Antigovernment Activist Beaten in Ukraine MOSCOW - A crusading antigovernment journalist and activist in Ukraine, who became famous last year after documenting the opulence of the heavily guarded residential compound of President Viktor F. Yanukovich, was savagely beaten early Wednesday morning. The assault on the activist, Tetyana Chornovol, 34, just outside the capital, Kiev, was the latest attack on government opponents who have been participating in sustained protests that have shaken the country. On Tuesday evening, Dmitri Pylypets, a protest organizer in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, was beaten and stabbed four times while walking on the street near his apartment, local news media reported. Just hours before she was ambushed, Ms. Chornovol published a blog item about a "country manor" being constructed for Ukraine's embattled interior minister, Vitaly Zakharchenko, in the village of Pidhirtsi, near Kiev. The assaults have occurred as protesters continue to occupy Independence Square in Kiev, where they first gathered last month in anger at Mr. Yanukovich's decision to back away from sweeping political and free trade agreements with the European Union. There were also ominous signs that the Ukrainian government was turning inward. The Ukrainian Security Service confirmed this week that it had blocked an unspecified number of foreigners, including several Americans, from entering the country, on suspicion that they were colluding with protest leaders and trying to destabilize Ukraine. Photographs taken in a hospital where Ms. Chornovol was said to be undergoing surgery showed her lying on a bed, her face battered and bloodied, with one eye blackened and shut, and her lips hugely swollen and cut. In a brief video posted on YouTube, she said she did not believe her attackers had said anything as they beat her. In the video, she said she had been driving home when a sport utility vehicle blocked her path. "People came out of it and began beating me," she said. I tried to bypass it, but it was impossible. The jeep hit me. It tried to kill me. They broke my window. I jumped out, tried to run. I was caught and they began beating me. "The attempt on the life of Tetyana Chornovol leaves no words, only rage and shame" Petro Poroshenko, a pro-Western businessman and member of Parliament, wrote on Facebook. He added, "The Ukrainian people will not be intimidated." Mr. Zakharchenko, the interior minister and a close ally of Mr. Yanukovich, has faced a barrage of criticism over a violent crackdown by the police on peaceful demonstrators in Independence Square on Nov. 30. Although lower-level officials have been disciplined in connection with the violence, their role is not clear. Mr. Zakharchenko is the most senior government official with direct authority over the police units involved in the enforcement action, and there have been repeated calls by the opposition for his dismissal. In response to Ms. Chornovol's beating, several protest leaders called for picketing outside the Interior Ministry. Mr. Yanukovich's office issued a statement on Wednesday afternoon saying that he had ordered the Interior Ministry and the general prosecutor's office to investigate the attack. Although Ms. Chornovol has been involved in a number of episodes involving high-profile activists, she is most famous for an incident in August 2012 in which she scaled the walls of Mr. Yanukovich's residential compound, called Mezyrgirya after the park where it is located and which consists of 345 acres of forested hills along the Dnieper River. Other investigative journalists had unearthed evidence that the house had been illegally privatized by companies connected to Mr. Yanukovich, with the park then leased to the government. Although Mr. Yanukovich had portrayed the home as modest during official tours for journalists, a fuller portrait has emerged of a grandiose marble-columned mansion with helipads and a pen for pet ostriches. Ms. Chornovol, who ran unsuccessfully for Parliament later in 2012, spent nearly three hours wandering the property and taking photographs before she was detained by security officers. During the recent antigovernment protests in Kiev, Ms. Chornovol was often at the center of the action, including in a standoff between protesters and the riot police near the presidential administration headquarters that briefly turned violent. Ukraine, which has been struggling with an increasingly dire financial crisis, this week received the first installment of a $15 billion bailout from Russia, which had maneuvered aggressively to stop the accords with Europe. After Mr. Yanukovich scuttled the agreements, he turned to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for help, and Moscow ultimately came to the rescue with the loans and a steep discount on natural gas prices.