP Lozynsky joined forces with rayon (county) prosecutor Yevhen Hrebenko and rayon police chief Mykhailo Kovalsky. The three went on safari that claimed the life of Valeriy Oliynyk, an unemployed man, age 53.
When the posse approached him on the road leading to the woods, the man started running away. They chased him into the woods, hit him and broke his leg. Then they shot him as many as nine times.
That’s what the locals are saying. They describe the victim as a man who worked odd jobs, collected things and has never done any harm to anybody.
MP Lozynsky gets totally different reviews.
The locals describe him as the modern-day equivalent of a medieval lord, one who treats country folks as serfs and terrorizes them. His grip on the community can also be compared to that of Latin American drug lords.
This Inter footage opens with the news anchor saying the locals fear for their lives and appeal to the SBU and the President for protection. They don’t trust local law enforcement.
Original Video- More videos at TinyPic
A woman says that, on that day, many people heard automatic rifle gunfire. Ivan Kucher, a former rayon executive, portrays MP Lozynsky as a man who bragged about his hunting prowess. His list of VIP guest hunters includes former president Leonid Kravchuk (a fan of Tymoshenko) and former speaker Ivan Plyushch (a fan of the Party of Regions).
Towards the end of the footage, Kucher questions Tymoshenko on why she put Lozynsky on the BYuT party list. To stimulate her thinking, he reflects on Ukraine’s turbulent history and predicts a popular uprising.
Wild boar from Lozynsky’s woods regularly attack people's farmlands and destroy crops. People are afraid to go out into the woods. An elderly local hunter with a registered gun who dared venture into the woods recalls being nearly strangled by Lozynsky. He had to find his way back home, some 8 km (5 mi), walking without his shoes and skis. In another encounter, the senior got beaten at gunpoint, had his house raided by police, who, as he says, planted evidence on him. The court gave him a suspended sentence.
A local Orthodox priest recalls confronting MP Lozynsky about an act that couldn’t have better epitomized Holovanivsk’s communist-capitalist “animal farm.”
Right outside the church, Lozynsky recently phased out the Ukrainian coat of arms, the trident, in favor of the Soviet coat of arms, the hammer and sickle. When confronted about the act, he told the priest to mind his own business.
What else would you expect from a former cop, discharged 18 years ago for professional misconduct, namely blackmail and forgery?
An STB report offers more slice-of-death scenes from Holovanivsk.
Lyubov Oliynyk, the victim’s mother, 81, claims that two days after her son’s death, four men and two women visited her house. These “great people,” as they called themselves according to the mother, came looking for some papers and clothes, and made inquiries about Valeriy. The group left Hr. 200 ($26) as an obvious inducement to keep her from pressing charges.
No one except the victim’s classmates was allowed to ID the body. When a female STB reporter raises the issue with an employee at the local prosecutor’s office, he suddenly becomes camera-shy and says this: “You just don’t want to have a normal conversation, do you?”
Oliynyk didn’t get to see her son until they mounted him on a truck, in a manner typical of all countryside funerals. She couldn’t give her son a proper burial for eight days.
In the footage, a friend of the deceased climbs into the truck bed along with the mother and briefly examines the body in the coffin. He reports a shaky head, possibly consistent with internal decapitation. The medical examiner ducks questions and suggests that forensic experts be consulted.
In the same vein, the rayon morgue will not issue a certificate of death. Instead, they forward the request to the office of the oblast prosecutor in Kirovohrad. In the death certificate, which the victim's classmates obtained in Kirovohrad, the cause of death reads: “Severe bleeding as a result of a gunshot wound,” “multiple gunshot wounds to lower limbs caused by a firearm,” “bodily injuries.”
The horrors don’t stop there. At the cemetery, the mother finds out that her son’s body is missing a leg.
Lozynsky’s side of the story: We spotted a man who looked like a poacher. He didn’t identify himself and started firing on us. We requested backup. Hrebenko (the prosecutor) and I chased the man into the woods and caught him and snatched his gun. Next, he pulled a knife on us. We ran away. He then pulled another gun at us. We jumped back into our car. Some 7-8 minutes later, police arrived and surrounded him. After negotiating for 20 minutes, they finally caught him and called an ambulance. (Lozynsky claims having sustained knife injuries.)
At a news conference in Kirovohrad, Lozynsky presented controversial material that he claimed implicates Oliynyk in illegal drug and weapons possession as well as professional misconduct during his service in law enforcement. (Both are former cops?)
He also produced video of an elderly woman (victim's mother?) in which, according to fuzzy news reports, she claims that her son would abuse her and would show her his gun. Asked about whether she believes her son could have fired at a human being, she says she does. (In the Inter report, the victim's mother says quite the opposite.)
Another Inter report shows two fragments of that press conference:
MP Lozynsky: We jumped out of the car and took measures to detain him. He was thrown on the round: I was holding one hand, with the pistol (he had a handgun in his right hand). The prosecutor was holding his left hand. The struggle continued for about maybe a minute and a half or two munutes. During this time, a few shots were made from this handgun...
Next time, we'll get a judge [on board]. There's no problem. But let me assure you: If this situation repeats itself in the future, I'll do the same thing.
Q: How many more handguns did the victim have? Why didn’t he shoot you with at least one of his handguns?
As questions linger, BYuT plans to award MP Viktor Lozynsky — for assisting in the capture of an armed criminal.
Sources:
http://censor.net.ua/go/offer/ResourceID/125124.html
http://censor.net.ua/go/offer/ResourceID/125176.html
http://inter.ua
http://vikna.ua/e107_plugins/videotv/videoview.php?view.13367
http://novynar.com.ua/politics/72683
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2009/6/23/97090.htm
http://www.newsru.ua/crime/22jun2009/lozinsky.html
http://podrobnosti.ua/criminal/2009/06/22/611028.htmls
