Ukraine Over the Edge by Gordon M. Hahn

Author:Gordon M. Hahn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McFarland
Published: 2017-11-22T05:00:00+00:00

Who Were the Shooters?

By midday on the 20th both sides were firing, but the government forces seemed to demonstrate some restraint. Thus, there are admissions by the official post-revolutionary investigation that Maidan protesters were killed by firearms not used by the Berkut, MVD Internal Troops or regular police. The head of the post–Maidan Rada’s special parliamentary commission, Gennadii Moskal, reported that of the 76 protesters killed on February 18–20, at least 25 were shot with 7.62mm caliber bullets and at least 17 with pellets, while another was shot with a 9mm bullet from a Makarov pistol.126 But who precisely initiated fire on the morning of the 20th is clear. Small groups of RS and SP members and fellow travelers from the MSD’s heavenly hundreds were the snipers of February 20.127

As noted above, the buildings from which the gunfire emanated—the Trade Union House, the Music Conservatory, and the Ukraina Hotel—were under the control of Right Sector and Svoboda groups. Numerous witnesses’ testimony, reports and analyses show that Maidan shooters opened fire on police as early as 5:30 a.m., wounded at least 14 Berkut police and killed at least 3 before 9:00 a.m. and before police returned fire. They were fired on mainly from three buildings: the Conservatory, Ukraina Hotel, and Trade Union Hall.128

BBC investigators found a Ukrainian photographer who photographed armed men in the Kiev Conservatory during the shooting. They also interviewed an ultranationalist, called Sergei, who claims he was part of an armed Maidan unit deployed in the Conservatory and was equipped with a high-velocity hunting rifle. The Conservatory directly overlooks that part of the Maidan where the police’s water cannon–mounted vehicles had taken up positions. Sergei states that his unit fired on police in the early morning of February 20 at approximately 7:00 a.m., but that they did not shoot to kill, merely firing at their feet.129 According to the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Conservatory riflemen were under the command of 27-year-old Volodymyr Parasyuk, who was the leader of one of the MSD sotniki units.130

Although Andriy Parubiy was commander of the MSD hundreds, Parasyuk claims his group did not coordinate its joining the MSD with Parubiy, but rather with the Right Sector, speaking with representatives of opposition Udar party leader Klichko.131 However, as Katchanovski correctly notes, it is highly unlikely that such a large unit of armed men could have been moving around on the Maidan without permission from someone in the EuroMaidan leadership—perhaps Parubiy and/or Klichko.132 Parasyuk, a native of nationalistic Lviv in western Ukraine, states that over the years he received paramilitary training with a range of nationalist groups there and was a member of the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists, one of the many Ukrainian organizations modeled like RS and SP on the World War II–era Nazi-allied OUN.133 Parasyuk admitted in a Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung interview that many in his soten or “hundred” of some 50 men were armed with hunting rifles and fired on the police from the Music Conservatory, but supposedly only in response to initial police fire.

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