The driver is said to have lost consciousness / Screenshot

Two people have been killed and three have been injured in a road accident on Kyiv's Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) when a Land Rover rammed into a crowd on October 30.

The driver was notified of charges as he violated road safety rules, the Kyiv City Prosecutor's Office said on Facebook.

"Upon agreement with the Kyiv City Prosecutor's Office, the 66-year-old driver of a foreign-made car involved in a large-scale fatal traffic accident in the center of Kyiv has been notified of charges. His actions are being investigated under Part 3 of Article 286 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine," the message says.

The man was detained; he is in the hospital under guard. His preventive measure of restriction will be chosen.

The car accident on the Maidan / Photo from kyiv.npu.gov.ua
The car accident on the Maidan / Photo from kyiv.npu.gov.ua

Among the injured, there is a five-month-old baby, who was with his parents in a car rammed by the Land Rover. All victims were hospitalized. According to the latest data, their condition is satisfactory.

Road accident on the Maidan: Facts

  • The accident occurred at about 16:00 on October 30. The Land Rover driver drove onto Independence Square and then rammed into a crowd. The car then moved onto the roadway, where it hit at least four cars before stopping.
  • As a result of the incident, two people were killed and three were injured.
  • The driver is said to have lost consciousness, according to the media outlet Obozrevatel. He reportedly underwent heart surgery not long prior to the accident.
  • According to vesti.ua, the suspect is Yuriy Nazarenko, born in 1954. He lives in Kyiv's Pechersky district. He had worked for five years for the Securities and Stock Market Commission in senior positions. He had worked since 2007 as the chief of staff at the Commission; in 2009, he became a member of the Commission. Nazarenko was in charge of information technology, he was building the securities regulator's IT infrastructure. Nazarenko also served as chairman of the board of the Agency for the Development of Infrastructure of the Stock Market of Ukraine and coordinated the work of companies incorporated in the Commission and issues of their budgeting. It is known from open sources that in 2014 he left the commission as part of the lustration campaign.