Death of MP Poliakov: Preliminary Cause and Reaction of Deputies

According to preliminary information, Poliakov died of acute coronary insufficiency.

On the morning of October 8, it became known that People's Deputy Anton Poliakov was found dead. We tell you everything known about this at the moment. 

Prosecutor's Office Statement

The Kyiv City Prosecutor's Office said: “Overnight, People's Deputy Anton Poliakov died. He was found unconscious by a patrol crew in a taxi that had been stopped for a traffic violation. An ambulance could not resuscitate him. All valuables, documents and cash remained with him. 

According to the driver, he picked up the passenger a few minutes earlier at a public transport stop in the Dniprovskyi district of Kyiv, after which the passenger began vomiting in the car. The causes of death will be established during an autopsy, which will take place in the coming hours.” 

Police noted that patrol officers urgently called an ambulance and a backup crew. The officers took the passenger out of the car and placed him in the recovery position. He had no pulse or breathing. 

Patrol officers immediately began cardiopulmonary resuscitation before the ambulance arrived. Doctors continued resuscitation efforts, but they proved futile, as the person never regained consciousness. 

Information about the death of the People's Deputy has been entered in the Unified Register of Pre-trial Investigations under Part 1 of Article 115 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The pre-trial investigation has been assigned to the Investigative Department of the State Bureau of Investigation in Kyiv. The Kyiv City Prosecutor's Office is procedurally supervising the criminal proceedings opened over Poliakov's death. The car has been inspected and seized, and investigators are questioning the driver.

Preliminary Cause of Death

According to preliminary information, Poliakov died of acute coronary insufficiency. 

Nadezhda Maksimets
spokesperson for the Kyiv City Prosecutor's Office

According to the autopsy results, the death of the People's Deputy resulted from acute coronary insufficiency and acute ischemic heart disease. The investigation is still awaiting the results of other forensic examinations. 

Anton Poliakov entered the Verkhovna Rada as a nominee of the Servant of the People party in the 206th constituency in Chernihiv Oblast, but on November 15, 2019, the “servants” expelled him from the faction “for violating the agreement on joint voting on sensitive issues and for conflicts with the faction leadership and then head of the Presidential Administration Andriy Bohdan.” 

On December 16, Poliakov asked to be expelled from the Servant of the People party on “ideological and moral principles.” He then joined the For the Future group, which is associated with Kolomoisky. 

Anton Poliakov was one of the MPs who flooded the “anti-Kolomoisky” law with amendments. Because of the law, he sued Verkhovna Rada Speaker Dmytro Razumkov and head of the Finance Committee Danylo Hetmantsev. The MP repeatedly claimed that “servants of the people” receive extra payments in envelopes. 

Reaction of Deputies

At a sitting of the Verkhovna Rada, the co-chair of the For the Future party's deputy group said that his late colleague Poliakov was an honest and refined decent person with a clean start in politics. 

Taras Batenko
co-chair of the For the Future party's deputy group

For us, this is a black Friday. With inexpressible sorrow, we speak about the death of our friend and comrade. Truthful, a truth-lover, decent, refined decent, honest, who, like many of you, burst into the walls of parliament to do good. Only he understood this good in his own way. His death is the price of Ukrainian politics — for some it is the Rubicon and cynical votes in the chamber, and for others — it is a confession. A well-known person once said that politics is not a clean business, but at least the beginning in it should be clean, and Anton Poliakov made his honest and clean start in politics, and then his heart could not take it. 

Colleagues in the Verkhovna Rada paid tribute to Poliakov with a minute of silence. At the same time, People's Deputy Halyna Yanchenko of the Servant of the People faction called on people not to spread conspiracy theories around Poliakov's death. 

Halyna Yanchenko
MP of the Servant of the People faction

To all the conspiracy theorists who are now hyping on a person's death, trying to earn political points: the cause of Anton Poliakov's death — cardiac arrest. According to the information I have, when the patrol officers stopped the taxi, Anton was alive but in serious condition. He was vomiting, and soon convulsions began. The police officers wore body cameras, which were working and recorded the event. Toxicology results will be available tomorrow or the day after, which will show whether there were any poisonous substances in the body. Do not invent “betrayal” where there is none. Around the topic of death, this looks extremely disgusting.