VOA
Western journalists have published photos of snipers who shot at protesters and police in Kiev shortly after 9 o’clock on the morning of February 20 and continued about seven hours later in the afternoon drawing to the bloodiest day. The photos prove that the shooters were from Ukraine.
Most of the photographs accompanying that article were taken on February 20, and they appear to reveal the truth about who carried out the shootings in Independence Square on that day.
The pictures show faces of snipers without masks. Earlier, the prosecutor general of Ukraine identified personalities of the shooters. This was announced by the head of department Oleg Magnitsky. He refused to name them, but confirmed – that all of them were citizens of Ukraine.
Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared that Moscow has evidence that suggests Ukraine’s ultra-right militia organization, the Right Sector, could have been behind the deadly sniper shootings in Kiev’s Independence Square, better known as Maidan.
Moscow says it has evidence that suggests Ukraine’s ultra-right militia organization, the Right Sector, could have been behind the deadly sniper shootings in Kiev’s Independence Square, better known as Maidan, Russia’s top diplomat Sergei Lavrov said in an interview with the Voskresnoye Vremya news program on Russia’s Channel One on Sunday.
Speaking at the Sunday Time show on Channel One, Foreign Minister Larov accused the Right Sector of pulling the strings in many violent clashes that happened in the Ukrainian capital Kiev during the winter protest, “including the sniper shootings.” “That’s the data we have,” he added.
Mr. Lavrov said Moscow had made its conclusions known to Western countries.
“I cannot say I’m 100 percent sure, but there are a slew of facts that indicate just as much. Of course, they should be double-checked,” he noted.
The Russian foreign policy chief said he hoped the regime would be able to follow through on its investigation into the lethal attaks and wouldn’t “sweep it under the rug.”
Western governments have instructed their diplomats not to attend events where Russians, entered on the list of sanctions connected with Crimea, may turn up, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
“In addition to the officially introduced sanctions, measures are being taken which arouse surprise. Our diplomats in countries of the European Union are denied contact at their foreign ministries. We know that US and European Union diplomats working in Moscow have been instructed not to attend events at which people entered on the sanctions list turn up,” Lavrov said in an interview with the Voskresnoye Vremya news program on Russia’s Channel One.
“This is absolutely at odds with the tasks tackled by diplomats. Diplomacy is the art of speaking and coming to terms. If diplomats are told to act as instruments of implementing a policy of sanctions, then there must be something else that is involved here,” he said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has dismissed threats by Ukraine introduce visas for Russians as something that no longer matters.
“This seems to be a dead issue in Kiev by now. Someone said it on the spur of the moment. The idea has been rejected and, in my opinion, it doesn’t matter anymore,” Lavrov told Russia’s Channel One television on Sunday.
On March 19, Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council decided to introduce visas for Russians in the wake of the Crimean referendum. Later, however, Arseniy Yatsenyk, who had been appointed prime minister by the Verkhovna Rada (parliament), announced that Kiev shouldn’t rush to either introduce visas or switch to foreign passports in its relations with Russia.
Ukraine’s interim foreign minister, Andriy Deshchytsya, told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov earlier this week that the idea of Ukraine’s federalization was unacceptable and that the Russian language cannot be given the status of Ukraine’s second state language.
“Deshchytsya said that our proposal was unacceptable because federalization goes against the fundamental principles of Ukraine’s state set-up. It is not clear, why. I don’t know anything about such principles. Second. The idea of making Russian Ukraine’s second state language was also rejected as unacceptable,” Lavrov said in an interview with the Voskresnoye Vremya Sunday news program. Lavrov and Deshchytsya met in The Hague on Monday.
Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office has identified snipers shooting at demonstrators in Kiev, parliamentary envoy for control over the prosecutor general’s office Oleg Magnitsky said live on 5th Ukrainian TV channel on Friday. “Snipers shooting at Maidan protesters are identified. But I cannot tell you their names. I can only say that they are Ukrainian citizens,” he stated.
Berkut did not use weapons during Maidan protests in Kiev, shots were fired from the opposition side, commander of special police unit said.
Allegations in some Western and Ukrainian media that policemen of the Berkut special task force used firearms and snipers against maidan protesters in Kiev are lies, a former Berkut police officer who is now commander of a special task police unit in Crimea, Alexander Vasyukov, told reporters on Friday.
“Our unit’s sniper was always with us and he could only use special means like noise grenades. We were unable to use firearms just because we hadn’t any! Radicals were the ones who used weapons, their snipers began shooting on law enforcers first only in dark hours and then night and day,” Vasyukov said at a press conference at Sevastopol.
The snipers who shot at protesters and police in Kiev were allegedly hired by Maidan leaders, according to a leaked phone conversation between the EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton and Estonian foreign affairs minister, which has emerged online.
“There is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers, it was not Yanukovych, but it was somebody from the new coalition,” Paet said during the conversation.
“I think we do want to investigate. I mean, I didn’t pick that up, that’s interesting. Gosh,” Ashton answered.
The call took place after Estonia’s FM Urmas Paet visited Kiev on February 25 at the peak of clashes between the pro-EU protesters and security forces in the Ukrainian capital.
Paet also recalled his conversation with a doctor who treated those shot by snipers in Kiev. She said that both protesters and police were shot at by the same people.
“And second, what was quite disturbing, this same Olga [Bogomolets] told as well that all the evidence shows that the people who were killed by snipers from both sides, among policemen and then people from the streets, that they were the same snipers killing people from both sides,” the Estonian FM stressed.
Ashton reacted to the information by saying: “Well, yeah…that’s, that’s terrible.”
“So that she then also showed me some photos she said that as a medical doctor she can say that it is the same handwriting, the same type of bullets, and it’s really disturbing that now the new coalition, that they don’t want to investigate what exactly happened,” Paet said.
