The murder of Iryna Nozdrovska has been seen as a litmus test for justice sector reform. Image courtesy of the author.On the day she disappeared, Iryna Nozdrovska took a bus from the Heroes of the Dnipro metro station in north Kyiv to the village of Demydiv, where she lived with her elderly parents and 18 year-old daughter Anastasiya. Two days before, Nozdrovska had sat in a court that blocked the amnesty of Dmytro Rossoshansky, the man who had been convicted for running over and killing Iryna’s younger sister Svitlana two years before. At the time of Svitlana’s death, Dmytro’s great uncle, a judge, was the head of a local district court. In Ukraine, police reform has been heralded as one of Maidan’s flagship reforms, one that would get rid of endemic corruption and selective justice — but it has faced mounting public criticism, especially in light of the Nozdrovska case.
The seven-year sentence against Rossoshansky was the result of a long fight which had seen Iryna quit her job to concentrate on a case she felt the police and the court were intent on burying. According to Ukrainian MP Mustafa Nayyem, a member of Petro Poroshenko Bloc, Dmytro Rossoshansky’s father had threatened Nozdrovska during the court session, telling her: “You will come to a bad end.” Iryna had a car, but lately the 38-year-old lawyer hadn’t been using it, her parents told me, as she was saving on petrol. Buses to Demydiv drive north through Kyiv, first going past high rises and then through expanses of forest. They play shanson or contemporary pop songs. The ride itself takes about half an hour. People say the road is good: it leads to Mezhyhirya, what used to be former president Viktor Yanukovych’s luxury estate.
When I visited Iryna’s relatives on the Sunday following her funeral, it was snowing. Two policemen had been dispatched to ensure the family’s protection. There’s two houses on the property. A smaller, antiquated one, where the parents live, and a new one, where Iryna lived with her daughter. Sitting in a room full of children toys, where the TV, the mirrors and the icons were covered with towels, Iryna’s parents seemed to have been made smaller by grief. Still, they were intent on speaking. Kateryna, Iryna’s 62-year-old mother, who would sometimes stop talking to sob against the back of the sofa where we are sitting, tells me that on 29 December she had called her daughter at 4:30pm. “She said she was in Petrivtsi, which meant she’d be home in 20 minutes, but she never arrived. And the next time I called there was no answer.”
