The Dniprovskyi district court in Kyiv has delivered a verdict in the case of civil rights activist Kateryna Handziuk.

The court found Vladyslav Manger and Oleksiy Levin guilty of organizing an attack on Kateryna Handzyuk. They were sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment.

Kateryna Handziuk was a Ukrainian civil rights and anti-corruption activist campaigner and political advisor, who exposed corruption in her hometown of Kherson. Handziuk was a critic of the security authorities and especially condemned corruption in the regional department of Ministry of Internal Affairs.

She was attacked with sulphuric acid on 31 July 2018, and died from the injuries on 4 November 2018 at the age of 33.

After the announcement of her death, there was a spontaneous mourning in the Ukrainian capital, in which hundreds of demonstrators moved to the Ministry of Interior and demanded the complete investigation of the murder.

The investigation established that in summer 2018, Oleksiy Levin received an order from the head of the Kherson Regional Council, Vladyslav Manger, to organize an attack on Handziuk. Allegedly, the activities of Kateryna Handziuk prevented Manger from implementing illegal logging schemes and undermined his authority in the region.