On September 5 a press conference was held in Slovyansk on the journalist Ihor Oleksandrov affair. Addressing the audience, Deputy Prosecutor General Serhiy Vynokurov confirmed that the murder of the local TOR Television Company head had been solved, the murderer found, but the investigation was still continuing. “Professional activity” has been finally dropped as the main explanation for the journalist’s killing, while the version of “accidental murder” (the wrong person was killed) has already been proven. Referring to the Criminal Code’s new wording, which sets more stringent requirements about not violating the secrecy of an investigation, Mr. Vynokurov refused to further clarify his report. At the same time he made a request to help find the driver who carried the murderer. The deputy prosecutor general also refused for ethical reasons to comment on the letter of Oleksandrov’s son Oleksiy, in which the latter questions the version described.
During the press conference, both Mr. Vynokurov and Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Volodymyr Melnykov repeatedly emphasized their discontent over journalistic inquiries in the press after Oleksandrov’s death.
To know the reaction of Ihor Oleksandrov’s colleagues to the law-enforcement officer’s statement, The Day contacted Valery Prudsky, general director of SAT, also a Slovyansk television company. In his opinion, Mr. Vynokurov said nothing new, merely repeating what had been announced earlier, thereby provoking the journalists present to ask pointed questions. “I can say that Vynokurov was doing his best to wriggle out of an embarrassing situation,” Mr. Prudsky says. “A piece of what can be called new information still slipped off his lips: he denied reports about the price of the baseball bats: they in fact cost between 40 and 50 hryvnias, not 300 dollars. Having traced their itinerary, investigators concluded that they are being supplied to Ukraine and sold, according to Mr. Vynokurov, everywhere, including Donetsk. The deputy prosecutor general evaded the question about how one attacker could possibly wield two bats. Rumor has it that the arrested person is also short. This led the journalists to ask Mr. Vynokurov if a man of such a modest stature was physically able to commit this kind of murder, for it is common knowledge that Oleksandrov was a stout man. The deputy prosecutor general answered that he was 100% sure of it. In addition, he refused to draw a social portrait of the suspect, saying the latter has a lawyer of his own and referred to the new Criminal Code, which forbids spreading any information that reveals the identity of a suspect before trial. I asked him, ‘What percent of Ukraine’s residents do you think will believe this version?’ I even wanted to ask him bluntly if he himself believes it. He replied this matter was of no interest to him because his task is to solve the crime and bring the case to court. As to the version aired by Messrs. Solodun and Serbin, former Kramatorsk oblast police officers, the deputy minister of internal affairs said that this was ‘a material that has no interest.’ It is clear that many other things will be hammered into us so that we believe certain things, but there is very little faith so far.”
The Oleksandrov case will be heard in an open court, for some reason with no television cameras allowed in the courtroom. This was announced well in advance, though it is for the judge to rule at the beginning of a court session whether or not a given session can be televised. With the date of session still to be announced, it is clear now that it will be in the focus of not only the media. For too many questions have been raised by this strange investigation, and the version drawn up by a group of over 800 of the best professionals looks far too unconvincing. Incidentally, reverberations from the Oleksandrov case have also forced Verkhovna Rada to intervene: it plans to decide on September 13 whether to establish an ad hoc commission to investigate what caused the attack on the Slovyansk journalist.
