Olya Polyakova was involved in a serious car accident with her daughter. What is known about the crash, why Kuzma Skryabin was mentioned online and where the “contract hit” theory came from.
Ukrainian singer Olya Polyakova was involved in a serious car accident on the evening of August 19, 2026, together with her eldest daughter Maria. After the collision, the car they were travelling in ended up in a ditch, while the singer’s daughter was injured and taken to hospital. The accident quickly moved beyond a routine news story: after a reaction from alyona alyona, social media users began drawing parallels with the death of Skryabin frontman Andriy Kuzmenko. At the same time, there is currently no evidence that the incident involving Polyakova was deliberate.
Polyakova spoke about what had happened almost immediately after the collision, posting several videos. According to the singer, another vehicle crashed into the car in which she was travelling with her daughter, causing their vehicle to leave the road.
Maria Polyakova injured her nose and damaged her teeth. Footage posted online shows paramedics taking the young woman away. The singer herself remained at the scene and tried to establish the circumstances of the accident.
In one of the subsequent videos, Polyakova showed a badly damaged Mercedes that was believed to have been the second vehicle involved in the collision. The singer approached a man standing nearby and assumed that he might have been the driver. A confrontation followed, during which the man knocked the phone out of her hands. Polyakova later said she had received information suggesting that a woman may have been driving the vehicle and had been making a U-turn on the road.
However, at the time of publication, it had not been publicly established who exactly was driving the second vehicle or who was responsible for the accident. Statements made immediately after the crash by those involved and by witnesses should therefore be treated as preliminary accounts rather than as an established version of events confirmed by investigators.
Where did the accident happen?
Initial reports in Ukrainian media suggested that Polyakova may have been involved in the accident while travelling to Odesa. However, police in the Odesa region said that no accident involving the singer had been registered within the region.
At the same time, several details in videos posted by the artist herself point to Moldova. The vehicle in which Polyakova was travelling had Moldovan licence plates, while the uniforms of the medics who arrived at the scene displayed insignia associated with Moldova’s National Center for Pre-Hospital Emergency Medical Assistance. The singer’s international passport was also visible in the footage.
For this reason, the collision most likely occurred in Moldova, although Polyakova herself had not publicly named the exact location of the accident. The singer had a concert scheduled in Odesa on August 20.
Why did people mention Kuzma Skryabin after the accident?
The story attracted particular attention after a reaction from alyona alyona. The rapper drew attention to the behaviour of the man who became involved in a confrontation with Polyakova after the accident and linked the incident to the singer’s recent controversial public statements.
“Olya, stay strong. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was ordered. Everyone remembers Kuzma,” alyona alyona wrote.
However, the artist provided no evidence to support such a theory. This is an essential distinction: there is currently no confirmed information that would justify describing the crash as an assassination attempt or a deliberately orchestrated accident.
The comparison with Skryabin did not appear out of nowhere. Andriy Kuzmenko, known as Kuzma Skryabin, died on February 2, 2015, in a road accident near the village of Lozuvatka in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region. His SUV collided with a truck, and the musician died at the scene. Investigators reported that Kuzmenko’s vehicle had moved into the oncoming lane before the collision.
In the years that followed, numerous alternative theories emerged around the death of one of Ukraine’s best-known musicians. Some fans connected the tragedy with Kuzma’s public and political views, but no evidence supporting the theory of a deliberate killing has been published.
The subject returned to the news only days before Polyakova’s accident. Andriy Kuzmenko would have turned 58 on August 17, 2026, and on August 18 an interview with his father Viktor Kuzmenko was published in which he said he still had doubts about whether the circumstances of his son’s death had been fully investigated and assessed the likelihood that the crash had not been accidental as “50-50”. This was the opinion of the musician’s father, not a new conclusion by investigators.
It was precisely this combination of circumstances — the recent anniversary of Kuzma’s birth, new comments from his father and Polyakova’s own high-profile statements — that made the comparison especially emotional for Ukrainian audiences.
Polyakova was at the centre of a major controversy before the crash
Additional context comes from Polyakova’s extensive interview with journalist Ramina Eshakzai, published shortly before the accident. The conversation triggered widespread debate because of the singer’s remarks on freedom of speech, social pressure, mobilisation and the actions of individual representatives of Ukraine’s Territorial Recruitment and Social Support Centres.
Some of Polyakova’s remarks drew sharp criticism, while other users and representatives of the entertainment industry defended her right to speak publicly about difficult issues. A separate controversy emerged around the part of the interview dealing with the use of force during mobilisation. Ramina Eshakzai later had to explain her own position separately after excerpts from the interview circulated without their full context.
The fact that the interview and the accident happened so close together in time became one of the reasons why social media users began speculating about a possible connection between the two events.
However, the fact that two events occurred close together in time does not in itself prove anything. Until law enforcement agencies present the results of their investigation into the crash, there is no factual basis for linking the collision to Polyakova’s public statements.
What is known at this point?
By the evening of August 20, the confirmed picture looked considerably more straightforward than many of the theories circulating on social media: Polyakova and her daughter were indeed involved in a serious road collision; their car ended up in a ditch; Maria was injured and handed over to medical personnel; and the accident most likely occurred in Moldova.
Who was driving the second vehicle, what directly caused the collision and who violated traffic rules had not yet been publicly established with final certainty.
The mention of Kuzma Skryabin in this story is significant primarily as an indication of how deeply his death remains embedded in the collective memory of Ukraine’s music scene. More than eleven years after Andriy Kuzmenko’s death, the tragedy continues to generate debate and numerous unconfirmed theories, so any serious accident involving an artist known for outspoken public statements is almost inevitably likely to trigger similar associations.
In Olya Polyakova’s case, there is currently a real road accident and a real reaction from the music community, but the theory that the crash was deliberately organised remains nothing more than speculation. Keeping these two things separate is especially important while law enforcement agencies are still establishing the circumstances of the incident.
