During the Revolution of Dignity, it was the Ukrainian law enforcement officers who killed the demonstrators on the orders of the then authorities and under the influence of Russia.
This was reported by the head of the Maidan affairs department of the Prosecutor Generalʼs Office Oleksiy Donsky, as Ukrinform reports from the briefing.
"If many would like to hear that there were Russian snipers, Russian law enforcement officers on the Maidan, then there is no such thing. This is a beautiful version that does not have real facts under it," he emphasized.
At the same time, Russia had a significant influence on the decision-making of the Ukrainian authorities led by fugitive President Viktor Yanukovych, which gave instructions to Ukrainian law enforcement officers regarding the organization and execution of the murders of protesters on February 18-20, 2014.
As for the Maidan cases, the investigation also revealed that Russiaʼs hybrid aggression began in November 2013, namely on November 30, when students were beaten in Kyiv. The goal is to distract the then government from European integration, that is, the Revolution of Dignity became a reaction to hybrid Russian aggression. New evidence in the case was discovered after the start of a full-scale war.
According to Oleksiy Donskyi, since February 2022, "certain persons" who were involved in the beating of students on November 30 and fled abroad after the Maidan events, began to show themselves, thanks to which the Prosecutor Generalʼs Office saw them "in a new picture."
"We noticed that the goal was not so much to disperse as to brutally beat. And some of those involved knew in advance that it would happen," he added.
After the newly discovered evidence, the former Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Volodymyr Sivkovich was charged with treason in the interests of the Russian Federation. The investigation believes that on the night of November 29-30, 2013, at the behest of Sivkovych, the head of the main department of the capital police gave the order to disperse the "Student Maidan".
However, the "Maidan cases" department of the Prosecutor Generalʼs Office is dissatisfied with the number of court verdicts, as the murders on January 22 and partially on February 18 remain unsolved due to the lengthy trial of the cases. However, it is worth noting that in 2023 there were as many verdicts in "Maidan cases" as in the four previous years.
As Oleksiy Donskyi explained, the difficulties in solving these crimes lie, in particular, in the fact that their initial documentation took place before the change of power, so the first investigative actions were not carried out as they should have been.
There is another problem with the processing of Maidan cases — an imbalance between the number of indictments sent to court and the number of verdicts.
"We cannot ask the court to prioritize ʼMaidan casesʼ in particular... the method of determining priority is opaque. The only possibility to eliminate this is legislative changes, which should be universal," Donskyi summarized.
- On November 21, 2013, Euromaidan began in Ukraine, after Viktor Yanukovych stopped preparations for signing the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU. The protests turned into anti-government protests and gained a larger scale after the police dispersed the students on November 30. In February 2014, the shooting of demonstrators led to the overthrow of the Yanukovych regime.
- The Euromaidan events were called the Revolution of Dignity, and the dead were called the Heavenly Hundred. According to the prosecutorʼs office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, 107 people died during the revolution. Another 2.5 thousand people were injured.