A court in Ukraine overturns the acquittal of a former Berkut officer accused of torturing participants in the Revolution of Dignity and sentences him to six years behind bars

This refers to Andrii Khandrykin, who used to work for the Berkut special police unit in Kharkiv in the east of the country. He was accused of torturing two participants in the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, which led to the overthrow of the regime of pro-Russian former President Viktor Yanukovych.

Watchers Media reports  from the courtroom.

"[The acquittal] verdict of the Dniprovskyi District Court of Kyiv shall be cancelled. To issue a new one, finding Khandrykin guilty and sentencing him to 6 years in prison," the panel of judges said in their decision.

In 2023, Khandrykin continued to work in the convoy service unit of the Kharkiv police. 

It will be recalled that Handrykin and two other Berkut officers, Vladyslav Masteha and Artem Voilokov, severely beat Mykhailo Nyzkohuz and Vladyslav Tsilytskyi on the colonnade of the Lobanovskyi Dynamo Stadium in Kyiv during the protests in January 2014.

The victims were then thrown from the height of the colonnade to the ground. Later, the detained minor Nyzkohuz was stripped naked and stabbed in the thigh.

On August 30, 2019, a court in Kyiv acquitted Khandrykin. Judge Oksana Birsa ruled that there was insufficient evidence to implicate Khandrykin in the torture of Maidan activists (activists of the Revolution of Dignity - ed.).  

However, the investigation found the suspects thanks to the reports they had written on the beaten and illegally detained Nyzkohuz and Tsilytskyi. 

Voilokov and Masteha, who were under investigation in this case, left for Russia together with other Kharkiv Berkut officers suspected of violence against protesters.

Their case was separated into a different criminal proceeding.