Valentyn Vyhivskyi
Valentyn Vyhivskyi – a Euromaidan activist, a member of the Revolution of Dignity, and an entrepreneur.
On December 15, 2015, at a closed court session, Valentyn was sentenced to 11 years in a strict regime colony under Article 276 of the Russian Criminal Code (espionage) by the Moscow Regional Court in Krasnogorsk. According to the public excerpt of the verdict, Valentyn was accused of “collecting and storing information constituting a state secret – structural and other technical documentation of a combat aircraft engine (117c) – for the purpose of transferring it to a representative of the Chinese military attaché in Belgium for a monetary reward”.
Valentyn Vyhivskyi was born on August 3, 1983, in Prypiat, Kyiv Oblast. After the Chornobyl disaster in 1986, he moved to Kyiv with his family. He graduated from the Faculty of Electronics at the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute and had his own small business involved in car repair. Vyhivskyi was passionate about aviation.
On September 17, 2014, Valentyn traveled to Crimea for one day, having told his family that he was going to an aviation exhibition. He had a return ticket and did not plan to spend the night in Crimea. In fact, Valentyn was supposed to meet an acquaintance there who was working at an aviation design bureau and was a member of a community of aviation enthusiasts. She needed financial assistance for her grandfather’s treatment, so he brought her the money he had gathered.
On September 18, members of the occupant’s law enforcement agency detained Valentyn in one of Simferopol’s institutions.
Then the Ukrainian was transferred to the ‘Lefortovo’ pre-trial detention center in Moscow, from where he was dragged to a forest with a bag over his head and subjected to a mock execution near a dug hole.
The court hearings were held behind closed doors, after having lawyer Ilya Novikov sign a non-disclosure agreement. For the past five years, Valentyn has been held in a cell-type facility of the colony.
Valentyn is unmarried and has a son.
Place of detention: Correctional Colony No. 11 in Kirov Oblast.
