Tragic drowning of Yanukovych junior in Baikal after 'he got stuck under the ice' 

New details have emerged of the appalling accident which led to the death of Viktor Yanukovych junior, the son of the ex-president of Ukraine. He died last year after driving in a Volkswagen minibus onto the Baikal ice, which suddenly cracked, but the exact circumstances were not revealed at the time.

The toppled leader Viktor Yanukovych's son helped five others survive, but his own efforts to escape failed after he freed himself from the vehicle as he became trapped under the ice, unable to find the hole. 

He frantically used his head to try and break the frozen surface but failed. Yanukovych's friends watched in horror, unable to help, according to a new version of his death which was hushed-up at the time. 

His friend Alexey Mochanov, a singer and car racer, said: 'I know the circumstances of his death... I know how he died, it was a scary death... The point was that the ice is very transparent there, there was no snow on it. 

'When the vehicle began to go under the water and first people jumped out, they did not even wet their shoes. They just opened the door and jumped straight to the ice. 

But Yankovych was in the driver's seat and it went down from the right front wheel... The lake is very deep and big... so when he went underwater with the car, he managed to get out, but he raised his head and could not see the hole. 

'If there was a snow cover, it would look dark from underwater, and he would have seen the hole, where to swim. But in this case all is bright, the ice is completely transparent and the hole was not visible.

'He was obviously hysterical, and was  hitting the ice with his head, trying to make a hole there, around 12 metres from the hole where the minibus fell through.

'All this was in front of the eyes of people, who were there and could do nothing. They could not dive and swim there, to bring him out. So it was a scary death.'

After his death, Yanukovych  - who like his father had lived in Russian exile since the February 2014 coup ousting him in Kiev - was not named, but the dead man was called instead Viktor Davydov. Davydov was his maternal grandmother's surname. 

The group had been staying earlier at the Olkhon Klyuch (The Olkhon Key) hotel. A local man here told Vesti TV this week that it was 'sheer stupidity' to drive onto the ice without taking someone who knew the safe routes on frozen surface.

'It was silly what they did,' he said.