Even before the investigation, the then Prosecutor General claimed that Sternenko would be suspected in any case.
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Deputy head of the President's Office Andriy Smirnov put pressure on the Prosecutor General's Office to convict activist Serhiy Sternenko in the case of his self-defense. Prosecutor Andriy Radionov, who handled the Sternenko case in 2020, stated this during an interrogation in court. The activist himself published the video with Rodionov's testimony on his Telegram channel.
In the spring of 2020, Andriy Radionov headed a group of prosecutors in the case of Serhiy Sternenko, who was charged with intentional homicide. It was Rodionov who refused to sign the suspicion against the activist, although even before that, the then Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova, without even getting acquainted with the case materials, declared that Sternenko would receive a suspicion in any case. After refusing to sign the suspicion, Rodionov was removed from the state, and the case was transferred to another prosecutor.
During the interrogation in the Odesa court on September 16, Andriy Radionov as a witness said that the investigation was incomplete and biased, and the suspicion was fabricated.
Read also: Two judges in the Sternenko case about “one cartridge” resigned
The prosecutor claims that not only Venediktova herself did not examine the case materials at the time, and therefore the right to biasly speak about suspicion. In addition, according to Radionov, the circumstances of the attack on Sternenko were not investigated within the proceedings, and no one was looking for the “instigators” of the attack either. He also stated that the results of the examinations were changed.
“When you hear on the Internet Sharia, Portnov, or someone else who directly states that they already know the conclusions of the examination and what will be there, and you study this examination and see that compared to the initial examination of the forensic medical examination, even the position of the knife has been changed. Where there will be both, you begin to think that these are concerted actions in an extra-procedural way. As far as I know, Symonenko said that this was an instruction from the deputy head of the President's Administration Smirnov,” Andriy Radionov said.
The current prosecutors in the case, that is, the prosecution, refused to comment on Rodionov's testimony. But Sternenko and his lawyers called the case a political order, and Rodionov's words shed light on the case.
Read also: The court closed the case of “one patron” against the activist Sternenko
“He reported on the pressure on the Prosecutor General's Office by the Deputy Head of the Administration of the President of Ukraine Yermak-Smirnov, on whose instructions the materials of the criminal proceedings were merged into public access through Sharia and Portnov. What the prosecutor reported clearly proves the signs of political persecution,” said Sternenko in the “Channel 5” comment.
In 2018, the well-known Odesa activist Serhiy Sternenko was attacked several times. During one of them, Sternenko, defending himself, mortally wounded one of the attackers, but tried to give him first aid and called an ambulance himself. On June 11, 2020, Sternenko was informed of the suspicion of premeditated murder and illegal carrying of a cold weapon (Part 1 of Article 115, Part 2 of Article 263 of the Criminal Code). The SBU admitted that Sternenko was attacked by Oleksandr Isaykul and Ivan Kuznetsov, who died, and that it was a case of self-defense, but “subsequent actions cast doubt on the above-mentioned version.” Sternenko connects the attack with his public activities, in particular numerous protests against buildings in Odesa and the activities of the mayor Gennady Trukhanov, whom he accuses of organizing the attack.
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Serhiy Sternenko's case has long gone beyond the scope of a personal criminal drama. The intervention of Portnov's team of lawyers brought two Ukraines into a head-on collision. The regime overthrown in 2014 publicly demands satisfaction from the “nationalists” of the Maidan. But or only? What lies behind the rating media picture? Whose Ukraine is actually behind Sternenko's case? Read more about this in Iryna Vedernikova's article “Sternenko case. Chronicles of revenge“.
