The case of the murder of Kateryna Handzyuk: the court sentenced Manher and Levin to 10 years in prison each

The Dniprovsky District Court of Kyiv informed about the verdict in the case of the murder of Kherson activist Kateryna Handzyuk. Vladyslav Munher was found guilty of ordering the attack, and Oleksiy Levin — of organization, for which they were each sentenced to 10 years in prison.

The defendants must also pay five million hryvnias in moral damages to the Handzyuk family.

Prosecutors proved that at the beginning of July 2018, the then head of the Kherson regional Council decided to organize an attack on Kateryna Handzyuk due to "personal enmity" by involving in the organization an assistant of a deputy of the Kherson Regional Council, who met with the future coordinator of the attack Serhiy Torbin and offered to attract executors and accomplices for money attack On the morning of July 31, 2018, the performer poured sulfuric acid on Handziuk near the entrance of her house — 40% of the activistʼs body was affected by chemical burns.

In August of the same year, according to prosecutors, Levin, on behalf of Munher, paid Torbin the promised $4 500 for co-conspirators, and gave another $500 earlier as a deposit.

In June 2019, the court found the members of the group of attackers guilty and sentenced Torbin to 6.5 years in prison, Hrabchuk to 6 years, Vasyanovich and Vishnevsky to 4 years each, and Horbunov to 3 years in prison. In October 2020, the court sentenced Ihor Pavlovsky, who was initially considered one of the organizers of the attack.

• Public activist Kateryna Handzyuk died in a Kyiv hospital on November 4, 2018, three months before that she was doused with sulfuric acid in Kherson. The perpetrators of the crime — former soldiers of the Ukrainian Volunteer Army Viktor Horbunov, Vyacheslav Vyshnevskyi, Volodymyr Vasyanovych, Mykyta Hrabchuk and the organizer of the attack Serhii Torbin — are in prison. All of them pleaded guilty, entered into a deal with the investigation and received from 3 to 6.5 years of imprisonment. One of them, Viktor Horbunov, who bought the acid, has already served his sentence and was released.
• On June 25, 2020, the Prosecutor Generalʼs Office completed the investigation into the murder of Handziuk.
• Ihor Pavlovsky was found guilty of concealing a crime. He made a deal with the investigation and admitted his guilt, for which he received a two-year suspended prison sentence. But the case regarding the alleged organizer and mastermind of the attack — assistant to regional council deputy Oleksiy Levin and chairman of the Kherson regional council Vladyslav Manher — was heard in the Dnipro court in Kyiv. None of them admitted their involvement in the crime.
• The Kyiv Court of Appeals, at a meeting on November 3, remanded Vladyslav Manher and Oleksiy Levin in custody until December 11. The preventive measure does not provide for the possibility of making bail.