Sergei Chorny, Russian Embassy legal attachО, left Kyiv on hurried summons from Moscow. Just another diplomatic routine trip, except that on Saturday, April 18, the diplomatic officer, driving his service Volga, ran over a certain Pikul, worker of Kyiv’s Auto Repairs Plant No. 12, just as the man was jay-walking Povitroflotsky Prospekt Ave. The worker was delivered to an emergency ward in critical condition and died soon afterward, The Day was told by Viktor Nahaichuk, head of the information department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who added that the Russian Diplomat was driving under the influence. Vasilly Titushkin, Russian Embassy Second Secretary, stated that Mr. Chorny had not been subjected to a breath test.
The following day the Ukrainian Interior Ministry forwarded a note to the Russian Embassy, suggesting that Mr. Chorny be stripped of diplomatic immunity, in accordance with Article 32 of the Vienna Convention on International Relations
Not so long ago, a Georgian diplomat was stripped of immunity in the United States under similar circumstances and is now serving a long term in US prison for having killed, albeit inadvertently, a 16-year-old girl.
Ukraine is not America, just as Russia is not Georgia. Sergei Chorny left Ukraine and the Russian side, according to Mr. Nahaichuk, “intends to bring him to account as provided by the laws of Russia.” However, investigation in the case will take place in Kyiv, leaving one wondering why should all this be done in the absence of the principal suspect, or why did the general public learn about a Russian diplomat killing a Ukrainian subject in a hit-and-run accident three days after the fact? Maybe just to give the murderer time to flee Ukraine and escape criminal charges?
