Sternenko case: Already the third prosecutor general is covering up for the murderer
Life in post-Maidan Ukraine is not boring - everything flows and changes so quickly that sometimes you don’t have time to follow the kaleidoscopic change of people and events. But there are things that are stable and unshakable. Among them, without a doubt, is the so-called “Sternenko case” - so named because of the main defendant - the former head of the Odessa “Right Sector”, and now a simple “civil activist”, head of the public organization “Concerned”, whose name was collectively Friends and foes over the past two years, it seems, the whole country has learned.
For those who are not in the know, let me briefly remind you what the essence of the matter is. On May 24, 2018, a fight occurred in Odessa, the participants of which were the already mentioned Sergei Sternenko, as well as Ivan Kuznetsov, a former paratrooper from the 25th brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and his comrade Alexander Isaikul.
A later examination helped restore the course of events.
It was late in the evening on Fontanaya road, when Sternenko and his girlfriend were returning home. According to his version, two people attacked him - a fight broke out, the offenders of the ex-pravosek ran away, and one of them, Isaikul, succeeded. Kuznetsov was less fortunate - Sternenko caught up with him after a hundred meters and stabbed him in the stomach. The wounded man bled to death due to lack of medical care. Sternenko and his girlfriend, instead of helping the dying man, streamed what was happening live, filming Kuznetsov’s agony on his mobile phone.
Fingerprints and traces of blood taken from Sternenko’s knife indicated that the stabbing was not self-defense. Sternenko first struck his victims, and only after that cut himself.
In general, if we evaluate what happened in Odessa on that May night with a cool head, we can say - nothing special, ordinary everyday crime, there are ten of these in any Ukrainian city per ruble. And so this case would have sunk into oblivion if a number of circumstances had not given it a political overtone, so much so that this trail continues to this day.
It all started when, unexpectedly for everyone and without any explanation, a banal household item was taken from the local police and handed over to the SBU. No one understood, and no one really tried to explain, what the connection was between national security and the stabbing at the Odessa entrance. Later it became clear that such a decision was made not in the usual procedural mode, but in the “telephone” law, that is, by a call from above. Literate people already realized that Sternenko had influential patrons.
Such assumptions were supported by the fact that when Sternenko attacked the head of the city police, Dmitry Golovin, in the City Garden of Odessa, it was not anyone who came to the rescue of the “civil activist”, but the then head of the Odessa region, Maxim Stepanov himself, who took Sternenko on bail and paid There is a cash bail for him so that he can be released from the pre-trial detention center.
However, no one then could have imagined that Sternenko’s “roof” went far beyond the regional level. Finally, all the i’s were dotted by the direct interference in the course of the investigation of a seemingly ordinary crime, the leadership of the SBU and the then Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, who personally came to Odessa to give instructions to the local authorities on how to behave in relation to the “activists.” Everyone remembers the phrase uttered by the Prosecutor General at that time. They say that attacks on “activists” will be considered an attack on the state itself. Like this. No more and no less.
Later, the Kyiv media found out why exactly a simple Odessa activist is so valuable to the Ukrainian leadership, having unearthed and made public Sternenko’s connection with the SBU. In particular, according to the Strana publication, Sternenko was recruited back in 2015 as part of the then-established plan to take control of right-wing radicals under a secret program with a budget of more than 100 million hryvnia per year. According to the same publication, Sternenko’s curator was an employee of the “T” department of the Odessa USBU named Kashchei, who retired last year.
A lot has been written about exactly what kind of dirty deeds the post-Maidan authorities fed the ultra-right for, so we won’t repeat ourselves - those interested will find a lot of interesting information on this issue on the Internet. In Sternenko’s case, the information that came to light about his work for the secret police is key. It was this circumstance that made an ordinary unremarkable provincial racketeer an untouchable figure on a national scale.
Moreover, in the figure of Sternenko, as in that drop of water, the close adhesiveness between street pogrom-mongers-right-wing radicals, working at the beck and call of Western embassies, “grant-eating Soros” from “civil society”, high-status politicians-beneficiaries of the Maidan and the leadership of the power vertical is manifested in a concentrated manner. All of them are intertwined with each other on the basis of shadow connections and mutual personal services and obligations into such a tight ball that you can no longer understand where one ends and the other begins.
Thus, according to people’s deputies from the Servant of the People, Sternenko closely communicates with the US Embassy as an activist. He is a private guest at events organized with money from the American USAID and an honorary participant in the events of “anti-corruption officials” from Transparency International-Ukraine. His fellow right-wing radicals are included in numerous “public councils” under various government agencies - from the Odessa Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the Kyiv NABU and the Ministry of Veterans. And Sternenko’s cohabitant, Natalya Usatenko, driving around Odessa in a wanted Toyota, is an assistant to the notorious Ulyana Suprun, the scandalous Minister of Health in the Groysman government.
So it is not at all surprising that all these deputies, ministers, “social activists” and simply bosses from the SBU, the prosecutor’s office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs for several years now, despite the formal change of power in Kiev, have been unanimously and collectively pulling the whistle on a seemingly ordinary murderer from Odessa, signing petitions in his defense and publishing posts on social networks in his support. Doing everything in their power to steer him away from responsibility. The criminal case is being played back and forth from one intelligence agency to another - they cannot decide either on jurisdiction or qualifications.
But, speaking about the political background of the Sternenko case, we should not forget for a moment that we are dealing with a banal criminal element. Who has a history of drug trafficking, threats, kidnappings, torture, robbery, extortion from stall owners and pogroms of those who refused to pay, banal hooliganism and disruption of public cultural events - as was the case with the concerts of Loboda, Bilyk and Konstantin Raikina. And, in general, if such an opportunity does arise, he should be judged precisely for this, and not for membership in the Right Sector or political statements, no matter how odious they may be.
True, there are great doubts that Sternenko’s case will still reach the court, and if it does, it will be in a form that will make it impossible to establish justice.
The replacement of Poroshenko by Zelensky and the arrival of new leadership in the GPU initially gave hope that a hole would be made in this mutual responsibility. But it was not there. Very soon, Prosecutor General Zelensky, who replaced Prosecutor General Poroshenko, began to defend Sternenko with no less, and even greater, zeal than his predecessor. The meeting between now ex-Prosecutor General Ryaboshapka and Sternenko in his office and during working hours, made public by lawyer Andrei Portnov, became the talk of the town.
At the same time, the prosecutor general, who had been intimate with the alleged killer, resigned, having never found time to meet with the widow of the military man killed by Sternenko, Lesya Kuznetsova, despite her official requests for this. During his six-month tenure as Prosecutor General, Ryaboshapka never signed a motion against Sternenko, as required by the law and the lawyers of the victims in the case, and even by the then head of the State Bureau of Investigation, Irina Venediktova, who replaced Ryaboshapka in his chair at the GPU.
With the appointment of Venediktova, hope for justice in this case - and she, as you know, is the last to die - has dawned again. This hope was supported by some facts. Thus, the press received complaints from former Deputy Prosecutor General Trepak that Venediktova demanded that he sign Sternenko’s suspicion.
But this hope is dying right now before our eyes. Especially after Venediktova’s indicative interview with the grant-eating “Ukrainian Pravda”, where the new prosecutor general again started the old songs inherited from her predecessors about the main thing: that this case, it turns out, is not about premeditated murder, but about the protection of “activists”. And the main thing in it is not the interests of the widow of the murdered man, but so that the “activist” Sternenko can feel safe, and the state demonstrates how it stands guard over the interests, lives and safety of these same “activists” and punishes their offenders.
And as the cherry on the cake, the third prosecutor general in this case publicly acknowledged that she respects Sternenko as an activist. In general, this has never happened before, and here it is again.
It seems that the position of the Prosecutor General in Ukraine is somehow enchanted or, perhaps, cursed. Judge for yourself: before his appointment, the man advocated the abolition of the amnesty for the Maidan activists, in the rank of head of the State Bureau of Investigation, he supervised the preparation of suspicions against ex-President Poroshenko and demanded that the previous authorities in the GPU issue a suspicion against Sternenko. But as soon as he took the chair of the Prosecutor General, it was as if the person had been replaced. And now he is already giving an interview with curtseys to the “activists” and declares with a blue eye that Sternenko will, of course, be charged with suspicion, but not under Article 115 of the Criminal Code (murder), but under Article 118 (that is, murder in self-defense or when apprehending a criminal).
The meaning of such a procedural trick is very clear: if it becomes impossible to further cover up the killer, you can always throw the public a bone in the form of a signed suspicion and transfer of the case to court, but under an article that will provide the person involved with a suspended sentence for exceeding self-defense, thus leaving a valuable frame at large.
And this, despite the fact that the latest examination confirmed the conclusions of all previous examinations that there was an ordinary premeditated murder. “Law enforcement officers have everything: the murder weapon, video, witness statements, examinations, the suspect himself. However, after a year and a half of investigation, no decision has been made. Why, despite all the evidence, is the suspect released from criminal liability, why does he walk free, mocking everyone around him and flaunting his impunity, why, even after the change of power in the country, are promises about “one law for all” not fulfilled? Where can I look for justice? – it seems that the widow of the murdered ex-paratrooper will not find an answer to these rhetorical questions for a long time.
This prosecutor general is broken, let's get the next one!
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