Source : https://www.academia.edu/8776021/The_Snipers_Massacre_on_the_Maidan_in_Ukraine
Auteur : Ivan Katchanovski.
1
My
Interview with Onet (Poland) Concerning The
“Snipers’
Massacre”
on
the Maidan in
Ukraine
Study:
Full-Text English-Language Version
(October
22, 2014)
Ivan
Katchanovski. Ph.D.
University
of Ottawa
(Published
interview version in Polish: Taka
jest moja wersja,
http://wiadomosci.onet.pl
(October
23, 2014))
1)
Why did you start the study on the Maidan-massacre? The situation
seemed to be clear.
According
to Western Europe, Ukraine society, United States, Polish politics
etc. - it was simply
a
massacre of innocent oppositionists who were fighting against
Janukovych-system. Why did
you
have doubts?
I
started to research the Maidan massacre because it was the crucial
event, which led to the
violent
overthrow of the government and gave a start to a large-scale violent
conflict that now
turned
into a civil war in Donbas. This massacre and the associated
overthrow of the
Yanukovych
government also led to sharp escalation of a conflict between the
West and Russia
over
Ukraine, and prompted Russian support for separatists, including its
direct military
intervention.
My previous academic research included similar issues. I also studied
the Maidan
from
its very start, including all major episodes of violence prior to
February 20.
The
governments and the media in Ukraine and the West immediately
accepted the opposition
version
of the massacre. They claimed that this mass killing was perpetrated
by the government
forces
on Yanukovych order, while such claims were based on inconclusive
evidence. Highly
publicized
videos of Berkut using live ammunition and SBU Alfa snipers radio
recordings were
presented
as definite evidence that they massacred protesters, even though they
did not contain
direct
and certain proof. Various sources, including opposition deputies,
reported shortly after
the
massacre existence of a video showing a sniper firing first at the
special police and then at
protesters,
but this video has not been made public. Ordering the mass killing by
Yanukovych
appeared
irrational and puzzling from a political science perspective.
Yanukovych and his
associates
lost all their power and much of their wealth and fled from Ukraine,
since the
massacre
of the protesters undermined his legitimacy even among many deputies
of his Party of
Regions,
who joined the opposition and voted to remove him from the
presidency. Similarly,
repeated
attempts of protesters to advance on the very small and relatively
unimportant part of
Instytutska
Street seemed also irrational and hard to explain because they came
there under
constant
fire, and were killed and wounded wave after wave.
2)
On the 1st October, you demonstrated the results of your research at
the University of Ottawa.
You
showed a lot of evidences. Today, are you absolutely sure that the
massacre was made by
the
opposition?
It
is not possible for me as a political scientist to claim absolute
certainty. For example, the
evidence,
such as videos and bullet trajectories, indicate that involvement of
the special police
2
units
in killing or wounding of some of the protesters, in particular armed
ones, cannot be
entirely
ruled out.
But
all the major sources of evidence that I analyzed independently
indicate the involvement of
the
elements of the opposition, including its far right wing, in the
massacre. This evidence
includes
at least 12 locations of suspected shooters in the Maidan-controlled
buildings or areas,
such
as the Hotel Ukraina, Zhovtnevyi Palace, Music Conservatory, the
Trade Union building,
and
the Main Post Office, which then was occupied by the Right Sector. My
analysis and
synchronization
in time of all publicly available videos of the massacre, including
those showing
suspected
shooters, and a radio intercept of a group of shooters point to the
same conclusion.
Some
30 gigabytes of previously unreported intercepts of radio
communications of Internal
Troops
units, the SBU Alfa unit commanders and snipers, and other government
agencies during
the
massacre on February 20 and earlier days of the Maidan, indicate the
same. Other sources of
evidence
include live statements by the Maidan announcers about "snipers"
shooting at the
protesters
from Maidan-controlled buildings, such as the Hotel Ukraina and
Zhovtnevyi Palace.
Ballistic
trajectories indicate that shots came from the same directions.
Eyewitness reports by
both
Maidan protesters and government special units commanders and public
statements by
government
officials confirm many of these locations. Types and caliber of
weapons, such as
Kalashnikov
assault rifles and hunting rifles, bullets and pellets used to shot
both the protesters
and
the police, and types of wounds among both protesters and the police
indicate the same.
There
is also a similar track record of politically motivated
misrepresentations by the Maidan
politicians
of other cases of violence during and after the Maidan and in
historical conflicts, such
as
their denials of the involvement of the OUN and the UPA in mass
killings of Jews, Poles, and
Ukrainians.
3)
If we agree with your opinion, we have to admit that
Ukrainian-society was cheated.
Whatever
the intentions of Ukrainian-opposite-politicians were, we have to
admit that the
common
people in Ukraine wanted a big change. Young Ukrainians in Kiev dream
about
European
Union, they want to live in a real-democratic system. Your opinion
can disappoint
them
but it's not possible to change their dreams about democratic
Ukraine. Do you agree?
I
agree to a large extent. The Maidan started with mass protests
against the Yanukovych refusal
to
sign an association agreement with the European Union. It turned into
mostly anti-government
mass
protest after the violent dispersal of the protesters on November
30th by Berkut. But many
Maidan
supporters were also misled to believe that at stake was the issue of
Ukraine joining the
EU
in the near future.
4)
In Russia, there's now a big, well developed propaganda. Lots of
people will think that your
concept
is a part of pro-Russian propaganda-strategy. What can you tell your
enemies? In
Ukraine,
you can become an enemy number one. On the other hand, in your
opinion, there is
opposition-government
who falsifies history. Now, you're waiting for counterarguments made
by
Ukrainian-authorities?
Are you ready to fight a discussion on the causes of the massacre of
Kiev?
3
Such
kind of false and baseless charges already started. Such personal
attacks are used to divert
attention
from the evidence presented and from finding and prosecuting actual
organizers and
perpetrators
of the mass killing. In retaliation for my academic research on such
issues and on
the
OUN and the UPA, my house, the land, and all personal possessions in
the Volyn Region of
Ukraine
were recently de facto seized with help of local courts on orders
from the higher-up
authorities.
I did this study as a part of my academic research, and I did not
receive any outside
funding
or requests to do it. I do not expect that any such new evidence
would be presented or
discussion
initiated by the Ukrainian government and the media in Ukraine.
The
findings about the "snipers'" massacre also provide a
rational explanation for the Russian
actions
in Ukraine after the largely violent overthrow of the pro-Russian
government,
specifically,
Russia's support for separatists, its illegal annexation of Crimea,
and its military
intervention
in Crimea and Donbas. Russian propaganda incorrectly represented the
ouster of
Yanukovych
as a fascist coup, and similar propaganda was used on other important
issues, such
as
denials of their direct military intervention in Crimea and then in
August in Donbas. But Putin
and
other Russian government officials also publicly stated that the
opposition, and specifically,
the
Right Sector, organized the massacre on February 20 as a key part of
a violent overthrow of
the
pro-Russian government, although they did not present specific
evidence. It is now appears
that
they had such evidence, likely from intelligence sources and the
Yanukovych government
officials
who fled to Russia. An international investigation of the massacre
could help to reduce a
possibility
of a full-scale war between Russia and Ukraine.
5)
Maidan-revolution is one of the newest, important part of European
history. We have a
complete
different perspective on the massacre in Poland, Russia, Ukraine...
If you have to
explain
to your students: "what happened and why it happened - in Kiev
20 February 2014 -
what
would you say?
The
massacre of the protesters and the police was organized by an
alliance between elements of
the
Maidan opposition and the far right in order to seize power. This was
a rational action which
achieved
its goals with use of such methods. This violent overthrow
constituted an undemocratic
change
of government, and the mass killing was a major human rights crime.
6)
In Poland, we have a distance to conspiracy theories. Four years ago,
we experienced the
Smolensk
disaster in which our president and 95 other people died. After this
tragedy, many
scientists
have created all sorts of theories. Why should we believe you? In
your theory, what are
the
strongest evidences?
I
do not believe in conspiracy theories. My study is based on the
various sources of evidence,
which
independently corroborate each other and can be easily accessed and
verified. The
strongest
evidence includes a few remaining publicly available recordings of
live broadcasts
showing
suspected shooters on the roofs of Zhovtnevyi Palace and Muzeinyi
Lane buildings
during
the height of the massacre. I also found on a radio scanners forum
time-stamped radio
intercepts
of Security Service of Ukraine Alfa commanders and Internal Troops on
February 20.
These
previously unreported intercepts contain specific information
about “shooters” or
“snipers”
from
the Maidan side, their use of live ammunition against the government
police and
security
forces on February 18-20, and about movement of these shooters to the
Hotel
4
Ukraina
that coincided with the start of the mass killing of the protesters
in the morning of
February
20.
7)
You suggest that the massacre might have been created by the members
of Right Sector. In
Poland,
we talk a lot about this organization. We are afraid of RS. What do
you think about this
organization?
What are theirs objectives?
In
Poland, we also talk a lot about the party "Svoboda", which
honor the authors of the Volyncrime.
For
many Poles, it is incomprehensible that Polish politicians stood
shoulder by shoulder
with
the policies of Svoboda during the Maidan-revolution. In your
opinion, is Svoboda a threat?
The
Right Sector is an alliance of radical nationalist and neo-Nazi
organizations and football
ultras.
These organizations regard themselves to various extent as
ideological heirs of the OUN
and
the UPA. The Right Sector was formed at the beginning of the
Euromaidan mass protests. It
played
a key role in other major cases of violence, such as attempts to
storm the presidential
administration
on December 1 and the parliament in the end of January and on
February 18. The
evidence
points to the Right Sector involvement in the mass killings of both
the protesters and
the
police. Such evidence includes a shooting of a female medic from the
Main Post Office when
it
was occupied by the Right Sector, and its involvement in the creation
of a special combat
company
based in the Conservatory building. Shooters killed and wounded many
Berkut
members
in the early morning of February 20 from the Conservatory building,
and then moved
to
other locations from which many protesters were killed and wounded
later in the morning.
The
Right Sector achieved its goal of the ouster of the Yanukovych
government, but its main
goal
is the "national revolution." While they formally are not
represented in the Maidan
government,
the Right Sector and its constituent organizations, such as the
Social National
Assembly,
formed their paramilitary units or special police battalions with the
new government
support.
Svoboda
played an important role in the Maidan protests, and it occupied
several important
positions
in the Maidan government. Its participation also led to wide use of
OUN and UPA
slogans
and symbols by relatively more democratic and non-nationalist
opposition parties and
protesters
during and after the Euromaidan. Svoboda leaders tried to moderate in
public their
previous
extremist orientation and statements. However, there are important
but still unanswered
questions
about their involvement in the massacre.
8)
In your research, you write about numerous errors/lies of Ukraine's
authorities. For example:
one
of the commanders of Berkut were accused of shooting protesters using
rifles but... few years
earlier
he lost his hand so it wasn’t
possible. What can you say about your biggest surprises
during
working on the massacre-research?
I
was surprised by the sheer amount of different kinds of evidence that
was publicly available,
but
was ignored, suppressed, or misrepresented by both the government and
the media in
Ukraine.
Another surprise was that the Western governments showed a little
interest in
independent
investigation of the massacre.
5
9)
In your research, you affirm that snipers in Maidan were aiming for
example at foreign
journalists.
Assuming your theory, could the death of Polish and other journalists
be convenient
for
the authors of the massacre?
Rooms
occupied by many foreign journalists, for instance, from BBC, the
Associated Press,
Polish
TVP, American ABC News, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation,
German ARD, and
Russia
RT, came under fire from Maidan-controlled buildings. Because nobody
of them was
killed
or wounded, in contrast to the protesters, it is likely that the
journalists from the leading
foreign
media were targeted to prevent them from filming the actual shooters.
10)
To summarize: in your opinion, is all Ukrainian-revolution based on a
big lie?
The
"snipers'" massacre and its misrepresentation by then
opposition politicians and the media in
Ukraine
played a key role in the overthrow of the government. The legitimacy
of the new
government
also rests to a significant extent on such misrepresentation. For
this reason, the
investigation
of this crucial case of the mass killing has been manipulated and
delayed. The
misrepresentation
of the Maidan massacre helps to understand similar misrepresentations
of the
Odesa
massacre and civilian casualties of the civil war in Donbas. The
Euromaidan protest
movement
and the major political changes and developments that it produced in
Ukraine cannot
be
reduced to this massacre. That said, this case of mass killing
already had a major impact on
the
future of Ukraine by giving a start to large-scale violent conflict
that turned into the civil war,
helping
to prompt the Russian military intervention, and de facto break-up of
Ukraine.
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