Justice does not come swiftly in Ukraine. Over twelve years after Yury Verbytsky, Lviv seismologist and Euromaidan activist, was abducted from a Kyiv clinic, horrifically tortured and left in freezing conditions to die, Serhiy Myslyvy has been sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment over his abduction and torture. Even here the court slightly mellowed the charges against Myslyvy. Although in this case, it may be linked with the fact that Myslyvy is facing another trial where he is charged, among other things, with Verbytsky’s killing, it is not the first time that Ukrainian courts have removed the charge about grave consequences.
Serhiy Myslyvy was one of the government-paid thugs, or ‘titushki from Bila Tserkva in Kyiv oblast who abducted Yury Verbytsky and journalist Ihor Lutsenko from a Kyiv hospital where Verbytsky was receiving treatment for an eye injury. The men were taken away during the night from 20-21 January 2014, with Lutsenko found the next day, badly beaten but alive. He explained that both had been taken to a garage and ‘interrogated’, with Verbytsky receiving particularly savage treatment, probably because he was from Lviv and continued to speak Ukrainian to his Russian-speaking torturers.
Verbytsky’s body was found in the Boryspil Forest near Kyiv on 23 January 2014. Although the authorities under the regime of Viktor Yanukovych reported only that he had died of hypothermia, the scale of his torture-induced injuries soon became known. A forensic medical report from 12 March 2014, later presented to the European Court of Human Rights, stated that “Verbytsky’s injuries included numerous haematomas all over the trunk of his body, limbs, head and face, fractured bones and ribs, and internal bleeding. It was considered that he had been hit by “blunt objects” at least thirty times.” After Myslyvy’s arrest in March 2020, his lawyers tried to call Verbytsky’s death an ‘accident’. The prosecutor pointed out in response that Verbytsky had suffered 36 fractures and over 50 bodily injuries. The men were tortured for nine hours.
Even if the immediate cause of death was hypothermia, those who abandoned him in such a state 500 metres from the nearest road in snow and a temperature of minus 10 must have understood that he would have no chance of seeking help and would die .
The indictment against Myslyvy was changed in 2023. He was accused of the abduction of two people with this causing the victim physical suffering and resulting in grave consequences, namely the victim’s death (Article 146 § 3 of Ukraine’s Criminal Code); and of torture committed by a group of people by prior conspiracy (Article 127 § 2).
There were appeals earlier over jurisdiction in the case, with this delaying the trial which finally began at the Bila Tserkva City-District Court on 21 January 2022. The debates ended on 25 May 2026, with prosecutor Yulia Malashych asking for a 13-year sentence, and Oksana Mykhalevych, Yury Verbytsky’s daughter, asking that Myslyvy be sentenced to 15 years.
Judge Victor Prymachenko announced the verdict on 1 June 2026. He found Myslyvy guilty of abducting and torturing Yury Verbytsky and Ihor Lutsenko on 21 January 2014. However, he changed the first charge from part 3 to part 2 of Article 146. In reporting the verdict, the Advocacy Advisory Panel noted that this meant that the court “did not see” grave consequences.
This was the second time judges changed the qualification in this way, with the change resulting in a conviction, but no prison sentence, in the trial of another of the Bila Tserkva titushki, Oleksandr Medvid. His trial, which ended on 3 April 2023, was before judge Lidia Shebunyaeva from the Shevchenkivsk District Court in Kyiv (details here).
The 12-year sentence against Myslyvy is, nonetheless, only one year less than that sought be the prosecution. Myslyvy will not, however, be imprisoned for that long according to this sentence. His detention in a Ukrainian SIZO, or pre-trial detention centre, from 8 August 2021 is to be counted as part of the sentence, with one day in the SIZO calculated as equivalent to two days of the actual sentence.
That does not necessarily mean that he will go free anytime soon as Myslyvy is one of the defendants in another trial at the same court. Myslyvy and Ivan Novotny are charged with involvement in a criminal organization and in obstructing peaceful gatherings. While Novotny is also charged with the abduction and incarceration of two people, Myslyvy is accused of killing Yury Verbytsky, as well as of using and incitement to the forgery of a Ukrainian passport. The trial is now underway.
The verdict on sentence on 1 June 2026 were the fifth to date linked in some way to the abduction, torture and killing of Yury Verbytsky. After two of them, the prosecution announced that they would be appealing. These were the cases of Oleksandr Volkov, who was convicted of organizing the abduction, torture and killing of Verbytsky and of Oleksandr Medvid. Both Andriy Berezovy and Oleksandr Perestiuk were convicted of complicity in abduction and torture.
European Court of Human Rights
In the Case of Lutsenko and Verbytskyy v. Ukraine, the Court in Strasbourg found that there had been violations of Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights (the right to life), both with respect to the murder itself, and to the authorities’ failure to carry out an effective official investigation. It also found that there had been violations of Articles 3 (the prohibition of torture); 5 § 1 (the right to liberty and security) and 11 of the Convention “on account, in particular, of the ill-treatment and persecution of the first applicant and the torture and death of the second applicant’s brother as a result of their implication in the Maidan protests. The Court also concluded that much of the abuse was committed by non-State agents who acted with the acquiescence if not the approval of the authorities and that to date no independent and effective official investigation has been conducted into these matters.”
