Ukrainian police have opened a murder investigation after the body of a lawyer who allegedly received death threats after campaigning for the prosecution of a drunk driver was found in a river. Iryna Nozdrovska, 38, died from multiple stab wounds, police said.

She was reported missing on 29 December two days after she helped to ensure a driver convicted of causing the death of her sister in 2015 was not released from prison. Ukraine’s foreign minister Pavlo Klimkin called the killing ‘a challenge to the state’, saying this is ‘a test of our society’s ability to protect female activists and to ensure justice as a whole’.