Early on the morning of December 25th, the muckraking journalist
Tetiana Chornovil drove out of Kiev toward her home, outside the
Ukrainian capital. Chornovil, who is thirty-four, had long been
an irritant to the government of President Victor Yanukovych,
and she is a leading figure in the mass protests that have
dominated central Kiev since late November. As Chornovil drove
along a stretch of empty highway in the dark before dawn, her
car was chased down and forced off the road by a black Porsche
Cayenne, whose passengers then emerged and beat her senseless.
The assailants broke Chornovil’s nose and gave her a concussion
before throwing her into a ditch. But she had captured a video
of the car chase on her dashboard camera, which post-Soviet
citizens use to protect themselves against extortion by traffic
police. The license-plate number of the Porsche and the faces
two of the men who assaulted Chornovil are visible in the
footage, which, fleetingly, generated hope among Ukrainians that
the attackers could b