How many died on Jan. 22 and who took their lives?

Government officials say two men were shot to death that day, but not by police. A third activist was found dead the same day, beaten and left to die in a forest near  Boryspil.

Doctors and activists, however, believe as many as six people were killed and police are to blame.

On that violent morning, medics moved the body of Serhiy Nihoyan from the scene of the violence on Hrushevskoho Street to a makeshift medical center inside the Parliament Library. The 20-year-old Dnipropetrovsk Oblast resident of Armenian descent was shot dead, purportedly by live ammunition fired by police.

A few hours later, doctors of EuroMaidan reported one more activist dead, having taken a bullet to the heart. This man turned to be a 25-year-old Belarus national Mykhailo Zhyznevsky. Oleg Musiy, the coordinator of medical services for the EuroMaidan rally, told the Kyiv Post it was impossible to incur this type of fatal injury from a rubber bullet.
Forensics experts found that Nihoyan was killed with buckshot and Zhyznevsky with a hunting bullet, both of which were not allowed for use by police.
Vitaliy Sekal, deputy head of the police investigative department, said that the two people were probably killed by someone else “in order to escalate conflict and justify use of guns by the protesters,” the police report said.
In the evening, the EuroMaidan rally was shocked by news of another death – activist Yuriy Verbytsky, a 50-year-old Lviv resident, who was found dead on Jan. 22 in a forest near Boryspil, a Kyiv suburb. Verbytsky was wounded in clashes and abducted on Jan. 21 together with activist Yuriy Lutsenko by about 10 unidentified men from the Zhovtnevy hospital.
Lutsenko, who was left by his kidnappers in the forest after 10 hours of brutal interrogations, later said that he thought he was going to say “goodbye to life” a minimum of three times in captivity. He said the abductors separated him and Verbytsky so he knew nothing about his fate.
A preliminary examination by police found that Verbytsky, whose body was identified by his brother, died of hypothermia, Mykola Zhukovych, a spokesman for the Kyiv Oblast police department told Ukrinform. Speaking to journalists, his family said he was found with a bag over his head.
News of more deaths was reported on the same day.
One was a protester who allegedly fell from Dynamo Stadium, where police and protesters have clashed over the past five days.
Ivan Klius, a 39-year-old Lviv resident, told the Kyiv Post he watched the man fall from atop the arcade after police shot him. Musiy said that medics received reports about a man who died after falling from a high altitude, but they couldn’t confirm the death, as that man was immediately taken to a public hospital.
Two more deaths were also reported by protesters, based on TV footage in which police were seen dragging motionless bodies to their side of the fighting lines. These alleged deaths were not confirmed
“Based on official information of forensic experts, we can speak about three dead bodies. Two of them are in Kyiv city morgue and one more in Boryspil city,” Sviatoslav Khanenko, head of medical unit of EuroMaidan headquarters said, speaking about Nihoyan, Zhyznevsky and Verbytsky, respectively.
“According to video information and reports of eye-witnesses, there were talks about two more killed. But we have no access to police morgues,” he said, adding that many protesters have also been reported missing and nobody knows whether they are alive.
Now the portraits of Nihoyan have been pasted on numerous walls around EuroMaidan with awards offered to find the alleged sniper who shot him offering $5,000 for information leading his capture and $100,000 for his head.
Nigoyan, a member of a security detail, was remembered as a guy who fearlessly stood on the barricades with the placard reading “God speaks by the people’s voice.”
“I was born in Ukraine and I live in Ukraine, that’s why I’ve came to support the people (of this country),” Nihoyan said in an interview with 1+1 TV filmed on EuroMaidan four days prior to his death.

Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at grytsenko@kyivpost.com.