The Buried Maidan Massacre and Its Misrepresentation by the West
April 22, 2019
The new Ukrainian government is faced with reopening an inquiry into
evidence of an organized mass killing in Kiev that Poroshenko stonewalled.
Ivan Katchanovski investigates.
By Ivan Katchanovski
Special to Consortium News
Five years ago, the Maidan massacre in Kiev, Ukraine, of Feb. 18-20, 2014,
was a watershed event, not only for the politics and history of Ukraine but
also for world politics generally. This mass killing in downtown Kyiv set
the stage for the violent overthrow of the pro-Russian government in Ukraine
and a new Cold War between Washington and Moscow.
Therefore, it is remarkable that five years after this massacre shook the
world, no one has been sentenced for any of the Maidan killings. This was
the best documented case of mass killing in history, broadcast live on TV
and the internet, in presence of thousands of eyewitnesses. It was filmed by
hundreds of journalists from major media in the West, Ukraine, Russia, and
many other countries as well as by numerous social media users. Yet, to
this day, no one has been brought to justice for this major and
consequential crime.
Police in Hrushevsky Street, Kiev, Feb. 12, 2014. (??????? ?????? via
Wikimedia)
Police in Hrushevsky Street, Kiev, Feb. 12, 2014. (Wikimedia)
From the start, the dominant narrative promoted by the Ukrainian and Western
governments and mainstream media has placed the blame for this tragedy
firmly on the Yanukovych government. It contends that forces loyal to former
President Victor Yanukovych- either snipers and/or the Berkut, a special
anti-riot police- massacred peaceful Maidan protesters on the direct orders
of Yanukovych himself. Such charges against Yanukovych, his ministers and
commanders and a special Berkut unit-whose five ex-members were tried for
the murder of 48 Maidan protesters on Feb. 20, 2014 - are generally taken at
face value. With some limited exceptions, challenges to this narrative are
treated dismissively.
For the most part, mainstream news media in the U.S. and other Western
countries ignored trial evidence, public statements by officials and
politicians and scholarly studies that put the standard narrative under
question. This includes non-reporting about my own academic studies of the
Maidan massacre.
Killing Protesters and Police
My work found that this was an organized mass killing of both protesters and
the police, with the goal of delegitimizing the Yanukovych government and
its forces and seizing power in Ukraine. Oligarchic and far right elements
of the Maidan movement were involved in this massacre. For this reason, the
official investigation was fabricated and stonewalled. I presented studies
to support this as well as several online video appendixes with various
evidence at the annual meetings of the American Political Science
Association in San Francisco in 2015 and Boston in 2018, the 2017 World
Convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities in New York in
2017, and a joint conference by the Institute for Russian and Eurasian
Studies at Uppsala University and the British Association for Slavonic and
East European Studies in 2018, and published their summary in an academic
press volume.
The prosecutor general of Ukraine recently announced that the investigation
of the Maidan massacre is complete. He cited reconstructions of the Maidan
massacre by a New York architecture company, working with a team of
Ukrainian "volunteers" to provide a 3D model, as definite evidence that the
Maidan protesters were massacred by the Berkut police and that snipers did
not massacre the protesters.
This model was featured by The New York Times, in its May 30, 2018, report
"Who Killed the Kiev Protesters?" as a proof that the Berkut police
massacred Maidan protesters.
However, no expert knowledge or familiarity with the Maidan massacre or
Ukraine is needed to see blatant misrepresentation of elementary data in
that 3D model.
The wound locations of the killed Maidan protesters in the 3D model do not
match the wound locations in the forensic medical examinations of the
bodies. The reports of those examinations were used in this simulation to
determine the locations of the shooters. They are published in Ukrainian and
English on the linked website. According to one such report, Ihor Dmytriv
was shot in the "right side surface" and the "left side surface" of the
torso "from the right to the left, from the top to the bottom, and a little
from the front to the back" with the entry wound 20.5cm (8 inches) higher
than the exit wound. However, in the simulation, his wounds have been moved
to the front and the back and made nearly horizontal.
Actual wound locations of Dmytriv and their misrepresentation.
Actual wound locations of Dmytriv and their misrepresentation.
A Maidan lawyer visually confirmed at the Maidan massacre trial that these
wounds locations of were in the right and left sides. In the video of their
examination of Dmytriv right after his shooting, Maidan medics also indicate
such locations of his wounds with no wounds visible in the front area,
contrary to the 3D model. The forensic medical reports also state that
Dmytriv was wounded in his right shoulder from bottom to top direction, with
this entry wound 5 cm lower, but the 3D animation also misrepresents this
direction.
The wound locations of the other two victims have been similarly altered.
The 3D model moved the exit wound location from around the middle line of
the back of Andriy Dyhdalovych's body in forensic medical and clothing
examinations significantly to the right. It also changed a similar large
vertical angle from a top and bottom direction and 17 cm difference in
height of entry and exit wounds to nearly horizontal level.
Actual wound locations of Dyhdalovych and their misrepresentation.
Actual wound locations of Dyhdalovych and their misrepresentation.
In the case of Yuriy Parashchuk, forensic medical examinations found that
his entry and exit wounds were in the back of his head on the left side. But
the 3D analysis moved the entry wound location to the front area and changed
its somewhat top-to-bottom direction to nearly horizontal. Frames from a
video by a French photographer shows a large bullet hole in the back of
Parashchuk's red helmet. How can he be shot in the back of his head by the
Berkut police on a nearly similar horizontal level?
Changing the wound locations invalidates the entire reconstruction and,
therefore, the conclusions of the SITU analysis and The New York Times
article, that these and other Maidan protesters were shot from the Berkut
positions.
One does not need to be a ballistic expert to see that locations of wounds
in the back and on the sides and top-to-bottom directions of wounds
specified in forensic medical reports and positions of these three killed
protesters facing the Berkut in the videos cannot physically match with
Berkut police positions located on a similar horizontal level on the ground
in front of them. The forensic medical examinations conducted for the
government investigation and made public at the Maidan massacre trial
revealed that the absolute majority of the protesters were shot not in front
and not from horizontal or near horizontal directions that are consistent
with police positions. Rather, they were shot from a top-to-bottom direction
and in sides or the back that are consistent with shooting from the
Maidan-controlled buildings.
Government Investigation
The government investigation, conducted after the Maidan government came to
power after this massacre, and which charged the Berkut police behind the
barricades with killing these three protesters, raises the same concerns.
The complex medical examinations, which were published on the SITU website
and which are presented by the government investigation in Ukraine as a key
evidence that the Berkut police massacred the protesters, showed the same
bullet trajectories as the 3D model. The text of these examinations, which
are available in Ukrainian and in English translations, shows that these
bullet trajectories were determined not by ballistic experts butby medical
experts without any calculations or explanations.
Synchronized videos, which were used by the SITU to determine that the
Berkut police behind a truck barricade killed Parashchuk, actually show that
he and other protesters were in a blind spot below the line of police fire
from behind a truck. It was physically impossible for the police behind the
wide and tall truck to shoot at him below over the top of this truck. Dozens
of other Maidan protesters who were killed and wounded around the same spot
were in the same situation.
Parashchuk in the blind spot below the line of fire from the police behind
the truck
Parashchuk in the blind spot below the line of fire from the police behind
the truck.
The locations of the forces of the Yanukovych government during the massacre
are well known, and they are identified in my studies, the government
investigation charges, numerous videos, and in the SITU 3D model.
At the time of the killings of these three protesters, Berkut policemen were
behind the barricades on Instytutska Street on the government side, while
the protesters who were killed were in between Berkut and the Hotel Ukraina.
Forensic examinations of bullet holes by government experts described
numerous bullet holes on the second, third, and higher floors and the roof
of the Hotel Ukraina on the side that faced the government forces. But they
did not identify a single bullet hole on the first floor on the Berkut
facing side of the hotel behind these protesters. Simple positioning of the
bullet hole locations described in these forensic reports clearly shows that
almost all bullets from the Berkut and other positions flew above the heads
of the protesters there or targeted poles, trees, and a flower box. This is
also shown in vide and photos - including some I took there after the
massacre - and in videos and reports of shooting at journalists in the hotel
with a Google Street View image from the first Berkut barricade.
This confirms my study findings that the special Berkut police unit and the
Omega unit of snipers of Internal Troops were shooting at snipers in the
Hotel Ukraina.
After five long years, the failure by the Poroshenko government's
investigation to determine bullet trajectories by ballistic experts or
conduct on-site investigative experiments for the same purpose - even after
the Maidan massacre trial judges ordered them two years ago to do so - is
therefore hardly surprising. It is impossible to bend physical reality. In a
literal cover-up, large fences were recently erected on the crime scene for
the construction of the Maidan massacre memorial, which would completely
alter the landscape. The fences and the memorial would make it impossible to
determine bullet trajectories on-site, which still has not been done by the
investigation for five years after this mass killing.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, with Poroshenko, outside
Presidential Palace in Kiev, Feb. 5, 2015, during Kerry's first round of
meetings with Poroshenko and members of the new government. (State
Department via Flickr)
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry with Poroshenko, outside Presidential
Palace in Kiev, Feb. 5, 2015, during Kerry's first round of meetings with
the new government. (State Department via Flickr)
The SITU reconstruction also missed bullet holes that appeared in Dmytriv's
shield and in a shield of another protester in front of Dyhdalovych in
videos of their shooting that were used in the reconstruction. The locations
of these bullet holes are inconsistent with shooting from the Berkut
barricades.
But these shields with clear locations of the bullet holes, like the helmet
of Parashchuk and almost all the shields and helmets of protesters who were
killed or wounded, mysteriously disappeared after the massacre, along with a
lot of other crucial evidence, such as bullets and security-camera footage.
Similarly, crucial testimonies of Maidan protesters, who witnessed the
killings of Dyhdalovych and Dmytriv, are ignored by the Times' report, SITU
and the official Ukrainian investigation. Dyhdalovych's wife stated in her
Ukrainian media interview that another protester told her that he saw that
Dyhdalovych was killed by a sniper on the roof of the Bank Arkada. This
protester was filmed following Dyhdalovych when they both went to evacuate
Dmytriv after he was shot. The Bank Arkada is a tall green building in the
front and to the right of both Dyhdalovych and Dmytriv, and it appears to
match the apparent directions of their wounds. My Maidan massacre studies
video appendices showed that it was in the Maidan-controlled area and that
snipers on its roof during the massacre were reported by both numerous
Maidan protesters, including many wounded who spoke at the Maidan massacre
trial and investigation, and by Security Service of Ukraine commanders and
snipers.
SITU diagram of victims' locations and names.
SITU diagram of victims' locations and names.
A female Maidan medic during the massacre was pointing to the top of this
green building and shouting about snipers. But her words were translated in
a BBC report as referring to six protesters killed by the snipers in that
area. A Maidan protester and another Maidan medic, who were wounded near the
same spot where these two protesters were killed, both testified at the
Maidan massacre trial that they were shot from this building. Government
ballistic experts confirmed this during on-site investigative experiments.
Western Press Silence
These revelations were not reported by any Western media. This includes The
New York Times, which on April 5, 2014, profiled this wounded protester
against the backdrop of an unquestioned report by the acting government in
Kiev that blaming "former President Viktor F. Yanukovych, his riot police
and their suspected Russian assistants for the violence that killed more
than 100 people in Kiev in February."
It also includes CNN, which filmed the shooting of this medic and attributed
it to the government forces.
The government investigation simply denies that there were any snipers there
and in other Maidan-controlled buildings, and refuses to investigate them.
This is done despite videos of such snipers and testimonies of the absolute
majority of wounded protesters at the trial and investigation and more than
150 other witnesses about snipers in these locations.
The assumption in the 3D model that Dmytriv was shot by the single bullet is
also contradicted by testimony of another protester who saw that Dmytriv was
shot by "a sniper" from the Hotel Ukraina. My Maidan massacre studies and
their video appendices showed that this hotel was then controlled by the
Maidan forces.
The New York Times article described collaboration of the New York
architecture firm with a Ukrainian "volunteer" in creating the 3D model. It
did not report 2017 admissions by the prosecutor general of Ukraine on
Facebook that his government agency funded the work of a group of anonymous
"volunteers," including this Ukrainian graduate student, in compiling and
synchronizing various videos of the Maidan massacre in collaboration with a
People's Front party outlet.
Some of the People's Front party leaders were accused by various Ukrainian
politicians and Maidan activists, such as Nadia Savchenko, and by five
ex-Georgian ex-military members in Italian and Israeli TV documentaries, of
direct involvement in this massacre. Meanwhile, the Times lauds the
Ukrainian government's investigation and Maidan lawyers for drawing on such
analyses by these "citizen investigators" and treats a New York architect
firm as providing key evidence in the Maidan massacre trial.
