This will document that the ‘new Cold War’ between the U.S. and Russia did not start, as the Western myth has it, with Russia’s involvement in the breakaway of Crimea and Donbass from Ukraine, after Ukraine — next door to Russia — had suddenly turned rabidly hostile toward Russia in February 2014. Ukraine’s replacing its democratically elected neutralist Government in February 2014, by a rabidly anti-Russian Government, was a violent event, which produced many corpses. It’s presented in The West as having been a ‘revolution’ instead of a coup; but whatever it was, it certainly generated the ‘new Cold War’ (the economic sanctions and NATO buildup on Russia’s borders); and, to know whether it was a coup, or instead a revolution, is to know what actually started the ‘new Cold War’, and why. So, this is historically very important.

Incontrovertible proofs will be presented here not only that it was a coup, but that this coup was organized by the U.S. Government — that the U.S. Government initiated the ‘new Cold War’; Russia’s Government reacted to America’s aggression, which aims to place nuclear missiles in Ukraine, less than ten minutes flight-time from Moscow. During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, America had reason to fear Soviet nuclear missiles 103 miles from America’s border. But, after America’s Ukrainian coup in 2014, Russia has reason to fear NATO nuclear missiles not just near, but on, Russia’s border. That would be catastrophic.

If America’s successful February 2014 overthrow and replacement of Ukraine’s democratically elected neutralist Government doesn’t soon produce a world-ending nuclear war (World War III), then there will be historical accounts of that overthrow, and the accounts are already increasingly trending and consolidating toward a historical consensus that it was a coup — that it was imposed by “somebody from the new coalition” — i.e., that the termination of the then-existing democratic (though like all its predecessors, corrupt) Ukrainian Government, wasn’t authentically a ‘revolution’ such as the U.S. Government has contended, and certainly wasn’t at all democratic, but was instead a coup (and a very bloody one, at that), and totally illegal (though backed by The West).

The purpose of the present article will be to focus attention on precisely whom the chief people are who were responsible for perpetrating this globally mega-dangerous (‘Cold-War’-igniting) coup — and thus for creating the world’s subsequent course increasingly toward global nuclear annihilation.

If there will be future history, then these are the individuals who will be in the docks for that history’s harshest and most damning judgments, even if there will be no legal proceedings brought against them. Who, then, are these people?

Clearly, Victoria Nuland, U.S. President Barack Obama’s central agent overseeing the coup, at least during the month of February 2014 when it climaxed, was crucial not only in overthrowing the existing Ukrainian Government, but in selecting and installing its rabidly anti-Russian replacement. The 27 January 2014 phone-conversation between her and America’s Ambassador in Ukraine, Jeffrey Pyatt was a particularly seminal event, and it was uploaded to youtube on 4 February 2014. I have discussed elsewhere that call and its significance. Nuland there and then abandoned the EU’s hope for a still democratic but less corrupt future government for Ukraine, and Nuland famously said, on that call “Fuck the EU,” and she instructed Pyatt to choose instead the rabidly anti-Russian, and far-right, Arseniy Yatsenyuk. This key event occurred 24 days before Ukraine’s President Victor Yanukovych was overthrown on February 20th, and 30 days before the new person to head Ukraine’s Government, Yatsenyuk, became officially appointed to rule the now clearly fascist country. He won that official designation on February 26th. However, this was only a formality: Obama’s agent had already chosen him, on January 27th.

The second landmark item of evidence that it had been a coup and nothing at all democratic or a ‘revolution’, was the 26 February 2014 phone-conversation between the EU’s Foreign Minister Catherine Ashton and her agent in Ukraine investigating whether the overthrow had been a revolution or instead a coup; he was Estonia’s Foreign Minister, Urmas Paet, and he told her that he found that it had been a coup, and that “somebody from the new coalition” had engineered it — but he didn’t know whom that “somebody” was. Both Ashton and Paet were shocked at this finding, but they proceeded immediately to ignore that matter, and to discuss only the prospects for Europe’s investors in Ukraine, to be able to get their money back — their obsession was Ukraine’s corruption. Ashton told Paet that she had herself told the Maidan demonstrators, “you need to find ways in which you can establish a process that will have anti-corruption at its heart.” So, though the EU was unhappy that this had been a coup, they were far more concerned to protect their investors. In any case, the EU clearly wasn’t behind Ukraine’s coup. Equally clearly, they didn’t much care whether it was a coup or instead what the U.S. Government said, a ‘revolution’.

The network behind this coup had actually started planning for the coup back in 2011. That’s when Eric Schmidt of Google, and Jared Cohen, also now of Google but still continuing though unofficially as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s chief person tasked to plan ‘popular movements’ to overthrow both Yanukovych in Ukraine, and Assad in Syria.

Then, on 1 March 2013, the implementation of this plan started: the first “tech camp” to train far-right Ukrainians how to organize online the mass-demonstrations against Yanukovych, was held inside the U.S. Embassy in Kiev on that date, which was over nine months before the Maidan demonstrations to overthrow Ukraine’s democratically elected President started, on 20 November 2013.

The American scholar Gordon M. Hahn has specialized in studying the evidence regarding whom the actual snipers were who committed the murders, but he focuses only on domestic Ukrainian snipers and ignores the foreign ones, who had been hired by the U.S. regime indirectly through Georgian, Lithuanian and other anti-Russian CIA assets (such as via Mikheil Saakashvili, the ousted President of Georgia whom the U.S. regime subsequently selected to become the Governor of the Odessa region of Ukraine). Hahn’s 2018 book Ukraine Over the Edge states on pages 204-209: 

“Yet another pro-Maidan sniper, Ivan Bubenchik, emerged to acknowledge that he shot and killed Berkut [the Government’s police who were protecting Government buildings] before any protesters were shot that day [February 20th]. In a print interview, Bubenchik previews his admission in Vladimir Tikhii’s documentary film, Brantsy, that he shot ahd killed two Berkut commanders in the early morning hours of February 20 on the Maidan. … Bubenchik claims that [on February 20] the Yanukovich regime started the fire in the Trade Union House — where his and many other EuroMaidan fighters lived during the revolt — prompting the Maidan’s next reaction. As noted above, however, pro-Maidan neofascists have revealed that the Right Sector started that fire. … Analysis of the snipers’ massacre shows that the Maidan protesters initiated almost all — at least six out of a possible eight — of the pivotal escalatory moments of violence and/or coercion. … The 30 November 2013 nighttime assault on the Maidan demonstrators is the only clear exception from a conclusive pattern of escalating revolutionary violence led by the Maidan’s relatively small but highly motivated and well-organized neofascist element.”

Although Hahn’s book barely cites the first and most detailed academic study of the climactic coup period of late February, Ivan Katchanovski’s poorly written “The ‘Snipers’ Massacre’ on the Maidan in Ukraine”, which was issued on 5 September 2015, Hahn’s is consistent with that: both works conclude that the available evidence, as Katchanovski puts it, shows that:

“The massacre was a false flag operation, which was rationally planned and carried out with a goal of the overthrow of the government and seizure of power. It [his investigation] found various evidence of the involvement of an alliance of the far right organizations, specifically the Right Sector and Svoboda, and oligarchic parties, such as Fatherland. Concealed shooters and spotters were located in at least 20 Maidan-controlled buildings or areas.”

Hahn downplays U.S. heading of the coup. But shortly before the coup, the CIA secretly trained in Poland the Right Sector founder/leader Dmitriy Yarosh (“Dmytro Jarosz”), who headed Ukraine’s snipers. So, even the Ukrainian ones were working for the U.S.

On 19 November 2017 was issued Gian Micalessin’s “The hidden truth about Ukraine – Part 1” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR1NFI6TBH0  & II https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0rR2Fh1zWI. Summarizing them here: Two Georgian snipers say Saakashvili hired them in Tblisi for a U.S.-backed operation. But they know only about the “Georgian Legion” part. They think it was patterned on Georgia’s Rose Revolution. They each got $1000 for the operation and flew to Kiev on 15 January and were promised $5000 on return. (9:00) “We had to provoke the ‘Berkut’ police so they would attack the people. By February 15th the situation [at the Maidan] was getting worse every day. Then the first shots were fired.” It was February 15 or 16. Mamunashvili [Saakashvili’s man] introduced them to “an American military guy, … Brian Christopher Boyenger” a former “sniper for the 101st Airborne Division” who “after Maidan he went to Donbass” to fight in the “Georgian Legion” but during the coup-climax, the far-right Andriy “Parubiy came very often,” and “Brian always accompanied him” and also instructing there was Vladimir Parasyuk, one of the leaders of the Maidan. The snipers were told not to aim but just to kill people randomly, to create chaos. There were also two Lithuanian snipers in the room. Some went down from the Ukraine Hotel to the second floor of the Conservatory Building, balcony. “They started to take out the guns and distributed them to each group.” “Then I heard shots from the next room” It lasted 15 minutes, then they were all ordered to escape.

On 13 February 2015 was telecast a German documentary, “Maidan Snipers. German TV expose. ARD Monitor. Eng Subs” in which one of the demonstrators said that many of the bullets were fired from buildings controlled by the demonstrators, but that “We were also shot at from the other direction.” However, at least before 21 February 2014, police (Berkut) were seized by demonstrators and at least the possibility exists that some of the Right Sector snipers were taking positions in and especially atop some of the government buildings so as to fire down into the crowd and seem to be firing from Yanukovych’s side. Gordon Hahn hasn’t been able to verify any firing in February 2014 by the Yanukovych government. Moreover: “they were the same snipers, killing people from both sides.”

On 1 February 2016 was posted to youtube a French documentary, “Ukraine — Masks of the Revolution” which shows, from a meeting at Davos, at 48:00, Victoria Nuland, the announcer trying to speak with her and saying to the audience, “The U.S. diplomat who came to support the Revolution, could she really ignore the existence of the paramilitaries?”; 48:50 Larry Summers at a meeting in Kiev during 10-12 September 2015 and then later at the “12th YES Annual Meeting” saying, “Ukraine is an essential outpost of our fundamental military interests”; 49:25: Petraeus also shown there and the announcer says, “He also thinks that Ukraine is essential to block Putin.” Petraeus urges investment in Ukraine to block Russia; 51:00 McChrystal there also urges arming Ukraine; 51:50 Nuland is there and the announcer says: “The country that is most invested in Ukraine’s future is the U.S.” “She is the architect of America’s influence in Ukraine.” Nuland says there at the “YES” meeting, “We had a significant impact on the battlefield.” But the U.S. regime blames Russia for that war.

Whereas U.S. propaganda still treats the matter as if Russia is what threatens Ukraine, that’s not generally the case in the propaganda by other governments. Even UK propaganda now commonly acknowledges that a more overtly fascist (even nazi)  takeover of Ukraine’s Government is what mainly threatens the people of Ukraine. The U.S. regime, and its massively deceived population, are being increasingly isolated internationally; and, so, the U.S. Government increasingly stands out as the world’s leader of fascism, and even as the leader of fascism’s racist form (which is nazism). But, still, what continues to be effectively prohibited throughout the U.S. and its vassal nations, is public acknowledgment that the U.S. Government perpetrated a coup in Ukraine that overthrew Ukraine’s Government in February 2014 and that replaced it with a nazi anti-Russian regime and thereby started the current ‘Cold War’, which is much hotter than the U.S. side acknowledges, or allows the public to know.

Gordon Hahn’s restriction of blame for the coup only to native Ukrainian nazis doesn’t fit the evidence, because there clearly is leadership of Ukraine’s nazis by the U.S. regime. Furthermore, the U.S. regime and its Ukrainian client-state are the only two nations at the U.N. who vote (and repeatedly) to back fascism, nazism and Holocaust-denial. The anti-Russia nazis took over America’s Government, which has taken over Ukraine’s. All of this goes back to the key U.S. decision, which was made on 24 February 1990.

—————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

Originally posted at strategic-culture.org "

***

Ukrainan äärioikeisto järjesti verilöylyn Maidanin aukiolla Kiovassa 2014 ja vieritti syyn venäjämieliselle hallitukselle. Tapahtuman seurauksena maa ajautui sisällissotaan ja lopulta venäjä hyökkäsi Ukrainaan.

Vain harva länsimedia kertoi totuuden äärioikeiston roolista Ukrainan sisäiseen hajaannukseen ja vallankaappaukseen eikä Suomen valtamediaa ole siinä joukossa. Samalla Suomen mediassa korostettiin Venäjän osuutta tapahtumiin jotka johtivat nykyiseen katastrofiin ilman minkäänlaisia todisteita. Tämä valheellinen narratiivi on nyt lopullisesti osoitettu pelkäksi halvaksi propagandaksi jonka seurauksia edelleen maksetaan turhina uhreina ja jota valhetta edelleen toistetaan sokeasti valtaeliitin toimesta.

https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/buried-trial-verdict-confirms-false-flag-maidan-massacre-in-ukraine-2024

Buried trial verdict confirms false-flag Maidan massacre in Ukraine

Ukrainian-Canadian political scientist and professor Ivan Katchanovski on the hidden origins of the Russia-Ukraine war

Ivan Katchanovski / February 20, 2024

A nearly one-million-word verdict from Ukraine’s Maidan massacre trial has recently confirmed that many Maidan activists were shot not by members of Ukraine’s Berkut special police force or other law enforcement personnel but by snipers in the far-right-controlled Hotel Ukraina and other Maidan-controlled locations a decade ago today. The verdict, handed down on October 18, 2023, states specifically that this hotel was controlled by Maidan activists and that an armed, far-right-linked Maidan group was in the hotel and fired from it. It also confirms that there was no Russian involvement in the massacre and that no massacre orders were issued by then President Viktor Yanukovych or his ministers. The verdict concludes that the Euromaidan was at the time of this massacre not a peaceful protest but a “rebellion” that involved the killing of Berkut and other police personnel.

This is an important official acknowledgement, not only because the violence represented the most significant case of mass murder, violent crime, and human rights violations in independent Ukraine to that point, but also because of the subsequent conflicts to which it has led or contributed. Notably, the massacre precipitated the violent overthrow of Yanukovych and his government, who were falsely blamed for carrying it out. It then spiralled into the Russian annexation of Crimea, the subsequent civil war and Russian interventions in the Donbas, and the conflicts between Ukraine and Russia, and between Russia and the Western powers, which Russia dramatically escalated with its illegal invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

There has been, however, a blackout of the verdict’s confirmation of the Maidan snipers in the Ukrainian media and, with a few notable exceptions, the Western mainstream media. Moreover, in an op-ed piece in The Bulwark, an online neoconservative magazine, author Cathy Young misrepresented the verdict, falsely claiming that it had found the Berkut police responsible for the deaths of 40 of the 48 protesters killed. Young also denied and openly whitewashed the existence of Maidan snipers and the far-right’s involvement in the Maidan massacre, labelling it a “conspiracy theory” despite clear and overwhelming evidence to the contrary in the verdict, the trial, and the investigation, as well as in academic studies of the event. Such deliberate omission and misrepresentation has been perpetrated in spite of the fact that the verdict’s Ukrainian text, as well as automatic English translation of the relevant excerpts, are publicly available, and in spite viral tweets describing and quoting from it.

The verdict by the Ukrainian Sviatoshyn District Court in Kyiv, along with the findings of the investigation by the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office (GPU), comprise a de facto official admission—on the part of Ukraine’s justice system no less, which cannot be called independent —that on February 20, 2014, at least 10 of the 48 Maidan activists killed, and 115 of the 172 wounded, were shot not by Berkut or other law enforcement personnel firing from government-controlled areas but by Maidan snipers operating in Maidan-controlled locations. The government investigation admitted that one dead protester and 77 wounded Maidan activists were not shot from Berkut-controlled sectors, and therefore did not charge anyone for those crimes. Of course, it stands to reason that if these activists were not shot by government personnel, they must have been shot by the Maidan snipers.

The verdict, issued by the Kyiv court shortly before the tenth anniversary of the Euromaidan, shows that the Maidan massacre narrative that has been propagated by governments, the mainstream media, and a variety of info-warriors in the West and in Ukraine is false. The proponents of this narrative have called the Maidan a peaceful protest and presented the massacre of the Maidan protesters as a crime perpetrated by government snipers on the orders of Yanukovych and his government. The prosecution, the victims’ lawyers, the New York Times and other mainstream media (with some notable exceptions), Wikipedia, self-proclaimed experts, and info-warriors denied the presence of snipers in the Hotel Ukraina and other Maidan-controlled buildings, the shooting of Maidan protesters by these snipers, and the far-right’s involvement in this mass killing, and claimed instead that such ideas comprise a “conspiracy theory” and “Russian disinformation.” The exceptions included reports by ARD, BBC, The Nation, Jacobin, Court House News, Ekathimerini (Greece), Jyllands-Posten (Denmark), Weltwoche (Switzerland), Il Fatto Quotidiano (Italy), and El Nacional (Spain)—in addition to Canadian Dimension, which has published some of my other writing on this subject.

Massacre of activists and shooting of journalists by snipers in the Hotel Ukraina

The verdict states that “based, even only on” 19 trial testimonies about the shooting from this hotel, including testimonies by victims who stated that they were wounded “from the area of the ‘Ukraine hotel’” and “objective data on gunshot wounds from the side of the hotel” of one killed and one wounded protester there was enough data to make “a categorical conclusion that on the morning of February 20, 2014, persons with weapons, from which the shots were fired, were in the premises of the Hotel Ukraina.” The trial decision specifies that nine Maidan protesters were killed and 23 wounded by “unknown persons” who were not “law enforcement officers,” and that there exists a lack of evidence for the involvement of the Berkut police (five of whom were charged for the crimes) in these killings and woundings. The decision also states explicitly that at least six specific protesters were killed and many others wounded by shots fired from the Hotel Ukraina and other Maidan-controlled locations, and that this was “the territory that was not controlled by law enforcement agencies at that time.”

This means that the victims were instead shot by snipers firing from Maidan-controlled locations, since the verdict confirms the findings of existing academic studies and the government investigation, specifying that Russian agents, whose presence in Ukraine was investigated and tracked, “did not have any participation” in the massacre. In the verdict, the trial judges and jury stated explicitly that during the massacre of the protesters, the Hotel Ukraina was “controlled by the activists,” that the Maidan activists in the hotel were armed with hunting rifles and a Kalashnikov-type assault rifle, that these activists shot from the hotel specifically targeting a BBC TV crew, and that at least three Maidan activists were deliberately killed by shots fired from the hotel.

The verdict confirms that a former member of the Ukrainian parliament, who is also a far-right activist, was filmed by a French TV crew in the Hotel Ukraina as he “provide[d] passage for activists” who were holding firearms that looked like “a Kalashnikov assault rifle and a hunting rifle.” A statement by the far-right Svoboda party asserts that it took control of the Hotel Ukraina, while videos and testimony by the head of the Maidan group guarding the hotel before, during, and after the massacre, as well as testimony by the hotel staff, indicate that this far-right group controlled and defended the hotel. Videos and trial testimony by Spilno TV, a pro-Maidan Ukrainian streaming group, show that a far-right-linked group of Maidan snipers was on the upper floors of the hotel and shot at the protesters.

The verdict confirms that a BBC TV crew was targeted by a Maidan sniper firing from the “activist-controlled” Hotel Ukraina. Screen grab from Video C/YouTube.

The verdict states that a BBC video “captures the shelling from the side of the Ukraina Hotel building of the camera crew of BBC journalists (a single shot is heard) … and in the premises of the Ukraina Hotel, an activist is recorded with … [a] pistol-type firearm.” The decision by the judges and jury evaluated this video “as documented data from the activist-controlled building of the Ukraina Hotel in Kyiv about the targeted use by the activists of objects that, by their external features, are clearly similar to firearms, weapons of the type of hunting weapons.” The Ukrainian government investigation revealed that a deputy of the far-right Svoboda party was living in a Hotel Ukraina room from which the BBC crew was shot. ICTV had filmed from the massacre site on the ground snipers in the same hotel room shooting Maidan protesters in the back. A Maidan activist testified at the trial that following this shooting, protesters told him that these were “our snipers.”

According to the verdict, a gunshot from the Hotel Ukraina hit a tree behind a group of Maidan activists, and two activists were killed and one wounded by shots fired from the hotel. An edited Belgian TV video of this massacre, and the luring of two Maidan activists to the site where they would be murdered, was presented by major TV networks in the Western countries and Ukraine as a massacre committed by government snipers or Berkut police.

The verdict confirms the shooting of Maidan activists from the “activist-controlled” Hotel Ukraina. Screen grab from Video C/YouTube.

The verdict notes that the victim, “who was also in the mentioned group of activists,” “was wounded in the back from the hotel,” as he himself testified, and that another victim from the same group was fatally wounded “from the upper floors of the ‘Ukraine’ hotel.” It specifies further that “within the scope of this court proceeding, data on the involvement of law enforcement officers in such an injury to the victim, and even more so the accused, have not been established” and that “the gunshot wound was inflicted on PERSON_1852 [a man named Volodymyr Zherebnyi] from the direction of the ‘Ukraine’ hotel, that is, from the territory that was not controlled by law enforcement agencies at that time.” As the verdict states, “this shot was aimed at a crowd of people.”

The verdict also states that “fatal gunshot wounds to the body (chest and abdomen) were received by PERSON_1770 [Oleh Ushnevych] from the side of the hotel ‘INFORMATION_161’ [the Hotel Ukraina] and the area in front of it, which were not under the control of law enforcement agencies, and hence the involvement of the accused and RSP [Berkut special company] fighters in them, and as a result, the victim’s death, is excluded” (because the verdict claimed, bizarrely, that he was also then wounded in the leg by a Berkut officer, Ushnevych was not included in a list of slain protesters whose killings showed no evidence of involvement by the Berkut or other government forces).

The verdict confirms the killing of Volodymyr Zherebnyi and the wounding of Volodymyr Venchak, on the ground near Zherebnyi, from the Hotel Ukraina. Screen grab from Video C/YouTube.

Massacre of protesters and police, and shooting at German journalists by snipers in Maidan-controlled areas

The verdict also confirms that the Maidan massacre on February 20 began with the killing of three and wounding of 39 Berkut and Internal Troops officers (the latter was a uniformed gendarmerie under the control of Ukraine’s Internal Affairs Ministry), none of whom were armed. It refers to those who shot these officers as “unknown persons,” but the presiding judge admitted in an interview with Ukrainian media that the verdict is referring to members of the far-right-linked group of Maidan snipers. A few of the snipers also admitted, in Ukrainian media interviews, to shooting and killing the police officers from the Music Conservatory building.

The verdict specifies that there is evidence for the killings of at least three other Maidan activists from Maidan-controlled locations, while involvement by the Berkut and other law enforcement has either been ruled out or remains unproven. It cites evidence for the killing of one activist from the Music Conservatory, which was the headquarters of a group of Maidan snipers linked to the Right Sector, a Ukrainian far-right organization, and which included Svoboda activists. The trial decision confirms that the Music Conservatory was then occupied by Maidan “activists” led by the commander of this far-right group, who subsequently became a member of the Ukrainian parliament following the Maidan events. The verdict also indicates that two rooms in the Hotel Ukraina were shot at from the Music Conservatory and the neighbouring Central Post Office, but omits the facts that these rooms were occupied by German ARD TV journalists and that the Central Post Office was then serving as the Right Sector headquarters.

The trial decision also cites evidence that Ihor Kostenko was killed neither by the Berkut nor other law enforcement agents, but from a Maidan-controlled location. The decision notes that Kostenko, “a few seconds before his fatal wound, together with other bystanders, watched the windows of the Hotel Ukraina … and this attention, united by joint observation of the source of possible danger, did not stop on the part of all observers even after the injury of PERSON_1708 [Kostenko], when he was already lying on the asphalt.”

Besides being a Maidan activist, Kostenko was a Wikipedia author and editor. It is revealing that Wikipedia deliberately omits that he was killed by sniper fire from the Maidan-controlled area. It is hardly coincidental that the same Wikipedia editors who deliberately and literally misrepresent and whitewash the false-flag Maidan massacre also systematically misrepresent and whitewash the far-right in Ukraine and its involvement in the Holocaust. These editors include Wise2, also known as Prohoshka, who has also propagated “scientific anti-Semitism” and whitewashed the involvement of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in the 1941 Lviv pogroms during the Nazi occupation of Ukraine, justifying it on the basis of “Jewish collaboration.” Another Wikipedia editor, who uses the handle My Very Best Wishes, brazenly whitewashed the fact that monuments in Canada to the Galicia Division and Roman Shukhevych are in fact commemorating a division of the Waffen-SS and a Nazi collaborator. A scholarly article by a noted historian at the University of Ottawa also listed My Very Best Wishes as one of the editors involved in an intentional distortion of Wikipedia’s history of the Holocaust in Poland. This editor also recently wrote, falsely, on Wikipedia’s biographical page on Elon Musk about the latter’s supposed “involvement in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.” Various publications and websites have identified Wise2/Prohoshka as a far-right Svoboda activist named Svyatoslav Gut, and My Very Best Wishes as Andrei Lomize, a biophysics researcher at the University of Michigan.

The verdict also confirms that the first three activists killed were shot with pellets of a type used for hunting, at a time before the Berkut unit, whose five members were falsely charged with the killings, had even been deployed. It explicitly states that at least one of these activists was shot from the Maidan-controlled area by one of the Maidan shooters using a hunting rifle.

Memorial to protesters killed in the Maidan massacre in Kyiv. Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

Fabricated evidence against Berkut, no massacre order by Yanukovych

The trial verdict also confirms the absence of evidence for any order by Yanukovych or his government to massacre the Maidan protesters. This is a crucial official acknowledgment, since Yanukovych and his government were overthrown on the basis of accusations of having ordered the massacre. Joe Biden, then US vice-president, wrote in his memoirs that during the Maidan massacre, he called Yanukovych and told him that “it was over; time for him to call off his gunmen and walk away,” that he “had lost the confidence of the Ukrainian people … and he was going to be judged harshly by history if he kept killing them.”

In addition to acquitting two Berkut policemen for killing and wounding the Maidan activists, the verdict states that all five accused Berkut officers had been blamed, baselessly, for killing 13 Maidan protesters and wounding another 29. This is further evidence of trumped-up, politically motivated charges.

The decision to convict in absentia three Berkut officers, who had been transferred by Zelensky to the Donbas separatists in a 2019 exchange, is a political one. The charging of these officers for the murders of 31 of 48 Maidan protesters killed, and the attempted murders of another 44 of 80, was based on a single, fabricated forensic examination, not to mention posited on the notion of collective responsibility. This single forensic examination of bullets, undertaken five years after the massacre, reversed the results of some 40 earlier forensic bullet examinations, including a computer-based examination which showed that bullets taken from the bodies of killed Maidan protesters did not match the Berkut Kalashnikov rifles. The recent Maidan massacre trial verdict has dismissed the single bullet match from the fraudulent forensic examination, supposed to have linked a convicted Berkut officer to a killed protester, as it was based on a bullet fragment that had appeared on the scene without any trace of corresponding pieces from the same bullet—a sign of evidence tampering. Nonetheless, on the basis of such forensic “evidence,” the decision to convict the Berkut officers had been taken.

The three Berkut policemen were convicted in absentia based on this single, fabricated forensic examination as well as on their presumed collective responsibility for the murders of 31 protesters and the attempted murders of 44 more. On the same basis and contrary to all other evidence, a Berkut commander was also convicted of the manslaughter of four protesters and the wounding of another eight, for supposedly having ordered his officers to fire indiscriminately during the evacuation of internal troops by the Berkut company, and its subsequent retreat after one Berkut officer was killed and another wounded. The decision attributes the killings and woundings of most of these protesters to Berkut or unidentified police officers, even in cases without bullet-to-gun matches, simply because these protesters were killed in the same group and in approximately the same time and place. This was done even though the trial verdict convicting the officers admitted that people in the same groups of protesters had been killed and wounded, at about the same time and place, not by law enforcement but by “unknown persons” located in the Hotel Ukraina and other Maidan-controlled buildings and areas.

The fabricated forensic bullet examination also contradicts synchronized videos which clearly show that Berkut officers had not been shooting at the specific times when almost all of the Maidan activists were killed. It also contradicts on-site investigations by government ballistics experts, pointing to bullet trajectories originating from Maidan-controlled areas; as well as the results of forensic medical examinations tracking bullet trajectories based on the victims’ wounds as seen from the top, back, and side; and the testimonies of the great majority of the wounded Maidan protesters, and of several hundred prosecution and defence witnesses and other witnesses, concerning snipers in the Hotel Ukraina and other Maidan-controlled locations. All this evidence demonstrates clearly that the Berkut policemen could not physically have shot these protesters. Indeed, these Berkut policemen were filmed shooting neither at the specific time the protesters were killed nor in their specific direction. Bullet-hole locations and wound trajectories showed that the protesters had been shot not at low angles, which would have been consistent with the Berkut barricade positions on the ground in front of the protesters, but at steep angles and from areas to the side or the rear, corresponding to the Maidan-controlled buildings or other buildings in Maidan-controlled areas.

Synchronized videos reveal that the single match in this forensic examination—a bullet taken from the body of a wounded Maidan activist linked to the Kalashnikov of a convicted Berkut member—was clearly fabricated, since the convicted policeman was filmed not shooting at the time when this protester (who himself testified that he had been shot from the Hotel Ukraina) was wounded. A government forensic expert determined that the protester had been shot from the top of the hotel, based both on the position of bullet holes in the chair he had been using to shield himself from the Hotel Ukraina snipers, and on the steep angle of his wound trajectory. Synchronized video shows that at the very time of his wounding while on a pedestrian bridge, protesters hiding beneath the bridge were pointing toward snipers in the Hotel Ukraina as the latter shot at protesters on the bridge.

Evidence that the conviction of a Berkut officer was based on a fraudulent forensic match between the officer’s AKM rifle and the bullet that struck a protester. Screen grab from Video D/YouTube.

The difference between those times when Berkut officers were shooting and those when specific protesters were killed has also been confirmed by video synchronizations produced by an anonymous group funded by the prosecutor general’s office (GPU), with the involvement of a propaganda outlet of Maidan politicians accused of organizing the massacre, as well as by Carnegie Mellon University researchers working on the model produced by SITU, a New York City-based research group. But during the trial, these synchronized videos—depicting the times when Berkut officers were shooting and those when protesters were killed—were shown either separately or as a not-easily-discernable combination of 12 videos on a single screen, thereby obscuring the fact that these events took place at different times. In a few cases where gunfire by Berkut officers coincided with killings of protesters, these moments also coincided with the sound of other gunshots, i.e., by the Maidan snipers. But the verdict from the Berkut officers’ trial used this deliberately misleading compilation, devised by an anonymous group linked to accused organizers of the massacre, as a proof of the Berkut officers’ guilt, even though, in fact, it constitutes clear proof that the officers were not guilty in the absolute majority of these cases (although in a few cases, shootings of protesters by Berkut officers engaged in a crossfire with Maidan snipers, or as result of ricochets, cannot be excluded).

The recent Maidan trial verdict has also revealed that the Maidan lawyers, in the end, did not present the SITU 3D model during the recent trial, even after wasting court and jury time by introducing it. This confirms again the fact that the model was unreliable, having been based on a primitive fraud in which the victims’ wound locations, which in fact accorded with the direction of gunfire from Maidan-controlled buildings, were altered to accord instead with Berkut positions on the ground. The SITU model, which was produced for the trial by a New York architectural research group by order of the Maidan lawyers at a cost of nearly $100,000, was used to propagate disinformation in articles published in the New York Times and other Western and Ukrainian media. This 3D model, like the salaries of the Maidan lawyers and even prosecutors’ visits, was paid for by billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundations in Ukraine.

The official admission that the great majority of Maidan activists were not killed or wounded by government forces is evidence, in and of itself, to suggest that the majority of the protesters shot were instead killed or wounded by Maidan snipers, since they were shot at the same time and in the same place. To falsely blame the Berkut for these killings is easy, because murdered people cannot testify. Of those wounded, however, the overwhelming majority testified to witnessing snipers and/or being shot by snipers operating in the Maidan-controlled buildings and areas.

The verdict means that a decade since this crucial massacre—one of the most documented cases of mass killing in history—nobody is in prison for the murders and attempted murders of Maidan activists and police officers, or for shooting at foreign journalists. The silence on the part of those who deny the false-flag Maidan massacre, who call these claims a “conspiracy theory” and thereby whitewash the mass murderers of the far-right, is both deafening and revealing.

Media blackout and whitewash

All Ukrainian media reports omitted the verdict’s confirmations of the false-flag massacre. The Western media (with a few notable exceptions) also omitted this information. Moreover, writer Cathy Young, mentioned above, deliberately misrepresented the Maidan massacre trial verdict, branding the revelations about Maidan snipers operating in the Hotel Ukraina a “conspiracy theory” and claiming, falsely, that the verdict did not indicate that Maidan protesters were shot from the hotel or other Maidan-controlled locations, and that it did not disprove involvement by Russian snipers. Young has further falsely claimed that the Hotel Ukraina was not controlled by the Maidan activists and has propagated instead an actual conspiracy theory that police in the hotel could have shot the protesters. Her claims in these regards are contrary not only to the verdict but also to a statement from the far-right Svoboda party about taking control of the hotel prior to the massacre, to videos of Maidan snipers shooting at protesters and a BBC crew from the hotel, to testimonies both by hotel staff and by the Maidan unit commander in charge of guarding the hotel, and to other evidence presented in scholarly publications.

Oligarchic and far-right leaders and organizations, including neo-Nazis, who were involved in this false-flag mass killing to seize power in Ukraine, were hailed by Western and Ukrainian politicians, media, and even many academics as heroes and defenders of democracy. They were invited for government visits and talks at universities, including in Canada. Government leaders, journalists, investigators, Maidan lawyers, NGO activists, partisan researchers, and info-warriors who branded the reports of the Maidan snipers and their false-flag massacre a conspiracy theory and propaganda were hailed as defenders of justice and human rights, and given grants by Western governments, foundations, and universities, including even a Nobel Peace Prize.

It is doubtful that any of the above parties will suffer any consequences for such fraud and whitewashing of mass murderers, in particular those of the far-right. Ukraine and Ukrainians continue to suffer the consequences of this massacre, which has spiralled into major conflicts, including the ongoing and devastating Russia-Ukraine war, which is also a dangerous, unwinnable proxy war undertaken by the West against Russia.

Ivan Katchanovski teaches at the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa. He is the author of Cleft Countries: Regional Political Divisions and Cultures in Post-Soviet Ukraine and Moldova and co-author of Historical Dictionary of Ukraine (Second Edition) and The Paradox of American Unionism: Why Americans Like Unions More Than Canadians Do, But Join Much Less.

Thousands of protesters fill Independence Square in Kyiv, Ukraine during the Maidan Revolution, February 19, 2014. Photo by Sergi Mykhalchuk/Flickr.

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Juttuun on liitetty feikkikojaus siitä, ETTÄ UKRAINALAINEN OIKEUS OLISI VAHVISTANUT, että mielenosoittajia ammuttiin "oikean sektorin" hallitseman hotellin huoneistosta. "Oikeuden vahvistus" on peräisin venäläiseltä TV-kanavalta. Jutun tapahtumaväitteitä ei ole todistettu vääriksi.

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YLE väittää venäjän ampuneen lastensairaalaan Kh-101-ohjuksen, joka on perusfunktioltaan keskimatkan taktinen ristely(-din)ohjus (-102), painaa noi 3 tonnia ja jonka katomatka 3500 km, lentokneesta ammuttuna huomattavasti enemmäkin vielä tukikohdasta laskien. Videoissa esiinrtyvät pötkylät eivät pole näitä, vaan ne ovat torjuntaohjuksia.

https://yle.fi/a/74-20098829

https://fakty.com.ua/ru/ukraine/20240708-mozhut-litaty-na-vidstani-do-55-tys-km-okupanty-obstrilyaly-kyyiv-raketamy-h101/

Что известно о ракетах Х-101, которыми Россия обстреливает Украину

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https://original.antiwar.com/justin/2015/03/05/isis-in-ukraine/

ISIS in Ukraine

Kiev and the jihadists: a dark alliance

While we’re fighting the Islamic State, a.k.a. ISIS, in Iraq and Syria, and American officials tout the alleged danger of an attack on the US homeland, in Ukraine Washington and the Caliphate are fighting on the same side. A remarkable series of articles by Marcin Mamon in The Intercept has documented an aspect of the Ukraine conflict that no one else has paid any attention to: the role played by the "Dudayev Battalion," a fighting force of radical Islamists consisting of Chechens, but also including fighters from throughout the Caucasus as well as some Ukrainains.

The keys to Ukranie’s Islamist underground were handed to Mamon by a contact in Istanbul, "Khalid," who commands the ISIS branch there. "Our brothers are there," he told Mamon, and the reporter traveled to Ukraine where he was put in touch with a contact named Ruslan, who led him to Munayev’s clandestine camp.

Named after the first "president" of breakaway Chechnya, Dzhokhar Dudaev, the Dudayev Battalion was commanded by Isa Munayev, recently killed in a east Ukraine. Imbued with a fanatical hatred of the Russians, who are backing the rebels in the east, Munayev’s men also feel they are paying back a debt, since the ultra-nationalist Right Sector battalions now fighting for Kiev apparently helped the Chechens in the past. Right Sector is an openly neo-fascist paramilitary group which provided much of the muscle that made the coup against Viktor Yanukovych, former Ukrainian president, possible. Organized into various battalions, including the notorious Azov Brigade, they idolize the World War II collaborators with the Nazis, who fought Soviet troops: the ultra-nationalists have been accused of carrying out atrocities in the Donbass, as well as terrorizing their political opponents on the home front. According to Mamon, they also have been involved in fighting the Russians in far-off Chechnya, where former Right Sector bigwig Oleksandr Muzychko fought alongside Munayev and "the brothers" against the Russians. As Ruslan told Mamon:

"I am here today because my brother, Isa, called us and said, ‘It’s time to repay your debt. There was a time when the brothers from Ukraine came [to Chechnya] and fought against the common enemy, the aggressor, the occupier."

Aside from this solemn warrior ethic, another likely reason for ISIS support to Kiev is the access this gives the terrorists to Western targets. As Mamon puts it:

"Ukraine is now becoming an important stop-off point for the brothers, like Ruslan. In Ukraine, you can buy a passport and a new identity. For $15,000, a fighter receives a new name and a legal document attesting to Ukrainian citizenship. Ukraine doesn’t belong to the European Union, but it’s an easy pathway for immigration to the West. Ukrainians have few difficulties obtaining visas to neighboring Poland, where they can work on construction sites and in restaurants, filling the gap left by the millions of Poles who have left in search of work in the United Kingdom and Germany."

We are told that ISIS is planning terrorist attacks in Europe, and security forces are busy rounding up suspects all across the continent – and yet here is this gaping hole in the West’s defenses, where "the brothers" are quietly infiltrating without much notice in the Western media. In cooperation with ultra-nationalist groups like Right Sector, which have also formed their semiautonomous battalions, the Islamists of Ukraine, brandishing Ukrainian passports, have opened a gateway to the West.

Demands that Washington start giving lethal aid to the Ukrainian regime are now part of the foreign policy debate in Washington, with the usual suspects urging the administration to open the weapons spigot. Yet the Ukrainians are saying they’re already getting lethal aid from countries they refuse to identify, according to Ukrainian national security council official Oleg Gladovsky:

"[The aid is coming from] places where we have no influence and where there’s no public uproar about it (which we ourselves have helped created in some places, unfortunately). It’s from these countries that we’re now receiving lethal aid."

So where is this aid coming from?

"In eastern Ukraine," writes Mamon, "the green flag of jihad flies over some of the private battalions’ bases." But how "private" are these fighting groups?

The tatterdemalion Ukrainian army, consisting of poorly-motivated and poorly-armed conscripts, is a poor match for the separatists, who are fighting on their home turf against an invader. The Kiev regime is dependent on these "private" armies to provide the backbone of its fighting force, and there appears to be an uneasy symbiotic relationship between the regular Ukrainian army and these volunteers, with a hands-off approach taken by Kiev to the latter. If the Ukrainian regime is now openly acknowledging getting aid from unnamed countries, it’s fair to ask: is the Dudayev Battalion getting direct aid from the same sources supplying Syria’s radical Islamist rebels with arms – Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and the Saudis?

As the US-funded-and –supported Syrian "moderate" rebels defect to ISIS in droves, the international jihadist network is extending its tentacles into Ukraine to take up the fight on behalf of their "brothers."

One of the key links between the Ukrainian ultra-nationalist factions and the Islamists was Oleksandr Muzychko, who fought alongside Chechen terrorist leader Shamil Basayev – the mastermind behind the Beslan school massacre – in the Chechen wars. Last year Muzychko was killed in a shoot-out with Ukrainian police, but before he went down he was the very visible public face of Ukraine’s ultra-nationalist movement.

In a video that went viral, Muzychko and a group of his fellow Right Sector stormtroopers entered the state prosecutor’s office in the city of Rivne, in northwestern Ukraine, and slapped the prosecutor around for not doing his job to Muzychko’s satisfaction. He also broke into a meeting of the Rivne city council, brandishing a gun, and declaring Right Sector would never disarm. While the authorities no doubt found Muzychko’s antics annoying, this sort of thing is "normal" in the new Ukraine, and it’s likely his involvement with the ISIS underground, rather than his public antics, brought down the ire of the authorities, who ambushed and shot him down on March 24 of last year. Was his involvement with the ISIS cell in Ukraine was becoming increasingly obvious, even to those in the West who had been content to look the other way?

That the Kiev authorities are working with the ISIS outpost is implied throughout Mamon’s piece: as Mamon made his way Munayev’s encampment in the company of Ruslan, they had no trouble at Ukrainian army checkpoints, where the opportunity to collect bribes was foregone and they were waved right through. Throughout Mamon’s piece we hear Munayev’s complaints of poverty: the Dudayev Battalion, we are told, must depend on criminal activities to finance their jihad. Yet one minor oligarch, named "Dima," hands them $20,000, and there is talk of selling black market amber to "buyers in the Persian Gulf, including wealthy sheikhs" – perhaps the same wealthy donors who have so generously funded ISIS.

The links between the Kiev regime and the ISIS enclave in Ukraine are numerous, and only half-hidden. When Mamon arrived at Munayev’s camp, he was met by an armored car that, we are told, was donated by Ihor Kolomoisky, one of the richest men in Ukraine who was recently appointed governor of Dnipropetrovsk. Kolomoisky, despite his Jewish heritage, has no compunctions about allying himself with openly anti-Semitic groups like Right Sector, whose battalions he has financed: like the ISIS-affiliated jihadists he gifted with an armored car, all he cares about is the fight against Vladimir Putin, whom he despises.

Another indication of the ISIS-Kiev alliance is the escape of Adam Osmayev, deputy commander of the Dudayev Battalion, from a Ukrainian jail, where he had been serving a sentence for plotting Putin’s assassination. After the coup in Kiev, Munayev and his fellow fighters broke Osmayev out of prison: when they were confronted by Ukrainian police at a checkpoint, they were mysteriously allowed to pass. As Mamon reports:

"After a dramatic standoff, the Ukrainians allowed the Chechens to go free. (There is no way to confirm Ruslan’s account, but in the fall of 2014, the Odessa court suddenly declared that Osmayev had fulfilled enough of his sentence and had been set free). Osmayev and Munayev came back to Kiev, and the Dudayev battalion was created."

"From time to time," writes Mamon, "Munayev met with representatives of the Ukrainian Security Service, known as the SBU."

The Dudayev Battalion numbers around 500 fighters, but there are also other jihadist brigades in Ukraine, organized into "the Sheikh Mansour battalion, which broke off from the Dudayev battalion" and "is based close to Mariupol, in the southeast of Ukraine," as well as two other groups composed of Crimean Tatars, each consisting of about 500 jihadists.

As US aid flows into Ukraine, how much of it will trickle down to these allies of ISIS – and to what future use will it be put? If John McCain and Lindsey Graham have their way, US arms will soon find their way into the hands of these terrorists, whose jihad against the Russians is bound to turn westward and strike at the capitals of Europe.

This is blowback with a vengeance: we are creating our own enemies, and giving them the weapons to harm us, even as we claim the need for universal surveillance in order to fight them. The mad scientists formulating US foreign policy are raising an army of Frankenstein monsters – who are sure to come after their deluded creators.

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NOTES IN THE MARGIN

You can check out my Twitter feed by going here. But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.

I’ve written a couple of books, which you might want to peruse. Here is the link for buying the second edition of my 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, with an Introduction by Prof. George W. Carey, a Foreword by Patrick J. Buchanan, and critical essays by Scott Richert and David Gordon (ISI Books, 2008).

You can buy An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), my biography of the great libertarian thinker, here. "

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