Volodymyr Rybak (murder victim)

Volodymyr Rybak (30 November 1971 – c. 17 April 2014) was a Ukrainian politician, representative of the Horlivka city council, kidnapped^[1] and then murdered by the pro-Russian militia on 17 April 2014.^[2]

Biography[]

Rybak was born in the city of Horlivka in 1971. In 1995 he graduated the Automobile Highway Institute of the Donetsk National Technical University and in 2002 – the Interregional Academy of Personnel Management.

In 1995–2009 Rybak worked in the division of Criminal Investigation for the Horlivka city militsiya.^[3] In 2009 he joined the All-Ukrainian Association Fatherland (Batkivshchyna) and next year headed its city's party cell.

Since November 2010 Rybak was a member of the Horlivka city council.^[3] During the 2012 Ukrainian parliamentary election, as a Batkivshchyna candidate, he ran for the Ukrainian parliament at the 41st electoral district (the Budonivskyi District of Donetsk) placing 4th with 5,195 votes (4.55%, winner [uk; ru] of the Party of Regions won the district with 80.85% of the votes).^[4]

Rybak was an active supporter of the 2013-2014 Euromaidan protest.^[3]

Rybak was abducted by separatists on 17 April 2014 after trying to raise the flag of Ukraine on Horlivka's town council building.^[5] Later his body with signs of torture was found in the River Torets, along with other two bodies.^[5] According to forensic reports, the victims were drowned being still alive and their bodies were covered with burns and stabs and their stomachs ripped open.^[5] The two other victims were Kyiv Polytechnic Institute student Yuriy Popravka and 25-year-old Yuriy Diakovsky.^[5]

In 2015 a memorial plaque was placed in Sloviansk after its liberation from Russian forces.^[6]

In May 2020 Igor Strelkov, a key organizer of the Donetsk People's Republic's militant groups confessed in an interview with Ukrainian journalist Dmitry Gordon that he was involved in the killing of Rybak: "Naturally, Rybak, as a person who actively opposed the "militias", was an enemy in my eyes. And his death, probably, is to some extent also under my responsibility".^[7]