Journo Beaten After Dissing Ukraine Minister

Anti-government protesters call for minister's resignation
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 26, 2013 10:22 AM CST
Journo Beaten After Dissing Ukraine Minister
Activists hold the photos of journalist and activist Tetyana Chernovil as they rally outside the Ukrainian Interior Ministry in Kiev, Ukraine, Wednesday, Dec. 25, 2013.   (AP Photo/Sergei Chuzavkov)

A female journalist was battered and bloodied in an "ambush" in Ukraine yesterday, hours after she published a report on the interior minister's opulence—in just the latest attack on anti-government protesters, the New York Times reports. Tetyana Chornovil, 34, was driving home outside the capital of Kiev when an SUV blocked her path. "The jeep hit me. It tried to kill me," Chornovil said. "They broke my window. I jumped out, tried to run. I was caught and they began beating me." Photos and a video show her with a black eye, swollen shut, and swollen and bloody lips.

Two men have been detained and a third identified in the assault that came as protesters—angry over President Viktor Yanukovich's refusal to sign agreements with the EU amid a financial crisis—have been gathering in Kiev's Independence Square. A protest organizer was stabbed four times earlier this week, and protesters are now calling for Interior Minister Vitaly Zakharchenko's resignation, Reuters reports; he'd previously come under fire for a violent crackdown on protesters. Prior to her attack, Chornovil had posted photos of Zakharchenko's handsome home. "Here lives the executioner," the journalist wrote. (More journalist stories.)

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