The police have detained a suspect in the case on the murder of Yuriy Verbytsky and abduction of Ihor Lutsenko in January 2014, lawyer Yevhenia Zakrevska said.

"A suspect in the case on the murder of Yuriy Verbytsky and abduction of Ihor Lutsenko has been detained. […] According to the investigation, [the suspect] was directly involved in the abduction of Lutsenko and Verbytsky from Oleksandrivska Hospital on the night of January 21, 2014," she said on Facebook.

Ihor Lutsenko on his Facebook page said that the detained person was not an ordinary perpetrator of the crime.

"His role was bigger than just an ordinary 'infantry titushko' [a paid-up thug]. He was something like a deputy commander of an assault group," he said.

The time and venue of a court sitting to choose a measure of restraint for the suspect has not been reported yet.

As reported, on February 28, 2020, the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine (PGO) notified of suspicion a member of a gang within the framework of the pre-trial investigation into the criminal case on the abduction and torturing of peaceful protesters Ihor Lutsenko and Yuriy Verbytsky in 2014. The name of the suspect was not made public.

Lutsenko and Verbytsky were abducted in Kyiv on January 21, 2014. A group of unidentified people seized them and tortures them for several hours. Later, they left Lutsenko in a forest in Boryspilsky district and he managed to reach a residential area and report his location. The dead body of Verbytsky was found later in the same district.