WHITE BOOK
ON VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE RULE OF LAW
IN UKRAINE
(APRIL 2014 — MID-JUNE 2014)
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation
Moscow June 2014
Formatted from WHITE BOOK pdf available here
Table of Contents
Introduction …………………………5
Violations of human rights and the principle of the rule of law
in the course of the so-called ‘anti-terrorist operation’ …………………7
Violations of the right to freedom of thought and belief, including political beliefs; the intimidation and kidnapping
of political opponents …………..29
Restrictions on freedom of the media
and journalist activities………… 41
Tragedy in Odessa ………………..51
The Snipers’ Case: a mock investigation,
violation of the right to the presumption of innocence
and of the right to a fair trial…….61
Ethnic and linguistic discrimination, xenophobia
and aggressive nationalism. Instigation of racism …………………………….67
Manifestations of religious intolerance, including threats
to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate ……….74
Conclusion …………………………79
Introduction
After the publication of the first edition of the ‘White Book’ POSTED which summarized multiple factual violations of human rights and of the rule of law in Ukraine from the end of November 2013 to the end of March 2014, the political crisis in that country has gained momentum. A lack of willingness from the de-facto Kiev authorities to respect the legitimate interests of south-eastern Ukraine, and their tendency to speak with local people who come up with legitimate demands from a position of force, resulted in the further escalation of the intra-Ukrainian crisis. Carrying out a so-called ‘anti-terrorist operation’ — a retaliatory operation in fact — announced by the self-proclaimed Kiev authorities was followed by a dramatic increase in the number of serious human rights violations. As well as ‘post-Maidan’ human rights violations in Ukraine (violating the right to freedom of expression and restrictions on the freedom of the media, manifestations of extremist, ultra-nationalist and neo- Nazi sentiments, religious intolerance and xenophobia, the intimidation of political opponents, their ‘cleansings’ and arrests, repressions and physical violence), there are new problems such as the violation of the norms of international humanitarian law by Kiev, reflected by the use of heavy weaponry and military aircraft during the retaliatory operation in the east of the country that resulted in a large number of victims among civilians, the problem of internally-displaced persons and refugees, including children, and a difficult humanitarian situation in general.
We could not turn a blind eye to the horrible tragedy in Odessa on May 2 when, under the watch of local authorities, dozens of people were brutally murdered by Ukrainian ultra-nationalist and neo-Nazi militants. The only guilt these people had was that they had different political views on the future of Ukraine. Still, none of the people who committed this insidious crime has been punished yet.
We would like to hope that the investigation initiated by the Kiev authorities would not be protracted or politicized as happened with the so-called ‘sniper case’, when destructive fire in Kiev in February 2014 resulted in the same unidentified snipers killing both protesters and law-enforcement officers.
All these issues were reflected in the second edition of the ‘White Book’ on Ukraine. However, we did not set a difficult task of reflecting all the tragic events that happened in this country. Nevertheless, the facts cited are enough to come to the discouraging conclusion that Ukraine has faced the gravest human rights challenges to which Ukrainian authorities cannot yet provide adequate responses.
This study covers the period from April to mid-June 2014. Just as in the first edition, the results of a thorough monitoring of Ukrainian, Russian and some Western media; remarks and statements made by the Kiev authorities and their supporters; numerous evidences, including those posted on the Internet, as well as the materials collected by the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, the Information Group of Crimes against the Person and the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission, were used as a factual basis.
Excerpts from the fundamental international instruments on human rights, whose universal provisions and norms have been violated in Ukraine during the indicated period, precede each section of this study.
As before, we believe that the main task of the second edition of the ‘White Book’ is to focus attention on the facts of the international community and key international human rights bodies, as well as relevant non-governmental organizations which have not yet shown proper and impartial attention to these issues.
Violations of human rights and the principle of the rule of law
in the course of the so-called ‘anti-terrorist operation’
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
Article 3. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
Article 5. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Article 7. All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.
Article 9. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
Article 13. 1. Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. 2. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
Article 14. 1. Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution. 2. This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966)
Article 6. Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.
Article 7. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Article 20. Any propaganda for war should be prohibited by law.
Article 26. All persons are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to the equal protection of the law.
Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984)
Article 1. For the purposes of this Convention, the term ‘torture’ means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.
Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1950)
Article 2. Everyone’s right to life shall be protected by law. No one shall be deprived of his life intentionally save in the execution of a sentence of a court following his conviction of a crime for which this penalty is provided by law.
Article 3. No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Article 5. Right to liberty and security
Everyone has the right to liberty and security of person. No one shall be deprived of his liberty save in the following cases and in accordance with a procedure prescribed by law:
the lawful detention of a person after conviction by a competent court;
the lawful arrest or detention of a person for non-compliance with the lawful order of a court or in order to secure the fulfillment of any obligation prescribed by law;
the lawful arrest or detention of a person effected for the purpose of bringing him before the competent legal authority on reasonable suspicion of having committed an offence or when it is reasonably considered necessary to prevent his committing an offence or fleeing after having done so;
the detention of a minor by lawful order for the purpose of educational supervision or his lawful detention for the purpose of bringing him before the competent legal authority;
the lawful detention of persons for the prevention of the spreading of infectious diseases, of persons of unsound mind, alcoholics or drug addicts or vagrants;
the lawful arrest or detention of a person to prevent his effecting an unauthorised entry into the country or of a person against whom action is being taken with a view to deportation or extradition.
Everyone who is arrested shall be informed promptly, in a language which he understands, of the reasons for his arrest and of any charge against him.
Everyone arrested or detained in accordance with the provisions of paragraph 1.c of this article shall be brought promptly before a judge or other officer authorised by law to exercise judicial power and shall be entitled to trial within a reasonable time or to release pending trial. Release may be conditioned by guarantees to appear for trial.
Everyone who is deprived of his liberty by arrest or detention shall be entitled to take proceedings by which the lawfulness of his detention shall be decided speedily by a court and his release ordered if the detention is not lawful.
Everyone who has been the victim of arrest or detention in contravention of the provisions of this article shall have an enforceable right to compensation.
Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts (Protocol II), 8 June 1977
Article 4. All persons who do not take a direct part or who have ceased to take part in hostilities are entitled to respect for their person, honour and convictions and religious practices. The following acts against the persons referred to are prohibited: violence to the life, health and physical or mental wellbeing of persons, cruel treatment, torture, corporal punishment, acts of terrorism, pillage, threats, outrages, humiliating and degrading treatment or threats to commit any of the foregoing acts, children shall be provided with the care and aid they require, and in particular education, including religious and moral education, living and reunion with their parents.
Article 13. The civilian population and individual civilians shall enjoy general protection against the dangers arising from military operations, the civilian population shall not be the object of attack.
Article 14. The starvation of civilians as a method of combat is prohibited. It is therefore prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless, for that purpose, objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works.
Starting from April 2014, the de facto authorities in Kiev that overthrew the legitimate and incumbent President, Viktor Yanukovych, following the coup d’état and the forceful seizure of power, began to use the phrase ‘anti-terrorist operation’ with regard to their actions in the Donetsk, Lugansk and Kharkov regions, thus preferring forceful repression of dissident Ukrainian citizens to political dialogue.
April 7, 2014. In response to the occupation of public institutions in the east of Ukraine and the declaration of sovereignty by the ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’, the acting President of Ukraine, A. Turchynov, declared the beginning of the “anti-terrorist operation” on the territory of the Donetsk, Lugansk and Kharkov regions.
At the same time, the self-declared Ukrainian authorities very soon faced the problem of shortages of ways and means for their forceful influence over the citizens of south-east Ukraine: law-enforcement agencies were destroyed and left dispirited by the new Kiev authorities themselves, while the combat capacities of the Ukrainian army raised big doubts. Under such conditions they relied mainly on the continuation of cooperation between the interim Ukrainian government and radical nationalists and neo-Nazis from the ‘‘Right Sector’’.
Moreover, the de facto authorities in Kiev legalized the process of engaging the former ‘Maidan Self-Defence’ participants into Ukraine’s law-enforcement agencies. For this purpose, in March 2014, Ukraine’s National Guard was created, incorporating representatives of the nationalist forces who had not been related to law enforcement authorities in the past.
One more method of the forceful suppression of protest sentiment in south-east Ukraine was the active engagement of foreign mercenaries from private military companies.
April 7, 2014. The arrival was observed of an aeroplane carrying approximately 150 foreign servicemen at Donetsk airport, presumably from the U.S. private military company ‘Greystone Limited’.
April 12, 2014. The “Right Sector” leader D. Yarosh encouraged, in his video message, all the structures of the “Right Sector” to mobilize and get ready to protect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.
April 13, 2014. The acting President of Ukraine, A. Turchynov, stated that the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine (NSDC) had decided to launch ‘a large-scale anti-terrorist operation with the involvement of the armed forces of the country’. It is illustrative that the decision was announced the day after the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Brennan, visited Kiev.
April 13, 2014. Ukraine’s acting Minister of Internal Affairs, Arsen Avakov, announced the creation of ‘a corps of special divisions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs on the basis of civilian components’. He stated on his Facebook page that ‘the Ministry of Internal Affairs is ready to engage more than 12,000 people all over the country to new special divisions and provide them with weapons and equipment and ensure their management by career officers’.
The decree to form a special battalion in the Lugansk region (‘Vostok’) was signed first; then similar units were created in Dnepropetrovsk (‘Dnepr’), Odessa (‘Shtorm’), and Nikolaev (‘Svyatoy Nikolay’). Special battalions formed in Kharkov were named ‘Kharkov’ and ‘Slobozhanshchyna’.
The specific character of such units is their improvised nature (battalions accept people who, for the most part, do not have law-enforcement experience, including the representatives of radical nationalist and neo-Nazi organizations: the former Euromaidan participants). Besides, financing of these units and management of their activity is carried out by the ‘governor-oligarchs’ appointed to the south- eastern regions by Kiev. Thus these formations are, in fact, ‘private’ units without any obligations to follow instructions and can neglect existing legislation.
April 13, 2014. Upon entry to Slavyansk (Donetsk region) the ‘Right Sector’ militants initiated an exchange of fire with the ‘People’s Militia of Donbass’ fighters. One person was killed and nine people were wounded.
April 14, 2014. The acting President of Ukraine, A. Turchynov, signed decree No. 405/2014 on the ‘implementation of the NSDC decision of April 13, 2014 ‘on urgent measures to address the terrorist threat and to preserve the territorial integrity of Ukraine’.
April 14, 2014. According to Kiev’s decision, fresh water supplies from Ukraine to the Republic of Crimea of the Russian Federation through the North Crimean Channel were cut to a third under a vague pretext (suggesting the supporting documents had been incorrectly completed). According to the First Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Crimea, Rustam Temirgaliev, the direct order to cut water supplies to Crimea was given by the Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration, Andriy Senchenko, who was appointed by the Verkhovna Rada.
April 14–15, 2014 (night). Unknown people set fire to the administration building in the village of Andreevka in the suburbs of Slavyansk. The building was completely burned down.
April 16, 2014. The Donetsk region saw clashes between locals and the armed forces sent by the Kiev regime to repress the dissidents:
In Mariupol, Ukrainian military men shot at locals who tried to enter the grounds of military unit 3057 from Ukraine’s internal forces. Three people were killed, thirteen people were wounded;
In Kramatorsk, a Ukrainian army airborne fighting vehicle opened fire on opponents to the new Kiev authorities. Three people were wounded.
April 16, 2014. The first attempt of the “anti-terrorist operation” in Slavyansk and Kramatorsk failed completely. Subdivisions of the 25th Dnepropetrovsk Airborne Brigade entered Kramatorsk where they were blocked by the locals. After talks, the column consisting of six units of armoured vehicles under the colours of Russia and the Donetsk People’s Republic headed to Slavyansk. In Slavyansk, the vehicles were left to the local militia and some troops returned to their permanent garrison. The next day, the acting President of Ukraine, A. Turchynov, ordered the brigade be disbanded for ‘cowardice and laying down arms’.
April 16, 2014. In Odessa, Ukrainian law-enforcement officers detained the “Right Sector” militants in whose car the bits, helmets, protective equipment and ‘Molotov cocktails’ were found.
April 17, 2014. In Geneva, following the quadripartite meeting of representatives from Russia, the U.S., the EU and Ukraine, the initial steps were approved to de-escalate tensions in south-east Ukraine providing, inter alia, that all parties should refrain from any acts of violence, intimidation and provocation. The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that, pursuant to the Geneva agreements, Kiev authorities would suspend the active phase of the “anti-terrorist operation”. However, this statement was immediately disavowed with a declaration by Ukraine’s acting Foreign Minister, Andrey Deshchytsia, who said that the military operation in the East of Ukraine would be conducted until the protesters were completely disarmed.
April 17, 2014. Near the village of Sergeevka (Donetsk region), Ukrainian servicemen fired at the roadblocks erected by Ukrainian federalization supporters. Several people were injured.
April 17, 2014. In the town of Izyum (Kharkov region), under the ‘anti-terrorist operation’ declared by the Kiev regime, about 1,000 Ukrainian servicemen were deployed. The soldiers were not supplied with food, they had to maraud and plunder local grocery stores.
April 17, 2014. In the Donetsk region, Ukrainian servicemen took the villagers of Kutuzovka as hostages. They were required to provide fuel for military vehicles. They were undressed to their underwear, beaten and abused. All these acts were captured on mobile phone cameras. The villagers were released in exchange for diesel (one litre per person) until finally the police intervened. According to the victims, some of the ‘Ukrainian’ servicemen understood neither Russian nor the Ukrainian language and spoke nothing but English.
April 18, 2014. In Slavyansk, a cache of arms and with “Right Sector” symbols was found. Among the weapons were clusters with unknown gas, two pistols, two kilogrammes of trotyl, improvised detonators, wires and radio sets.
April 18, 2014. The Crimean Basin Department of Water Resources said that Ukraine had totally cut the supply of fresh water to the territory of the Republic of Crimea of the Russian Federation.
April 19, 2014. In the River Torets and near the village of Raygorodok (near Slavyansk) police officers found the bodies of two men with signs of torture. The locals were convinced it was done by “Right Sector” militants, known for their cruelty, and who a few days earlier had arrived in Slavyansk with the Ukrainian servicemen. Later the Ukrainian Interior Ministry press office said that, after identifying one of the two bodies, it was established that it was of the Gorlovka Town Council deputy Vladimir Rybak from the Bat’kovschina party.
April 20, 2014 (night). The Easter truce was violated when, at one of the roadblocks through which people were allowed in to Slavyansk, local citizen soldiers were fired upon from a convoy of vehicles they had stopped. As a result of that fight, two unarmed activists and one citizen soldier were killed and three people were injured. Citizen soldiers who arrived came as soon as the alarm was raised managed to seize two of the attackers’ vehicles in which they found foreign-made firearms, an aerial survey map of the area and a numbered badge of a “Right Sector” member. According to the law-enforcement authorities, 12 attackers left the scene of the incident and headed towards the Kharkov region, taking with them their dead and injured people.
April 22, 2014. The ‘acting president’ of Ukraine, Aleksander Turchynov, demanded that the power structures renew the special operation in the east of the country. Ukrainian Security Service press secretary Marina Ostapenko stated that ‘the operation had not been scaled down and its active part had been suspended for the holidays.’ It is worth noting that these statements were made immediately after U.S. Vice President Joe Biden left Kiev following his visit to Ukraine.
April 23, 2014. Ukraine’s Acting Vice-Prime Minister Vitaly Yarema said that the ‘active phase’ of special operations in the eastern regions had resumed. According to him, it was done ‘in accordance with the order’ of Aleksander Turchinov. Yarema added that the law enforcement authorities ‘were trying to eliminate all groups’ in Kramatorsk, Slavyansk and other towns and cities in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.
April 23, 2014. “Right Sector” leader Dmitry Yarosh said, at a press conference in Dnepropetrovsk, that he would not occupy himself with his presidential election campaign, but rather would focus on ‘the struggle against separatism.’ He declared the beginning of the formation of a special battalion, ‘Donbass’, in the Donetsk region, with the approval of the heads of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, the Interior Ministry and the Security Service. According to Yarosh, the ‘special unit’ would consist of the activists and trained fighters from the “Right Sector” who are ready to assist in conducting the special operation of the Interior Ministry and the Security Service in south-east Ukraine. He also announced that his
headquarters would be transferred from Kiev to Dnepropetrovsk. ‘In fact, we fulfilled the dream of many Ukrainians, and the Bandera Army at last crossed the Dnieper,’ said Dmitry Yarosh.
April 23, 2014. In Cherkassk (Dnepropetrovsk region), the Ukrainian reservists who, under the threat of criminal prosecution were mobilized by the Kiev regime in the 93rd Separate Motorized Brigade to participate in the suppression of residents’
demonstrations in the south-east, rebelled. They expressed dissatisfaction with conditions in their camp, as well as with the fact that their families had been left without a livelihood. Many of the reservists after their ‘mobilization’ were dismissed from their jobs and the State does not provide any assistance to their wives and children. Initially, the term of training was 10 days, but people had been held in the camp for more than a month. Moreover, many of them did not agree to possibly fight against their own people.
April, 23–24, 2014 (night). In Mariupol (Donetsk region), a group of radical nationalists of about 30 men armed with pistols, bits and pieces of weaponry broke into the Town Council building, which was controlled by federalization supporters. The militants beat the unarmed people who were inside and ransacked it. 5 people were seriously injured.
April 24, 2014. Ukrainian servicemen attempted to assault Slavyansk. Special Forces entered the city supported by helicopters and armoured vehicles. 5 citizen soldiers were killed, some people were injured. Having captured and destroyed 3 of the federalization supporters’ roadblocks, the Ukrainian servicemen retreated.
April 24, 2014. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that a grouping of the Ukrainian troops of more than 11,000 was engaged in a military operation conducted in south-east Ukraine. About 160 tanks, more than 230 infantry combat vehicles and armoured personnel carriers, no fewer than 150 guns and mortars, military helicopters and aircraft were involved in the operation. Units from the National Guard and battalions composed of “Right Sector” extremists engaged to fight against civilians. Demonstrations by the civilians were suppressed by soldiers from Security Service Special Forces and the Ukraine Interior Ministry who were redeployed in Donetsk and Lugansk.
April 25, 2014. “Right Sector” leader Dmitry Yarosh appealed to the ‘acting president’ Aleksander Turchinov demanding the mass arming of the population.
April 26, 2014. Ukraine completely blocked the gateways of the North Crimean Channel through which water was supplied from the Dnieper River to the Crimean Peninsula.
April 28, 2014. The “Right Sector” demanded that the Ukraine Interior Ministry arm the soldiers of the ‘Donbass’ special battalion formed by the radicals. A request to that effect was sent to the acting Interior Minister, Arsen Avakov.
April 30, 2014. Ukraine’s acting President, Alexander Turchinov, met the heads of the State Regional Administrations in Kiev and instructed them to establish ‘territorial self-defense battalions’
composed of ‘patriots of the country prepared to take up arms to protect Ukraine’ in each region. However, the existing laws of Ukraine do not contain any provisions allowing the establishment of such armed units.
May 1, 2014. Ukraine National Guard fighters fired at the Donbass self-defense forces’ checkpoint into the town of Krasnoarmeisk (Donetsk region). 11 unarmed locals who were guarding the checkpoint were seized and taken to an unknown location.
May 2, 2014. The Ukrainian armed forces began to attack the city of Slavyansk, assisted by extremists from the “Right Sector” and other ultra-nationalist organizations. In the course of the retaliatory operation, Ukrainian security forces used combat helicopters and armoured vehicles. English was spoken in their radio communications, and fighters armed with U.S.-made M16 rifles were seen among the attackers. The “Right Sector” fighters who entered the city outskirts plundered food stores and broke into houses searching for militia members. Ukrainian armed forces completely blocked Slavyansk and did not allow women and children to leave the town.
May 2, 2014. In the township of Yasnogorka (Donetsk region) unarmed locals tried to stop an armoured formation from the Ukrainian armed forces. To disperse the people, the troops fired ammunition into the air. An armoured personnel carrier ran down an elderly man who was taken to hospital in a state of shock and with both his legs fractured.
May 2, 2014. The Ukrainian authorities unilaterally banned Russian air companies from flying to Donetsk and Kharkov. The Federal Air Transport Agency noted that this was an unprecedented violation of international air traffic arrangements, infringed the rights of passengers and led to a humanitarian blockade of residents of the south-eastern regions of Ukraine.
May 3, 2014. During hostilities in Slavyansk, 15 militia members were killed, of whom 11 were unarmed.
May 3, 2014. The Ukrainian security forces launched a special operation in the city of Kramatorsk (Donetsk region). Armed people with no insignias tried to ‘clear’ the town from ‘separatists’.
In the Kramatorsk suburbs, National Guard fighters killed 21-year-old nurse Yulia Izotova and three of her friends. The young people were trying to drive to a safe place, when their car was shot at with automatic guns. All those in the car were killed.
According to the Health Department of the Donetsk State Regional Administration, the hostilities in Kramatorsk took the lives of 6 people, while 15 more were injured by bullets and taken to hospitals.
May 3, 2014. Late in the evening Ukrainian security forces assaulted the premises of the City Council of Mariupol (Donetsk region) which erupted in flames. The assault was repelled by militia.
May 3, 2014. A source in the Ukrainian Interior Ministry said that the acting Interior Minister, Arsen Avakov, and the head of the Ukraine Security Service, Valentin Nalivaichenko, on April 29, 2014, had instructed the Migration Service to issue 300 Ukrainian passports as soon as possible for citizens in the Baltic states and Poland who could enter Ukraine in order to act as advisers and field commanders in punitive operations against the protesters in the east.
May 4, 2014. Germany’s Bild newspaper wrote that the Kiev authorities are being advised by numerous officials from U.S. special services such as the CIA and FBI. They ‘assist Kiev in suppressing the uprisings in the east of Ukraine and establishing security structures’
May 5, 2014. Ukrainian security forces engaged in a massive attack against Slavyansk. The heaviest fighting took place near the village of Semyonovka, at the entrance to the city. Ultra-nationalists who formed the backbone of Ukraine’s National Guard, acted with the utmost cruelty. They fired guns against residential houses and did not hesitate to shoot unarmed people. Over 20 citizen soldiers and civilians were killed, dozens were injured and city hospitals were overcrowded.
May 5, 2014. Cities and towns of east Ukraine, blocked by Ukrainian armed forces, verged on a humanitarian catastrophe, as medical supplies and blood for transfusions were lacking and a shortage of food supplies began.
David-Pierre Marquet, the International Red Cross (ICRC) Public Relations Officer for Europe and Central Asia, said that the cities of Slavyansk and Kramatorsk were in desperate need of medical supplies. According to Marquet, other cities and towns in east Ukraine were also suffering from a lack of medical supplies. In particular, Lugansk lacked antibiotics. There also was a shortage of medical supplies in Donetsk and Odessa.
May 5, 2014. Major Ukrainian commercial bank, Privatbank, belonging to Igor Kolomoiskiy (the Ukrainian oligarch funding Euromaidan and the “Right Sector”) suspended its activities in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions. This bank serviced over 400,000 retired people and 220,000 recipients of other social benefits in the
Donetsk and Lugansk regions. As a result, people in these regions faced major difficulties with receiving their pensions, students’ allowances and remuneration.
May 6, 2014. It was reported that Ukraine’s Security Service was preparing provocations with the use of Russian military uniforms. About 200 Russian military outfits and 70 forged IDs of Russian armed forces’ officers were brought from the Khmelnitski region to Donetsk. An anonymous source in a Ukrainian security agency said that the fighters were instructed to stage and film an attack against Ukrainian border guards using Russian military uniform.
May 6, 2014. Andrey Parubiy, the Secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council and former commandant of Euromaidan, signed a decree merging all ‘Maidan self-defense’ structures with either the Interior Ministry, National Guard and army or the reserve battalions being established at that moment. All the structures of the ‘Maidan self-defense’ were ordered to formalize their activities within 10 days.
This step was a direct violation of the Geneva agreements of April 17, 2014, which provided for, in one of its paragraphs, that illegal armed groups in Ukraine must be disarmed.
May 6–7, 2014 (night). Ukrainian armed forces opened fire on militia checkpoints at the entrance to the city of Mariupol, killing one and injuring about ten.
May 7, 2014 (morning). Ukrainian armed forces and “Right Sector” fighters seized the City Council premises in Mariupol which were controlled by militia. During the assault, gas was used against the people inside the building. As a result, 15 persons were taken to hospital with acute eye and inhalation injuries. Dozens of federalization supporters were detained by the police.
May 7, 2014. The Ukraine Interior Ministry announced the detention of Igor Kakidzyanov, the Defense Minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic. Later, photographs and videos were published online demonstrating Oleg Lyashko, a Ukrainian presidential candidate and leader of the Radical Party, personally subjecting the handcuffed and almost-naked Igor Kakidzyanov to brutal interrogation.
May 7, 2014. It was reported that Ukraine had started building a dam across the North Crimean Channel in the Kherson region to completely cut off the supply of water to the Republic of Crimea of the Russian Federation. From April 14, 2014, after Crimea had reunited with Russia, Ukraine cut the supply of water through the North Crimean Channel three times and, on April 26, closed its gates.
May 7, 2014. “Right Sector” fighters opened fire on the Prosecutor’s Office building, controlled by federalization supporters in the city of Severodonetsk (Lugansk region).
May 8, 2014. National Guard units seized the premises of the Mariupol City Executive Committee. When members of the public tried to approach, they were fired at without warning. One person was injured.
May 8, 2014. About 40 armed persons wearing black uniforms with no insignia set fire to the Izvarino Customs Control point on the Ukrainian side of the Russian- Ukrainian border, and escaped.
May 9, 2014. In Mariupol, Ukrainian troops and fighters from the Dnepr Battalion (which was established in Dnepropetrovsk and funded by Ukrainian oligarch Igor Kolomoiskiy) attempted an assault against the building of the City Division of the Interior Ministry, the staff of which refused to follow instructions from Kiev. Unarmed people tried to help the latter. Ukrainian security forces opened fire against the crowd, killing 9 and injuring 42 persons. The building was completely burned down. On the night of May 9–10, 2014, the City Executive Committee building was also partially burned.
May 9, 2014. In the city of Slavyansk a 12-year-old boy wearing the ribbon of St. George was severely injured by an unknown person with a gun.
May 10, 2014. Ukrainian security forces assaulted several Slavyansk self-defense posts, injuring 8 people.
May 11, 2014. Fighters from the National Guard Dnepr Battalion entered the city of Krasnoarmeisk. They began randomly shooting at local residents, killing 2 people.
May 11, 2014. German newspaper Bild wrote that the Ukrainian army and police included 400 serving mercenaries from Academi (formerly Blackwater in 2009), the private security services provider. The Donetsk People’s Republic militia repeatedly mentioned English-speaking foreigners taking part in combat operations in south- east Ukraine.
May 11, 2014. Near Baranovka (Lugansk region), a Ukrainian serviceman wounded a local citizen who tried to prevent the movement of armoured vehicles. The man was taken to hospital with gunshot wounds to both legs.
May 12, 2014. According to the Health Department of the Donetsk Regional State Administration, the ongoing armed confrontation between security forces and federalization supporters in south-east Ukraine that started on March 13, 2014, had
caused 49 deaths in the Donetsk region. Meanwhile, a total of 245 people were taken to the region’s hospitals with gunshot wounds and 150 of them hospitalized.
May 13, 2014. In violation of an agreement with the UN, three helicopters, coloured white and bearing UN identification marks, were used by Ukrainian servicemen against militia in a military operation near Kramatorsk. Earlier, these helicopters were involved in UN peacekeeping operations in African countries.
May 14, 2014. In the vicinity of the Alexandrovka settlement (near Kramatorsk) in the Donetsk region, Ukrainian servicemen opened fire without prior warning on a minivan and a car carrying locals returning early morning from a fishing trip. Two people died, two were wounded.
Another assault on civilians took place in the same region on the road between Novaya Varvarovka and Old Varvarovka. A 50-year-old woman and her son, who were travelling in a Niva car, were stopped by Ukrainian servicemen and cold- bloodedly shot. The woman died at the scene, her son survived but was severely wounded and taken to hospital. The assailants took the dead woman’s money and identity documents.
May 15, 2014. The Ukrainian army mortared private houses in Slavyansk. A 42-year-old resident was seriously wounded by projectile fragments.
May 16, 2014. The ‘People’s mayor’ of Slavyansk, V. Ponomarev, told a press conference that, during the punitive operation in south-east Ukraine, Kiev authorities involved mercenaries from a Polish private military company Analizy Systemowe Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz (ASBS, OTHAGO) and American protective services providers such as Greystone and Academi.
May 16, 2014. The First Deputy Prime Minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic, A. Purgin, accused Kiev authorities of hushing up the real number of the murdered and wounded in the “anti-terrorist operation”. ‘The bodies of dead locals are buried in nameless graves, and people with gunshot wounds and other injuries are afraid to resort to state medical institutions,’ said Purgin.
May 16–17, 2014 (night). During the assault of Slavyansk, Ukrainian servicemen, for the first time during the punitive operation, used heavy artillery (howitzers). Some shells hit residential districts, there are casualties. As a result of the artillery fire, the railway bridge in Andreyevka (near Slavyansk) was heavily damaged.
May 18, 2014. Militia from the Donetsk People’s Republic informed that one of the Ukrainian National Guard units stationed in Kramatorsk shot some of their fellow countrymen who were conscript soldiers who refused to take part in the punitive operation and were going home.
May 19, 2014. The head Ukraine’s Internal Affairs Ministry, A. Avakov, informed that the payment of pensions and salaries to the inhabitants of Slavyansk and Kramatorsk was suspended.
May 19, 2014. Ukrainian National Guard militants stopped a coach en route between Kramatorsk and Slavyansk. There were mostly women on board; they were taken off the coach, forced to their knees, and interrogated.
May 19, 2014 (evening). Ukrainian servicemen shelled the outskirts of Slavyansk with howitzers and mortars, as well as a village of summer houses and an agricultural market. Several residential houses were damaged. Two militiamen were wounded; a local female resident received a serious wound in her head from a fragment.
May 20, 2014 (early morning). Ukrainian security forces resumed their mass shelling of Slavyansk from Karachun mountain, as a result of which several residential buildings were partially destroyed.
May 21, 2014. A Representative of the Donbass People’s Militia informed that the shelling of Slavyansk by Ukrainian security forces caused the razing of a residential building in the Vostochny district; three people were injured, two of them severely.
May 21–22, 2014 (night). The Ukrainian army checkpoint near the town of Volnovakha (Donetsk region), where recruits of the 51st voluntary brigade were on duty, who had earlier refused to shoot civilians, was attacked by National Guard gunmen supported by armoured vehicles and combat helicopters. Some arrived in PrivatBank cars belonging to the oligarch I. Kolomoyskiy. As a result, 16 Ukrainian servicemen died, over 40 were wounded.
May 21–22, 2014 (night). Ukrainian security forces conducted an artillery attack on Slavyansk. In the evening of May 22, 2014, the massive shelling of the town and the neighbouring village of Semyonovka resumed from the Ukrainian army checkpoint near the town of Krasnyi Liman. Several private homes were destroyed.
May 23, 2014. In the afternoon, Ukrainian security forces resumed shelling Slavyansk city centre. The three-storey building of a car servicing firm was destroyed, while several residential houses were damaged. The people inside were not badly injured but they were deafened by the blast wave.
May 23, 2014. In a hospital near Lisichansk (Lugansk region), Ukrainian security forces shot 30 Ukrainian servicemen for refusing to attack
civilians. According to the self-defense headquarters, there were “Right Sector” radicals acting in Lugansk region, financed by oligarch I. Kolomoyskiy.
May 25, 2014. Unknown people shot four cars carrying local citizens who were leaving Novoaydar in the Lugansk region. According to information received by the LifeNews TV channel from law-enforcement sources, one person died and three were wounded as a result.
May 25, 2014. In Novoayadar (Lugansk region), gunmen from the Dnepr detachment, financially supported by oligarch I. Kolomoyskiy, opened fire on unarmed members of a local election commission who refused to open a polling station for Ukraine’s presidential election.
May 25, 2014. A psychiatric hospital in Semyonovka near Slavyansk was partly destroyed as a result of shelling by Ukrainian security forces.
May 26, 2014. Three Ukrainian army combat helicopters fired on the Donetsk-based Tochmash plant. One person was injured in the shooting.
May 26, 2014. Donetsk self-defense forces and Ukrainian security forces clashed on the outskirts of Donetsk and in nearby settlements. As a result, one civilian, near the railway station, died of a fragment wound.
May 26, 2014. Ukrainian security forces positioned on Karachan mountain resumed shelling the Semyonovka settlement near Slavyansk. Two civilians became victims.
May 27, 2014. Donetsk City Mayor A. Lukyanchenko confirmed the deaths of at least 40 people in the army operation at Donetsk International Airport which was carried out with the use of Ukraine army assault aircraft.
May 27, 2014. All entrances to and exits from Donetsk were blocked by Ukrainian security forces who, on the motorway to Marioupol, prevented passage to passenger buses with people trying to leave the military operation area.
May 27, 2014. Authorities in the Donetsk People’s Republic informed that Ukrainian security forces opened fire on a truck carrying militiamen wounded in Donetsk. According to different data, between 24 and 35 people were killed.
May 27, 2014. Four people died as a result of shelling in Slavyansk by Ukrainian security forces. The head of Education at Slavyansk Town Council, A. Zubarev, informed that the issue of ending the school year early was being discussed due to the active phase of the Ukrainian army operation in the south-east of the country.
May 28, 2014. Shooting was heard near the Donetsk branch of the Ukraine Security Service. Fighting between militia and Ukrainian armed forces units continued near Donetsk International Airport. Ukrainian armed forces snipers, who took up positions on the airport roof, shot people going to the nearby cemetery.
May 28, 2014. A school in the Artyom settlement was damaged as a result of the artillery shelling of Slavyansk by Ukrainian security forces.
May 29, 2014. The Prime Minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic, A. Borodai, said dozens of people died in a military operation by Kiev authorities in the Donetsk area.
May 29, 2014. Ukrainian security forces started a large-scale military operation in Slavyansk and Kramatorsk deploying artillery fire and air assaults. As a member of the People’s Militia told ITAR-TASS, ‘hospitals received an order to evacuate people from the upper floors’. He claimed that the same warning was given to the city maternity hospital. According to the militia, more than 20 civilians were killed and more than 30 were injured by shelling in Slavyansk.
May 29, 2014. The Donetsk Regional Public Administration press service announced that, for the last 20 days of hostilities, 7 minors aged from 4 to 17 had been injured in the region. On May 9, while out walking, a 12-year-old child suffered gunshot wounds to the abdominal cavity and shoulder; on May 26, a 13-year- old girl received a shrapnel wound to the leg; on May 28, while walking with his grandmother, a 4-year-old child suffered a shrapnel wound to the soft tissues of the left forearm. Four more children and adolescents suffered gunshot wounds in other cities and town of the region. For instance, on May 17, in Makiivka, a 7-year- old child who was standing at a bus stop was wounded in the leg. On May 25, a 17-year-old girl in Horlivka sustained a gunshot wound to the chest. On May 25, a 15-year-old villager from Marinivka in the Shakhtersk district was inside a car which was shot at near the checkpoint to the city of Snizhne. The child with a puncture wound to the abdominal cavity was brought to a children’s hospital. On May 28, in Donetsk, an 8-year-old boy received a shrapnel wound to the right crus.
May 29, 2014. The Ukraine Foreign Affairs Ministry responded negatively to the official note from the Russian Foreign Ministry in which Russia offered humanitarian assistance to the residents of east Ukraine and asked Kiev to ensure its delivery to the regions affected by the conflict.
May 30, 2014. A children’s hospital was shelled by Ukrainian security forces in Slavyansk. At the time of the shelling, there were children inside. Moreover, a children’s health centre was damaged.
May 30, 2014. The Main Investigation Department of the Russian Investigative Committee initiated a criminal case ‘due to the use of banned means and methods of warfare on the territory of the proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics’. The criminal case was opened ‘against the servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine whose identity is unknown yet and members of the National Guard of Ukraine and the “Right Sector” for shelling the cities of Slavyansk, Kramatorsk, Donetsk, Mariupol and other localities of the proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics’ in accordance with the elements of crime specified in Article 356, Part I of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (Use of Banned Means and Methods of Warfare). The investigation team believes that, at the time of shelling the afore mentioned cities and localities, in violation of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of August 12, 1949, servicemen of the Ukraine Armed Forces and members of the Ukraine National Guard and the “Right Sector” deliberately ‘used weapons, artillery, air force (including aircraft with United Nations symbols), armoured vehicles and the respective armaments for the purpose of killing civilians’. There were victims and injured people among the civilian population. Moreover, industrial, energy, communications and transport infrastructure facilities as well as buildings and facilities used for residential, social and cultural purposes, including hospitals, kindergartens and schools, were completely or partially destroyed.
May 30, 2014. The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) reported the detention of four people in Crimea (O. Sentsov, O. Afanasyev, A. Chirniy and A. Kolchenko) suspected of organizing acts of sabotage and terrorism in Simferopol, Yalta and Sevastopol. An FSB press release claimed that the detained were members of a subversive terrorist division of the “Right Sector”.
May 30–31, 2014 (night). Ukrainian border guards prevented a bus carrying children from Slavyansk who wanted to leave Ukraine for Russia. The children had to cross the Russian border on foot.
May 31, 2014. The headquarters of the Slavyansk People’s Militia reported that there were victims among members of the Ukrainian National Guard and injured people among the civilian population as a result of night shelling of the city. Two people were killed and four injured, including a 40-year-old woman who died in hospital from a shrapnel wound. According to the People’s Militia, the shooting continued all night in the township of Semenivka, in micro-districts ‘Vostochny’ (‘the Eastern’) and ‘Severny’ (‘the Nothern’) as well as in the township of Cherevkivka where its water treatment facilities were fired at. The headquarters stated that, if those facilities had been damaged, the people of Slavyansk would have no access to drinking water.
June 1, 2014. The Donetsk People’s Republic Press Service reported that when an attempt was made to retrieve the bodies of the militia fighters killed near Donetsk airport, the Ukrainian army shot at the ambulance vehicle and a car carrying militia personnel. Six people were killed.
June 1, 2014. The shelling of Slavyansk by Ukrainian security forces caused damage to the ‘Parus Nadezhdy’ orphanage (‘Sail of Hope’) and the High Voltage Research Institute. The companies ‘Stroymash’ and ‘Slavtyazhmash’were also shot at. Five civilians suffered shrapnel wounds.
June 2, 2014. A Ukrainian Air Force attack bomber opened fire at the Lugansk Regional Public Administration building. 8 civilians were killed and 28 injured. It has become obvious from intercepted communications from the Ukrainian pilot (which were made available on the Internet) that he consciously hit a civilian target. The fact that the building was shelled was confirmed by the special OSCE monitoring mission in Ukraine.
June 2, 2014. Mariupol’s chief endocrinologist, P. Likhonosov, announced that there was a serious shortage of insulin and other life-saving medications in the city.
June 3, 2014. People’s Mayor of Sloviansk spokesperson S. Khoroshova reported that Ukrainian security forces had moved to the city up to one hundred armoured vehicles, including tanks, Tyulpan self-propelled mortars, Gvozdika howitzers and Grad multiple rocket launchers.
June 3, 2014. In Krasnyi Lyman, Ukrainian security forces shelled a hospital. The shells fell on the building’s roof. The hospital fence was also damaged.
June 3, 2014. In their joint statement, the Ukrainian Red Cross Society, Russian Red Cross Society, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and the International Committee of the Red Cross expressed their utmost concern about the humanitarian situation in south-east Ukraine.
The city of Shchastya (Lugansk region) was shelled on the night of June 3–4, 2014. According to preliminary data, one shell fell on a residential house, and another damaged the city’s water well.
On June 3–4, 2014, using heavy artillery, the Ukrainian National Guard massively attacked Slavyansk and its neighbouring localities. Eight air strikes hit the outskirts of Slavyansk. The central water pipeline was damaged, and the water supply to Slavyansk, Kramatorsk and the nearest villages stopped. There were victims among the civilian population.
June 4, 2014. The Donetsk Railway Press Service reported that, due to serious damage caused by the Ukrainian Air Force air strikes to the railway track and the platform at Krasnyi Lyman station, a number of suburban trains were cancelled.
June 4, 2014. Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Donetsk People’s Republic, D. Pushilin, said that at the time of the seizure of Krasnyi Lyman, Ukrainian servicemen had shot down up to 25 injured militia fighters at the local hospital.
June 4, 2014. The Russian Federal Migration Service informed that the number of Ukrainian refugees who had crossed the Russian border and stayed in the Rostov region (Russian Federation) had exceeded 8,000.
June 5, 2014. As a result of the further shelling of the Semenivka township near Slavyansk, the ‘Kapachim’ chemical plant caught fire. According to some estimates, up to 200 tonnes of sulphur could have been stored there.
June 5, 2014. People’s Mayor of Slavyansk spokesperson S. Khoros- hova informed that, in the city of Slavyansk, besieged by Ukrainian security forces, there was a shortage almost of all kinds of medicines, from antibiotics to bandages.
June 5, 2014. A report by the special OSCE monitoring mission stated that the already-tense situation in Donbass may even be worsened by ‘an intensified anti- terrorist operation by Ukrainian Armed Forces and by the sturdy resistance of anti- government forces’. It also mentioned increased fighting in Slavyansk, Kramatorsk and their neighbourhoods, where attack aircraft and military helicopters are used, and a possible large-scale assault on Donetsk by Ukrainian security forces which is expected soon by the Donetsk People’s Republic’s leaders. The report pointed to an increased number of military engagements in Lugansk and the Lugansk region.
June 6, 2014. Without explaining the reasons, Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs notified Russia of the closure of some checkpoints in the Lugansk and Donetsk regions on the border with Russia. Kiev’s decision caused additional problems for Ukrainian refugees wishing to leave the warzone.
June 6, 2014. Two railway employees sent from Kramatorsk to Krasnyi Liman to repair the railway lines were killed as a result of a mortar bombardment by Ukrainian security forces.
June 6, 2014. Formations of Ukrainian armoured vehicles, including tanks, actively attacked Slavyansk. According to witnesses, as a result of bombardments in Mandrychino district, civilians were seriously wounded. Ambulances could not reach places where the wounded were. People bled bleeding to death in basements.
Ukrainian security forces also resumed artillery bombardments of Semenovka village, east of Slavyansk.
June 6, 2014. As a result of artillery bombardment of the Cherevkovka settlement in the vicinity of Slavyansk, four residential buildings on Leningradskaya Street were damaged, and one erupted into flames.
June 6, 2014. The Donbass Fuel-Energy Company press service announced that, in the Slavyansk district, 40 settlements, 11 hospitals and a number of administrative buildings were disconnected from the electricity supply.
June 6, 2014. The Government of the Rostov region (Russian Federation) announced that between June 5 and 6 more than 12,000 Ukrainian citizens came to the Rostov region.
June 6, 2014. The Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Crimea (Russian Federation) announced that about 5,000 refugees from Ukraine, including more than 600 children, came to the peninsula.
June 7, 2014. An aide to the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Donetsk People’s Republic, M. Petrukhin, who was dealing with humanitarian assistance delivery issues, was killed in the centre of Donetsk.
June 7, 2014. As a result of the bombardment of Slavyansk by the Ukrainian security forces, the paint and lacquer shop of the Betonmash factory burst into flames. Two shells also hit the ‘High Voltage’ Research Institute.
June 7, 2014. The leader of the Lugansk People’s Republic, V. Bolotov, said that since June 2nd, 13 people were killed, including 10 civilians, as a result of military clashes in Lugansk.
June 7, 2014. The acting head of Ukraine’s Internal Affairs Ministry, A. Avakov, announced that 20 members of the Chernigov battalion were dismissed after they refused to go to attend an “anti-terrorist operation” in the Lugansk region. Earlier, he said that former members of the Berkut division were dismissed after they refused to participate in the punitive operation in south-east Ukraine.
June 8, 2014. Ukrainian security forces subjected the centre of Slavyansk to an artillery bombardment. According to local residents, shells exploded on the
central square, the city’s executive committee and communications hub. At the time, the city centre was crowded, as a festive service has just ended in the church located on the square. There were civilians among the victims who received shrapnel wounds. The bombardment damaged water pipelines and caused serious problems with the drinking water supply.
On the same day, Ukrainian servicemen resumed the artillery bombardment of the Semenovka settlement near Slavyansk. According to some information, GRAD multiple artillery rocket systems were used for the bombardment. There is a note on the militia’s website: ‘Today the settlement of Semenovka near Slavyansk has been completely destroyed. No building remained unaffected.’
Violations of the right to freedom of thought and belief,
including political beliefs; the intimidation and kidnapping
of political opponents
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
Article 19. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1950)
Article 10. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966)
Article 19. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.
Since early April 2014, the State Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has been conducting raids against supporters of federalization in the south-east of the country.
April 1, 2014. Officers from Ukraine’s Security Service searched the apartment of Alexei Albu, the Odessa Regional Council deputy from the Communist Party of Ukraine. According to him, they were looking for weapons and lists of activists from the ‘Borotba’ union. But, finally, they had to report that nothing illegal was found in the apartment. Albu said that the search was an attempt to intimidate him for organizing mass street protests demanding the nationalization of oligarchs’ property and a democratic referendum in Odessa on self-government in the region.
Police also searched the apartment of V. Kaurov, head of the Union of Orthodox Citizens of Ukraine. Officers found the priest’s son there, but, according to Mr. Kaurov, he was beyond the reach of Ukrainian law-enforcement agencies.
Ukraine’s ‘Alfa’ special police unit intended to detain Oleg Mokryak, Archpriest, head of the diocese’s missionary work department, catechesis and religious education, but he was not at home at the time. ‘The priest has been accused of contacts with participants in demonstrations organized in Odessa to criticize the actions of the new Kiev authorities,’ Ukrainian law-enforcement agencies reported.
April 1, 2014. In Donetsk, the SBU arrested Benes Ayo, a black ‘AntiMaidan’ activist and a Latvian citizen, who repeatedly spoke out at rallies against the self- proclaimed Kiev authorities.
April 1, 2014. O. Sidorchuk, the prosecutor of Transcarpathia, said that, according to his instructions, the relevant authorities keep track of all statements made by parties and organizations (including foreign ones) in order to find calls for separatism. According to Sidorchuk, if there any such signs in public statements or remarks by representatives of parties or organizations, it is recognized as a crime against the foundations of national security, and the perpetrators will face criminal responsibility provided for in law.
April 1, 2014. In Zaporizhia, V. Polyusov, the City Council deputy from the Party of Regions, was severely beaten. According to Polyusov, two strangers who had their faces covered with hoods attacked him.
April 2, 2014. In Transcarpathia, the SBU launched a criminal investigation ‘into the Rusyn separatism’. The investigation was opened because of statements published on the Internet and broadcast by Russian TV. In connection with this case,
N. Starosta, Chairman of the People’s Council of Subcarpathian Rus, was called in for questioning by the SBU. Transcarpathian Rusyns demand to be recognized as a national minority in Ukraine, just as in 22 countries around the world, including in Europe. Some Rusyns call for the recognition of the 1991 referendum on ‘self- governing territory’, during which more than 75% of the region’s citizens voted in favor of self-governance.
April 2, 2014. According to data on the website trueinform.ru, which had been gathered by a member of a Kharkov resistance movement, law-enforcement authorities launched 140 criminal investigations into alleged incitement to separatism and 53 Ukrainian citizens were charged with separatism. This is the new Ukrainian government’s response to the calls for federalization of the country.
April 2, 2014. Ukrainian oligarch V. Nemirovsky, who was earlier appointed Governor of Odessa region by the new Kiev authorities, said that there are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ protesters. He noted his willingness to support those who favor Ukraine’s rapprochement towards Europe, and called the ‘pro-Russian’ activists provocateurs and promised to deal with their ‘sponsors’.
April 3, 2014. The Ukraine Prosecutor General’s Office issued an arrest warrant, and to bring to court, the toppled President Viktor Yanukovych. Earlier, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office launched criminal investigations against Mr. Yanukovych for encouraging people to ‘demand a referendum on the status of each region within Ukraine’.
April 3, 2014. Investigations against S. Petrakov, a Lugansk City Council Deputy from the Party of Regions, were launched. He said that his construction company ‘Teplyi dom’ began to face problems. ‘I clearly know that it was Kiev’s order to paralyze the enterprise’s operations, bring criminal charges, and thereby kill ‘two birds with one stone’ — to change the market structure in the construction industry through unfair competition practices while mopping up the political landscape of Lugansk, which is particularly useful in the run-up to the local elections, because one of the candidates for local council elections will lose the right to be
elected; Petrakov said. A number of online media suggested that Petrakov also intended to participate in the election for Mayor of Lugansk.
April 4, 2014. In Donetsk, more than 50 tramway depot employees signed for a referendum on Ukraine’s accession to the Customs Union and for making Russian a second state language. However, they refused to talk to journalists because they feared being dismissed.
April 4, 2014. In the Donetsk region, the SBU opened criminal proceedings against P. Gubarev, deputy ‘people’s governor’, and R. Doni, a Ukrainian citizen, for allegedly planning riots and inciting the seizure of state power. He was detained by court order. Doni was taken to a detention facility in Kiev.
April 4, 2014. The Kharkov region Court of Appeal ruled that I. Kromskiy, a famous ‘AntiMaidan’ activist, must wear an electronic bracelet in order to prevent his ‘illegal activities’. The court also ordered him to hand over all of his documents which allow him to leave the country and placed him under house arrest as a preventive measure.
April 5, 2014. In Mariupol (Donetsk region), the SBU arrested D. Kuzmenko, a so-called people’s mayor, elected at a meeting of citizens. His brother Denis was arrested in his own apartment that same day, but was released later. According to local media, D. Pugovkin, another well-known public figure, an activist of the Communist Party of Ukraine, was also arrested.
April 6, 2014. In Kiev, the so-called ‘Council of Maidan Hundreds (a council uniting the commanders of extreme-right military groups) decided to impose a ‘curfew’ within the boundaries of ‘Maidan Nezalezhnosti’ (Independence Square) from 01:00 to 05:00. Public gatherings and mass actions which had not been approved by the ‘Maidan commandant’s office’ were prohibited. It’s forbidden to move around the square unless necessary; patrols now have the right to check documents.
April 6, 2014. In Kiev, the so-called ‘Council of the Maidan’ demanded to be given a say in appointments to Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers. The Ministers were ‘invited’ to ‘Popular Assembly’ which was to be held on Maidan on April 9. ‘Each minister should have made a brief presentation on his education, work experience and what his goals would be if chosen for the position. Moreover, if Maidan activists say they do not believe him, he should resign, and the Verkhovna Rada is to propose a new candidate for the position,’ declared the ‘Council of the Maidan’.
April 6, 2014. In Kharkov, supporters of Ukraine’s federalization clashed with “Right Sector” activists.
April 7, 2014. In Kiev, about 100 ‘Maidan self-defense’, “Right Sector” and ‘AutoMaidan’ activists blocked the Ukraine Supreme Court building, which was supposed to host the Congress of Judges of Ukraine. The extremists broke into the premises and demanded the adoption of a law on lustration, then took the Congress delegates outside. While leaving the building, O. Lavrynovych, the former Ukraine Justice Minister, was attacked by radicals: they struck him on the head and tried to capture him. The only thing that saved him was the personal intervention of
E. Sobolev, head of the Verkhovna Rada’s so-called ‘lustration committee’.
April 7, 2014. On Primorsky Boulevard in the centre of Odessa, several dozen “Right Sector” militants armed with sticks beat up four young men wearing St. George ribbons who were walking along the street.
April 7–8, 2014 (night). In Kharkov, near the regional state administration building, masked militants in uniforms with Jaguar unit chevrons (Ukraine’s Interior Troops unit) together with “Right Sector” neo-Nazis held a so-called ‘anti- terrorist’ operation. Using non-lethal weapons, they broke up a rally of supporters of federalization or greater autonomy for south-east Ukraine. 64 people were arrested; the city centre was cordoned off.
The next morning started with efforts to ‘cleanse’ Kharkov from those who disagree with the policies of the self-proclaimed Kiev authorities. Citizens wearing St. George ribbons were being detained. Foreigners who spoke neither Russian nor Ukrainian were among the punishers. Wounded demonstrators said they were afraid to go to hospital because of possible reprisals.
April 7–8, 2014 (night). In Nikolaev, near the Regional State Administration building, neo-Nazis attacked a tent city of supporters of federalization and the expansion of self-governance of south-east Ukraine. The attackers used sticks, traumatic weapons, firecrackers and petards. Fifteen people were injured, some of them with gunshot wounds, 11 were hospitalised. Police detained 23 people.
April 8, 2014. A. Avakov, Ukraine’s acting Internal Affairs Minister, decided to undertake a ‘purge’ in the Kharkov police. He said that it would recommend dismissing over 30% of policemen for alleged sabotage, while breaking up the demonstrations against the Kiev regime.
April 8, 2014. At a plenary meeting of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada, scuffles broke out between deputies from the Communist Party (CPU) and those of the nationalist Svoboda party.
P. Symonenko, the leader of the Communist party, from the parliament’s rostrum, accused the current authorities of a ‘lack of action in the south-east of Ukraine,’ adding that ‘People have been
demanding, for a long time, making Russian the second national language. People have been demanding attention to their social problems. But the authorities do not listen to them,’ Symonenko said. He also noted that ‘the current authorities call the protesters that seized administrative buildings in Donetsk, Lugansk and Kharkov ‘separatists’. But when regional state administrations were seized in western Ukraine, the deputies from the Svoboda party said those who were doing it were patriots,’ added the Communist party leader.
After he spoke, deputies from the Svoboda party ran over to Symonenko and pushed him from the rostrum. Deputies from the Communist Party stood up for their leader, and a fight ensued. After that, deputies from the Communist party faction and the majority of deputies from the Party of Regions left the parliamentary session.
April 8, 2014. In Kiev, neo-Nazis organized pickets outside the Verkhovna Rada demanding people be ‘put to prison for wearing the St. George Ribbon and other Russian symbols’.
April 8, 2014. Verkhovna Rada deputies adopted the law on the lustration of judges as well as amendments to the Ukraine Criminal Code to increase prison sentences for ‘separatism’.
145 judges will be screened for taking part in authorizing bans on mass protests on Maidan and prosecuting their participants.
Representatives of the Kiev regime continuously make threats to the residents of south-east Ukraine who advocate the country’s federalization. The latter are humiliatingly called ‘separatists’ and ‘Colorado beetles’.
April 8, 2014. Commenting on the Kharkov ‘cleansing’ against those who oppose the Kiev regime, I. Farion (a ‘Svoboda’ party deputy in the Verkhovna Rada) stated, ‘I would have acted much tougher. I would just shoot them. Enemies dominate on our land. We should have driven them away as early as in 1654. That is why today’s reaction is absolutely legitimate, but measures should be much tougher. Those creatures deserve only one thing — death’.
April 9, 2014. In Ivano-Frankovsk, the local ‘Maidan self-defence’ and the “Right Sector” set up a so-called ‘shame pole’ in the town’s central square opposite the regional state administration, where photographs of ‘corruptionists’ and those ‘who discredited themselves by collaboration with the Yanukovych regime’ are put on display.
April 9, 2014. In Nikolaev, extremists from the “Right Sector” threw eggs and poured water on Ukraine presidential candidate and Party of Regions Rada deputy
O. Tsaryov and then beat him. He had come to a Nikolaev hospital to visit activists wounded at a rally in support of the country’s federalization.
April 9–10, 2014 (night). In Kiev, fire broke out in the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU) office. At the end of February 2014, the building was taken over by ‘Euromaidan’ activists. It was occupied by extremists from the neo-Nazi organization ‘S-14’, the lustration committee and the so-called ‘Maiden’s Clerical Hundred’.
The CPU faction refused to vote in the Verkhovna Rada until the party’s office was returned. On April 9, a court ordered the ‘Euromaidan’ protesters to leave the building but, before they did, they vandalized it, breaking furniture, stealing office equipment, and leaving behind cans with petrol. Firefighters suspect arson, as fire erupted in three locations at the same time.
April 10, 2014. In Odessa, during the celebrations commemorating the 70th anniversary of the city’s liberation from German and Romanian occupants, clashes occurred between ‘Euromaidan’ supporters and their opponents. Ukrainian nationalists from the ‘Odessa Maidan’ group tore the Soviet Banner of Victory from the flagpole and stamped on it.
Several dozen ‘Euromaidan’ militants blocked the exit of the hotel where O. Tsaryov, Ukraine presidential candidate and deputy of the Verkhovna Rada from the Party of Regions, was staying. Extremists armed with stones and sticks, were chanting ‘Get out, Tsaryov!’ An attempt by ‘Anti-Maidan’ protesters to allow access to the hotel ended in a brawl. 10 people received injuries.
April 11, 2014. Rada deputy A. Briginets, from the ‘Batkivshchyna’ faction, posted on Twitter that more than 100 citizens of the Russian Federation that supported Crimea’s reunification with Russia are banned from entering Ukraine. The deputy referred to SBU’s reply to his query.
April 11, 2014. In Rovno, about 50 radicals from the “Right Sector” broke into the regional branch of the Communist Party of Ukraine and demanded it suspend its activities and transfer the title to the buildings to the local community. The attackers seized the party’s books and newspapers and burnt them in the yard before driving out the CPU members and sealing the building.
April 13, 2014. In Kharkov, clashes occurred between ‘Euromaidan’ supporters and advocates of Ukraine’s federalization. 50 people were injured, including 1 police officer.
April 13, 2014. In Zaporozhye, ‘Euromaidan’ supporters attacked protesters against the Kiev regime. Some people were injured.
April 13, 2014. In Mariupol, about 20 people were injured in clashes between supporters and opponents of Ukraine’s federalization.
April 14, 2014. In Kiev, Ukrainian presidential candidate O. Tsaryov was severely beaten inside the ICTV television channel, where he was taking part in live programme called ‘Svoboda slova’. An aggressive mob, headed by “Right Sector” extremists, attacked the politician and demanded that he withdrew from participating in the presidential election. O. Tsaryov is the chairman of the Anti-Fascist Forum of Ukraine and advocates a federal structure for the country.
Near the same building, radical nationalists attacked another presidential candidate — M. Dobkin, a Rada deputy from the Party of Regions. They smashed his car and punctured its tyres, threw flour at him and poured bright-green antiseptic over him. Dobkin’s assistants were injured. Previously, he had reportedly been repeatedly arrested and threatened with death for criticizing the current Kiev authorities.
April 14, 2014. In Sumy, “Right Sector” radicals vandalized the CPU office, destroyed Lenin’s portrait, party material and St. George Ribbons and beat one of the employees.
April 16, 2014. Several leaders of the Donbass People’s Militia disappeared (most- likely kidnapped):
O. Seletskaya, a leader of the Donbass People’s Militia, disappeared in Mariupol. A month before she was fired from the ‘Azovelectrostal’ plant for ‘too strong social activism’;
Three People’s Militia activists disappeared in Gorlovka (A. Sapunov, elected people’s mayor at a rally, and his closest aides — Evgeny and Tatiana Shevchenko, a married couple).
April 18, 2014. In the vicinity of Donetsk, L. Baranov, one of the coordinators of the Donetsk People’s Republic, was forcefully put in a jeep (presumably by SBU officers) and driven to an unknown location.
April 19, 2014. In Kharkov, Ukrainian law-enforcement officials detained K. Dolgov, one of the coordinators of the movement for federalizing Ukraine, on absurd charges of setting fire to an ATM machine.
April 21, 2014. Rada deputy O. Lyashko — a Ukrainian presidential candidate — proposed on his Facebook account to destroy by air or missile attacks TV towers broadcasting Russian channels that are, according to him, ‘instruments of anti- Ukrainian propaganda’. ‘We must also destroy nests of terrorists by targeted air strikes,’ Lyashko wrote, meaning by ‘terrorists’ those who live in south-east Ukraine and advocate the country’s federalization.
April 21, 2014. In Kiev, “Right Sector” militants brutally beat A. Selivanov, leader of the All-Ukrainian Movement ‘Vernoye Kazachestvo’. According to the victim, the attack was caused by his pubic activities aimed at developing close ties between Ukraine and Russia.
April 27, 2014. In Kharkov, a violent crowd of fans of the ‘Metallist’ and ‘Dnepr’ football teams, equipped with sticks, firecrackers and stones attacked a rally of unarmed supporters of Ukraine’s federalization. As a result, 14 people were hospitalized, some with grave wounds.
April 27, 2014. P. Gubarev, the ‘people’s mayor’ of Donetsk, who was seized by SPU employees in early March, went on indefinite hunger strike in protest against the military operation in Slavyansk. OSCE representatives who visited the political prisoner in a Kiev jail reported that the hunger strike affected his health.
April 28, 2014. At Kherson airport, the plane carrying Ukrainian presidential candidate A. Dobkin, who came to the city to meet voters as part of his election campaign, was blocked on the runway by armed representatives from local nationalist organizations. The presidential candidate had to leave Kherson without stepping off the plane.
April 28, 2014. In Donetsk, SBU employees arrested deputy ‘people’s mayor’ I. Perepechaenko.
April 28, 2014. Supporters of Ukraine’s federalization and presidential candidates
O. Tsaryov and M. Dobkin were denied participation in the presidential debates that were to be aired on the ‘First National’ TV channel on May 9–23.
April 28, 2014. An assassination attempt on G. Kernes, Kharkov’s mayor, who received a severe gunshot wound.
April 28, 2014. In Donetsk, football ‘ultras’ brought from different regions of Ukraine and equipped with sticks, chains and non-lethal weapons, and chanting neo-Nazi slogans, attacked participants of an anti-fascist march. 14 civilians with more or less grave injuries asked for medical assistance.
April 29, 2014. In central Kiev, on Maidan Nezalezhnosti, a mass fight occurred between representatives of the so-called ‘Maidan self-defense’ and neo-Nazis from the ‘Patriot of Ukraine’ organization.
April 29, 2014. Leader of the ‘South-East’ social movement, O. Tsaryov, withdrew Ukraine’s presidential election. Explaining his decision, he stated that Kiev authorities did not allow him to bring the voice of the south-east to those living in other regions of Ukraine. Tsaryov’s press service quoted him saying, ‘going to Kiev to make public speeches would mean risking my life, and participation in televised debates on the UT-1 channel via teleconference was not allowed.’
April 30, 2014. In Nikolaev, unidentified people shot at the car of D. Nikolaev, the ‘people’s mayor’. He and his wife had received telephoned death threats on several occasions.
May 1, 2014. Kiev’s district administrative court prohibited activities of the All-Ukrainian ‘Russian Unity’ party on Ukrainian territory accusing it of ‘encroaching upon the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country’.
May 2, 2014. In a video that appeared on the Internet, “Right Sector” activists took responsibility for both the past and future abductions of resistance activists in Kharkov.
May 5–6, 2014 (night). In Dnepropetrovsk, unidentified people started a fire in the office of O. Tsaryov, Ukraine people’s deputy and leader of the ‘South-East’ movement.
May 6, 2014. Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada adopted a decision to request the Communist Party of Ukraine faction leave a closed meeting where the report of law-enforcement agencies on the situation in the country was presented. The Party of Regions faction left the room as a sign of solidarity as well. ‘Today they put a bullet hole in parliamentary democracy,’ commented Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko.
May 8, 2014. In Kharkov, Ukrainian law-enforcement agencies detained an activist of the movement for the federalization of Ukraine, and President of the Kiev branch of the bikers’ club ‘Night Wolves’, A. Vereschagin on ‘separatism’ charges. It was done on the grounds that he was delivering humanitarian aid (insulin and medicines for children) to Slavyansk.
May 10, 2014. In Bryanka town (the Lugansk region), unidentified assailants beat and then shot to death a supporter of Ukraine’s federalization for the distribution of leaflets inviting people to take part in the referendum.
May 13, 2014. In Kharkov, federalization activist and President of the Kiev branch of the ‘Night Wolves’ bikers’ club, A. Vereschagin, was kidnapped. It took place immediately after his release from prison on bail of 97 thousand hryvnia (he was arrested on May 8, 2014, on the grounds that he was delivering humanitarian aid to Slavyansk). As he left the temporary detention facility, Vereschagin was pushed into a car and taken to an unknown destination. Presumably, Vereschagin’s kidnap was organised by militants from the extremist “Right Sector” organization.
May 13, 2014. An assassination attempt was made against the ‘people’s governor’ of the Lugansk region, V. Bolotov. His car was fired upon in an ambush by unidentified persons near the village of Izvarino (60km from Lugansk). V. Bolotov was wounded in the shoulder and was hospitalized.
May 14, 2014. In Dnepropetrovsk, armed people wearing masks and black National Guard uniforms tried to burn down the home of the ‘South-East’ movement leader and Rada deputy O. Tsarev. They broke the fence, ransacked inside, fired at the car parked in the yard and left. After that, the house caught fire. But it turned out that the attackers got the wrong address and, in fact, the house of one of Tsarev’s neighbours was damaged.
May 14–16, 2014. In Torez town (the Donetsk region) three anti-government activists were kidnapped. Local press reported: ‘As of the morning of May 16 in Torez, three activists were reported to be missing. The leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic in Torez — Irina Poltoratskaya — disappeared overnight on May 14–15. Donetsk People’s Republic activist Igor Polyakov was kidnapped during the night of May 15–16. Yesterday afternoon, on May 15, Denis Yaniev left home and never returned. As you know, he was a member of the commission to conduct a referendum on the Donetsk People’s Republic.’ On May 21, Rada deputy
Lyashko’s battalion ‘Ukraine’ admitted kidnapping the abovementioned people, as well as seizing Alexander Simca from Sniezhnoye town (the Donetsk region).
May 15, 2014. A recording of a telephone conversation between Ukrainian oligarch
I. Kolomoyskiy and ‘South-East’ movement leader O. Tsarev, which took place earlier, appeared on the Internet. Kolomoyskiy said that Dnepropetrovsk’s Jewish Community linked O. Tsarev with the death of a Jew in Mariupol and was ready to put a million-dollar reward on his head. Furthermore, Kolomoysky threatened Tsarev that he would ‘hang his relatives right in the city square’.
May 16, 2014. Ukraine Communist Party leader and presidential candidate
Simonenko, at a TV election debate on the First National Channel, announced
his withdrawal from the campaign because he believed the upcoming poll to be unfair and illegitimate.
After the TV debate, Simonenko was met at the TV centre by a group of about 30 people with bats and ‘Molotov cocktails’. The Communist Party leader left the building through an emergency exit, but his pursuers soon overtook his car, blocked it and smashed its windows. The ‘Molotov cocktail’ bottles were thrown at the car. Representatives of the so-called ‘Automaidan’ admitted responsibility for the attack.
May 20–21, 2014 (night). In Dnepropetrovsk, unidentified persons torched the house and car of O. Tsarev. He reported that, at 2am, two buses arrived, filled with armed people who threw ‘Molotov cocktails’ at his house.
May 27, 2014. The Ukraine Communist Party’s premises in Dnepropetrovsk were attacked.
May 29, 2014. About 30 people in camouflage gear and masks entered the grounds of the ‘Dnipro paper factory LLC’, owned by the ‘South-East’ movement leader O. Tsarev, and announced that the factory’s owner had changed.
June 3, 2014. The Rada voted in favour of initiating criminal proceedings against — and for the arrest of — Deputy Tsarev, who stands for the federalization of Ukraine.
Restrictions on freedom of the media and journalist activities
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
Article 3. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
Article 9. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
Article 13. 1. Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. 2. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
Article 19. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers;
Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1950)
Article 2. Everyone’s right to life shall be protected by law. No one shall be deprived of his life intentionally save in the execution of a sentence of a court following his conviction of a crime for which this penalty is provided by law.
Article 5. Everyone has the right to liberty and security of person.
Article 6. In the determination of his civil rights and obligations or of any criminal charge against him, everyone is entitled to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal established by law.
Article 10. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.
Article 13. Everyone whose rights and freedoms as set forth in this Convention are violated shall have an effective remedy before a national authority notwithstanding that the violation has been committed by persons acting in an official capacity.
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966)
Article 6. Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.
Article 7. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Article 9. Everyone has the right to liberty and security of person. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention. No one shall be deprived of his liberty except on such grounds and in accordance with such procedure as are established by law.
Article 12. Everyone lawfully within the territory of a State shall, within that territory, have the right to liberty of movement and freedom to choose his residence.
Article 19. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.
April 2, 2014. Ukrainian border guards denied entry to the country to a crew from Russia’s REN TV. They stamped ‘Entrance to Ukraine prohibited’ in the foreign travel passports of reporter R. Super and cameraman P. Kosikhin.
In just one week (March 26 — April 2) eight Russian TV crews were deported from Kiev, Donetsk and Odessa.
April 7, 2014. Ukrainian border guards denied entry to two journalists working for the Russian-language edition of Forbes magazine; they were removed from the Moscow-Dnepropetrovsk train at Kazachja Lopan station and put on the first train back to Russia. The official explanation of the decision to deny entry to the correspondents was that ‘they did not have enough money for the trip and the goal of the journey was unconfirmed’. The magazine says, ‘border guards also told the reporters that if they attempted to cross the border again, they would be denied entry to Ukraine for three years’.
April 7, 2014. A. Ivanov, a cameraman from RT’s Ruptly video agency (a division of the Russian TV network ‘Russia Today’, known as ‘RT’) was detained and interrogated at Donetsk airport. He said officials took away his passport — promising to give it back only when he returned to Russia — and put him on a plane to Moscow. According to RT Editor-in-Chief M. Simonyan, Ukrainian border guards explained their decision by the fact that Ivanov did not have enough funds to stay in Ukraine.
April 8, 2014. M. Dodonov, a commentator from ‘Star’ TV, was detained by Ukrainian border guards at Donetsk airport and held for more than seven hours in a so-called ‘retiring room’, while his belongings and documents were inspected by Special Services staff. Afterwards, he was offered the chance to buy a return ticket at his own expense. The journalist said that border guards accompanied him to the plane and that none of the crew was surprised because, later on the plane, he was joined by correspondent colleagues from St. Petersburg’s ‘Channel 5’ as well as the ‘Moscow Region’ channel. On the same day, a reporter from LifeNews TV was expelled from Ukrainian territory in the same manner.
April 8, 2014. RIA News photojournalist A. Kudenko was denied entry to Ukraine at Donetsk airport border control under the pretext of allegedly not having enough money to stay in the country.
April 8, 2014. Ukrainian law-enforcement bodies disrupted the business trip of several employees from St. Petersburg’s ‘Channel 5’. Journalists S. Bernwald and
K. Krylov were denied entry to Donetsk, while a filming crew from the current affairs programme ‘Now’ (A. Mayorov and S. Guryanov), were detained at Kharkov airport without explanation.
April 8, 2014. Ukrainian border guards removed RIA News journalist A. Malyshkin from the Moscow-Lugansk train. He was also denied entry to the country with the following explanation: ‘lack of funds to stay in the territory of Ukraine’.
April 8, 2014. Kharkov Regional State Administration staff would not permit a RIA News correspondent to join a tour especially arranged for journalists of a regional administration building that was liberated at night from pro-federalization activists. The RIA News correspondent was denied access on the grounds that he represented Russian media.
April 8–9, 2014 (night). Editor-in-chief of the magazine ‘Russian Pioneer’ and special correspondent for ‘Kommersant’, A. Kolesnikov, and the newspaper’s photographer, D. Azarov, were taken from ‘Moscow-Donetsk’ train by Ukrainian border guards and banned from entering the country under the contrived pretext of a lack of funds, despite the fact that each journalist carried 50,000 rubles and intended to stay in Donetsk for just three days.
April 9, 2014. Ukrainian border guards continued to put Russian journalists on the ‘Persona non grata’ list. ‘Kommersant’ special correspondent A. Kolesnikov and photographer D. Azarov were taken from the train going to Donetsk.
April 10, 2014. The Committee for the Protection of Journalists, an international non-governmental organization, called on the Ukrainian authorities not to impede the work of Russian colleagues because the restriction of media access strengthens suspicion and misunderstanding. As of April 10, 2014, Ukrainian border guards denied entry to Ukraine, under contrived pretexts, to more than 20 Russian journalists.
April 10, 2014. The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, D. Mijatović, said that the OSCE had received reports of more than 20 cases when Russian journalists were denied the right to cross the Ukrainian border.
April 10, 2014. R. Miroshnik, Director General of the Lugansk Regional TV and Radio Company, was sacked after a decision by the State Committee of Ukraine for TV and Radio Broadcasting ‘because he insufficiently criticized separatists in a live broadcast’. Miroshnik said of his dismissal that, ‘what is happening now is the fight against dissidents, an unwillingness to listen to the other side and to the South-East…’
April 13, 2014. A journalist for the ‘AIF’ newspaper, V. Kozhemyakin, was arrested at the Novoazovsk border checkpoint in the Donetsk region and deported to Russia. He was banned from entering Ukraine for three years.
April 14, 2014. According to the ‘Echo of Moscow’ radio station’s website, correspondent V. Boyko, who was to cover the situation in east Ukraine, was denied entry to the country.
April 14, 2014. A correspondent from the ‘URA.Ru’ agency, R. Zhuravlev, was detained at Kiev’s Borispol airport while crossing the Ukraine border. He was banned from entering the country for five years.
April 15, 2014. Correspondents from Russia’s REN TV channel — M. Plakhotnik and S. Sidorenko — were detained in Odessa. They were searched and interrogated.
April 16, 2014. Ukrainian policemen beat and detained correspondent K. Babaeva and camera operator M. Povalyaeva from Russia’s LifeNews TV. They took their phones, Dictaphones and took them to Mariupol police station where they were interrogated for several hours.
April 16, 2014. Near Izyum town (Kharkov region) a filming crew for the All- Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company was detained: special correspondent E. Reshetnev, cameraman S. Truskov and engineer V. Klivanov. The journalists were searched and interrogated.
April 17, 2014. Clashes between locals and troops sent by the Kiev regime to ‘enforce order’ took place in the Donetsk region. In Mariupol, Ukrainian servicemen attacked by firing at local citizens who tried to enter the grounds of military unit 3057 of Ukraine’s internal military forces. Three people died, 13 were injured.
April 23, 2014. In Pershotravinsk (Dnepropetrovsk region) Ukrainian security forces detained an employee from Russia’s NTV channel and Belorusian citizen
S. Chirich. They exercised physical and moral pressure on him to make him ‘admit’ that he was a Russian spy.
April 25, 2014. In Donetsk, SBU officials detained LifeNews TV journalists J. Pustoplesnova and M. Pudovkin. Having accused them of engaging in activities that ‘threatened the security and territorial integrity of Ukraine’ they deported them from the country.
April 25, 2014. Ukrainian border guards denied entry into Ukraine of the special correspondent from the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, A. Rogatkin.
April 26, 2014. Ukrainian servicemen detained LifeNews correspondent S. Golyadin at the checkpoint between the Kharkov and Donetsk regions. He endured tough questioning in a humiliating way.
April 28, 2014. In Kiev, violent thugs picketed two Ukrainian TV channels — Inter and ICTV — demanding they stop broadcasting Russian programmes and series. They smashed windows at Inter TV’s headquarters and threw an object
inside that later required fumigation. Near the ICTV premises, hooligans left banners saying ‘Off Russian propaganda!’
April 29, 2014. The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, D. Mijatović, condemned the acts of violence towards journalists covering Ukrainian events. She stressed in her statement published on the OSCE website that ‘impunity for the assailants of journalists and broadcasters is escalating tensions and contributing to the deterioration of the security situation’. She also expressed her outrage at ‘the lack of response by law-enforcement authorities to these attacks,’ adding that the ‘Rule of law must be reintroduced in Ukraine’.
May 2014. In the Slavyansk area, a car carrying reporters from ‘Komsomolskaya Pravda’ — A. Kots and D. Steshin — was shot at by a sniper from the Ukrainian military. After that, the SBU banned Kots from entering the country for five years.
May 5, 2014. Ukrainian neo-Nazis labeled British journalist Graham Phillips, who was working for Russia Today, a ‘Russian spy’ and set a $10,000 bounty on his head. The British reporter posted the information on Twitter and Facebook.
May 6, 2014. The Russian mass media received information from their trustees working in the Ukrainian security forces that Ukraine special services were preparing a provocation regarding Russian journalists covering the situation in south-east Ukraine. According to information received by Kirill Kleimenov, the Director of News Programmes at Russia’s Channel One, the Ukraine Security Service had bought some substances prohibited in Ukraine (but permitted in Russia) in order to slip them into the hotel rooms in Kharkov where the Russian journalists were staying. Kleimenov said the provocation was being aimed, in particular, at staff from the ‘Russia’ and ‘First’ TV channels.
May 7, 2014. A camera crew from Russia’s ‘TV Tsentr’ channel (consisting of commentator Vera Kuzmina, director Alexander Goriainov, camera operator Vladimir Chernikh and assistant cameraman Dmitriy Panov) was denied entry to Ukraine under a formal pretext (i.e. the absence of required documents. Their passports were marked with an ‘entry denied’ stamp).
The journalists were sent to cover the pre-election situation and presidential election in Ukraine. Judging from the fact that the Russian camera crew was awaited by Ukrainian mass media in Kiev’s Borispil airport, and the same day a report on its deportation was broadcast by the local TSN channel, it was a preplanned act by the Kiev regime aimed at restricting journalists’ activity.
May 7, 2014. Ukrainian security forces engaged fire on LifeNews journalists near Slavyansk. Several minutes before the mortar firing, Alexey Kazannikov
said that Ukrainian security forces disguised several Grad launch vehicles near the checkpoint. Reports came that Kiev was planning to use multiple launch rocket systems against the people’s volunteer corps.
May 9, 2014. During the assault on the Internal Affairs Department building in Mariupol, Ukrainian security forces wounded ‘RT’ TV freelance operator Fedor Zavaleikov in the stomach. He was taken to a local hospital.
May 10, 2014. Kiev-controlled military men detained freelance reporter Artem Larionov on the highway between Slavyansk and Kramatorsk. Larionov’s information blog actively put on the Internet data on the situation in south-east Ukraine.
May 12, 2014. Pavel Kanigin, a Russian Novaya Gazeta journalist, was kidnapped in the Donetsk region.
May 13, 2014. A LifeNews camera crew met a convoy of Ukrainian armoured vehicles near Kramatorsk, and was attacked by gunfire without prior warning. The correspondents’ car was damaged, but fortunately none of them was injured.
May 15, 2014. Near Kramatorsk, the Ukrainian military opened fire from an armoured personnel carrier on a car carrying camera crews from ‘RT’ and St. Petersburg’s ‘Channel Five’. Fortunately, none on board was injured.
May 16, 2014. Throughout the day 10 Russian mass media staff were either not allowed into or deported from Ukraine by security forces for allegedly being unauthorised work in a border area.
May 18, 2014. Ukrainian military men detained Oleg Sidiakin and Marat Saichenko — LifeNews journalists — near Kramatorsk, who were in Ukraine legally. Russia’s Foreign Ministry, the Council of the Federation and State Duma urged the release of the detainees. Ukrainian security forces held the correspondents until May 25. Ukrainian mass media published a video, in which the Russian reporters were shown on their knees with their arms pinned to their backs and sacks on their heads. After being released, the journalists said they were tortured, humiliated and moral coercion was exerted on them.
Kiev authorities ordered that Ukrainian intelligence agencies ‘found and neutralised’ the Russian journalists, after Oleg Sidiakin and Marat Saichenko had made a shocking video of helicopters bearing UN symbols, which, in violation of the agreement with the UN, were used by the Ukrainian military in punitive operations near Kramatorsk on May 13.
Anatoly Suleimanov, the Editor-in-Chief of the LifeNews television channel, said in an interview with the Russian News Service radio station that someone had set a price for the lives of his journalists: ‘We are 100% sure that someone had set a price of $10,000 — now $20,000 — for the lives of several of our staff in Ukraine.’
May 19, 2014. VGTRK correspondent Ksenia Kibkalo and her camera crew were detained in Uzhgorod. The journalists were interrogated, their filming equipment confiscated, some of their video recordings deleted and they were ordered to leave the country under the threat of criminal prosecution.
May 20, 2014. A Ukrainian border patrol denied entry to staff from the RT Arabic channel into the country. The reason for the denial was that the journalists had not managed to justify the purpose of their travel.
May 20, 2014. Correspondent Yaroslav Lukashev from the ‘Vesti FM’ radio station was deported from Ukraine while in Kiev’s Borispil airport. Despite his identity document and Ukrainian journalist accreditation, he was told that he had not provided enough documents to justify the purpose of his travel in Ukraine.
May 20, 2014. British freelance reporter Graham Phillips, while working for RT, was detained by Ukraine’s National Guard at the checkpoint in Mariupol. He was searched and aggressively interrogated. Security forces accused Phillips of spying for Russia and detained him for 35 hours. After intervention by the Russian and British Foreign Ministries, Graham Phillips was released.
May 21, 2014. The Ukrainian Border Guard Service refused permission to enter the country to two VGTRK camera crews and a group of REN TV correspondents, which were going to cover the May 25 presidential election; even though they had identity documents and official accreditations from the Ukrainian Central Electoral Commission. The journalists were told that they had not justified the purpose of travel.
May 22, 2014. Kiev authorities blocked the operations of Invest Group- a major Ukrainian Multimedia holding.
May 22, 2014. A group of armed people occupied a building belonging to Ukraine’s ‘Vesti’ newspaper. The journalists regarded the occupation of the building as pressure on the mass media the day prior to the presidential election.
May 23, 2014. The Ukrainian Border Guard Service refused to permit a camera crew from the RT Spanish channel to enter the country, even though the correspondents had accreditations from Ukraine’s Central Electoral Commission. The journalists were going to Odessa to cover the presidential election.
May 24, 2014. Kiev authorities deported a VGTRK camera crew (led by special correspondent Alexander Rogatkin) from Ukraine. The journalists were there to cover the presidential election, but they were taken off their train at Konotop railway station, detained, and then ordered to leave the country. The group had all the required documents, including accreditation from the Ukrainian Central Electoral Commission, but the Russians were accused of holding forged documents.
May 24, 2014. A group of foreign journalists came under Ukrainian army mortar fire near Slavyansk. Andy Rocchelli, a correspondent from Italy’s Cesura agency, and Andrey Mironov, his Russian interpreter, were killed. William Roguelon, a French freelance photographer, was wounded in both legs.
May 24, 2014. The Ukrainian border patrol denied entry to ‘Kommersant FM’ correspondent Natalia Suvorova as she allegedly did not have enough money. The journalist was going to Kiev by train and carrying about 6,000 rubles in cash with more available via her banking card.
May 26, 2014. The Ukrainian Air Force conducted a missile and bombing raid on Donetsk airport where flights were stopped. A group of Russian and foreign journalists came under fire from Ukrainian security forces 500 meters from the airport.
May 26, 2014. Unidentified people opened fire on a car carrying an ITAR-TASS correspondent, damaging the vehicle. Fortunately, the journalist was not injured.
May 27, 2014. A ‘Mir-24’ camera crew came under sniper fire in Donetsk. According to correspondent Maxim Krasotkin, the sniper fired close to the camera crew as they tried to get closer to the airport.
May 29, 2014. Journalists from ‘Russia-24’ TV came under fire as they filmed near Donetsk airport. The gunshots, lasting about 10 minutes, came from a high-caliber weapon. No one got injured as a result of the shooting.
May 30, 2014. Dunja Mijatović, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, noted in a press release that the safety of journalists remained one of the main problems in east Ukraine.
June 6, 2014. Russia’s ‘Zvezda’ television channel revealed that two of its staff on assignment near Slavyansk had gone missing (cameraman Andrey Sushenkov and sound technician Anton Malishev). It transpired that they were detained by members of Ukraine’s National Guard at the checkpoint. According to a witness, the journalists had sacks put on their heads, were forced onto their knees and later taken to an unknown location. After their release the journalists said that, for two
days, they had been held ‘almost without water in a narrow, stuffy room, where the temperature reached 50 degrees’ and that methods of physical coercion had been used on them.
June 6, 2014. Oleg Lyashko, people’s deputy of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada, provoked an incident with a VGTRK camera crew in parliament building. In the hall, Lyashko approached Russian journalist Alexander Balitskii and demanded he show his identity documents. Having received the accreditation card the deputy tried to tear it up. He then literally ejected the camera group out of the Rada, saying that the Russian journalists ‘did not have any moral right to enter the Ukrainian parliament’. The incident was accompanied by grievous public insults from Oleg Lyashko towards the Russian journalists.
June 17, 2014. Another terrifying tragedy took place near Lugansk. Mortar fire conducted by the Ukrainian security forces on an area where there were no military facilities resulted in the deaths of two VGTRK correspondents: Igor Kornelyuk and Alexander Voloshin.
30 June 2014. Camera operator Anatoly Klyan from ‘Pervyi kanal’ was killed by Kiev forces in Donetsk. A car with journalists of LifeNews TV was shot at with light weapons near a military unit, and were lucky to escape. Unknown persons started to shoot at engineering crews from the Mir 24 and REN TV channels.
Tragedy in Odessa
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
Article 3. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
Article 5. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Article 7. All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.
Article 19. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966)
Article 6. Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.
Article 7. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. In particular, no one shall be subjected without his free consent to medical or scientific experimentation.
Article 19. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.
Article 20. Any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law.
Article 21. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of association with others, including the right to form and join trade unions for the protection of his interests. No restrictions may be placed on the exercise of this right other than those which are prescribed by law and which are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security or public safety, public order, the protection of public health or morals or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
Article 26. All persons are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to the equal protection of the law.
Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1950)
Article 2. Everyone’s right to life shall be protected by law. No one shall be deprived of his life intentionally save in the execution of a sentence of a court following his conviction of a crime for which this penalty is provided by law.
Article 3. No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Article 10. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.
Article 11. Freedom of assembly and association
Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and to freedom of association with others, including the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.
No restrictions shall be placed on the exercise of these rights other than such as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others. This article shall not prevent the imposition of lawful restrictions on the exercise of these rights by members of the armed forces, of the police or of the administration of the State.
Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (1995)
Article 9. The Parties undertake to recognise that the right to freedom of expression of every person belonging to a national minority includes freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas in the minority language, without interference by public authorities and regardless of frontiers. The Parties shall ensure, within the framework of their legal systems, that persons belonging to a national minority are not discriminated against in their access to the media.
May 2, 2014. A mass killing of Ukrainian federalisation supporters by militants of Ukrainian ultra-nationalist and neo-Nazi groups took place. In the middle of the day over a thousand radical football fans that had earlier been brought to Odessa, joined the armed ‘Right Sector’ and ‘Maidan Self-Defence’ in the march through the city centre under the slogan “For a united Ukraine”. Participants of the march were also chanting “Death to enemies” and “Knife the Moskals”. During the march numerous fights and gun fights broke out, instigated by unidentified persons wearing red sleeve badges. The first victims were wounded and killed.
By 7pm the radicals reached the ‘Kulikovo pole’ square where they destroyed and set fire to the tent encampment of the ‘Euromaidan’ opponents who were gathering signatures for the referendum on federalisation of Ukraine and granting Russian language an official language status. During the fight, THE attackers used gasoline bombs and pavement blocks; gunshots could be heard.
The federalisation supporters tried to take refuge in the Trades Union building, that was swiftly locked up and set on fire by the Ukrainian nationalists.
First, the main entrance and then the first floor lobby were set on fire. The fire spread to several floors, which was facilitated by preventing the fire brigades that had arrived into the square from putting it out. As stated by the Head of the Regional Department of the State Service for Emergency Situations of Ukraine, Volodymyr Bodelan, the firefighters arrived at the square in a timely manner; but the crowds at the Trades Union building would not let the vehicles approach the burning building.
Some Euromaidan supporters interfered with the firefighting operation in the Trades Union building. They prevented the federalisation supporters from escaping by shooting at the windows and fire escapes, and so forcing the barricaded people to jump out of the windows. Many fell to their deaths. Those who managed to escape were ruthlessly beaten by the crazed nationalists to the strains of the Ukrainian national anthem and screams of ‘Hail to Ukraine’. The burnt and beaten Maidan opponents were promptly arrested for arson by the police officers who’d been previously been standing aside.
According to official sources, 46 people (among them 8 women) died. The oldest was 70, the youngest — only 17 years old. Most were burned alive or died of carbon monoxide poisoning. 247 people sought medical help, 99 of whom were admitted to hospital. Another 48 people were missing as of May 5th.
In the meantime, O. Tzarev, a member of the Ukrainian parliament and a leader of ‘South-East’ movement, together with a number of Ukrainian politicians, claimed that the authorities were intentionally under-reporting the number of victims, concerned about possible public unrest. Based on the information from undisclosed sources in law enforcement and forensics, local media reported that the actual death toll was between 72 and 116 people. Among those killed was a local council member for the Regional party, V. Markin, who died in hospital as a result of the injuries he suffered after being beaten by ‘Right sector’ militants; and an Odessa poet, V. Negaturov, who died in an intensive care unit from the wounds he suffered at the Trades Union building).
May 2, 2014. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs categorically condemned the tragic events, making a point that it serves ‘as additional evidence of the criminal lack of responsibility in the Kiev authorities, who are conniving with the national radicals, including the Right Sector, who brazenly organise a physical terror campaign against those who support federalisation and real constitutional changes in the Ukrainian community.’
May 3, 2014. The President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, expressed his condolences to the relatives of the victims killed in Odessa and added that he felt deepest indignation at the actions of the Kiev authorities, which can be interpreted as a crime.
May 3, 2014. The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon demanded a conclusive investigation into the circumstances of what happened in Odessa on May 2nd.
May 3, 2014. The tragic events in Odessa were enthusiastically welcomed by the Ukrainian nationalist community who referred to them on their websites as a ‘triumph of the Ukrainian spirit’ and those who had burnt alive in the Trades Union building were referred to as ‘Colorado beetles’ and ‘Shish-kebab’.
What’s more, in her comment on the mass killing of Kiev government opponents by the ’Euromaidan’ militants, Iryna Farion, a Ukrainian parliament (Rada) deputy for the Svoboda party wrote the following: ‘Bravo, Odessa! You showed real Ukrainian spirit. You are the birthplace of the great nationalists Ivan and Yuri Leap. Let demons burn in hell! Football fans are the top rebels. Bravo!’
Another parliament deputy, and candidate for mayor of Kiev, L. Orobets of the Batkivshchyna party commented on the events in Odessa on her Facebook page saying: ‘This day will go down in history. Despite having been betrayed at least partly by the militia, the Odessans stood for Odessa and proved to all that Odessa is part of Ukraine. This victory was secured at the expense of the patriots’ lives. Colorado beetles mobs were eradicated. Aggressors that struck first were met with a resounding rebuff’.
Ukrainian presidential candidate, and a leader of Batkivshchyna’ party,
Y. Timoshenko, declared upon her arrival in Odessa that the burning of people was merely an attempt to protect an administrative building, while the attack on a federalisation supporters’ camp by radical nationalist was just a peaceful rally. Head of the Odessa region’s State Administration. V. Nemirovsky, announced on his Facebook page that ‘the actions of Odessans attempting to disarm and capture the armed terrorists are to be considered lawful’.
May 3, 2014. the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs declared that the preliminary investigation established that the fire in the Trades Union building was caused by gasoline bombs thrown down — that is — by the ‘pro-Russian activists’ trapped in the building. However, it conflicts with the footage filmed at the site of the tragedy and the numerous eyewitness testimonies maintaining that the fire started after the building was pelted with bottles filled with flammable liquid from the street. People inside the building were trapped as the attackers set the doors on fire. That same day the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was quick to lay the responsibility for what had happened in Odessa on the Russian secret service. The acting Head of the Ukrainian Presidential Administration, S. Pashinsky, also made similar remarks.
The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs called this version ‘delirium, a total lie and cynicism’, demanding that Kiev disclose information as to whether there had been any Russian citizens among the victims of fire in Odessa, adding that, otherwise, such declarations should be viewed as another unfounded attempt to convince the public of a certain Russian trace in an attempt by Kiev’s authorities to dodge all responsibility for what’s happening in Ukraine.
After that, the Ukraine Security Service claimed that the Odessa turmoil was financed by former Ukraine Deputy Prime Minister S. Arbuzov and the former Inland Revenue Minister, A. Klimenko. In turn, Arbuzov and Klimenko fervently denied all accusations of their involvement in the events in Odessa in their interviews with the Russian press.
May 3, 2014. First Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine V. Yarema stated that the people in the Trades Union building ‘died suddenly, very abruptly’ due to the ‘combustion of a certain substance that emitted gas’. Later, this version was repeated by the regional head of the Ukraine State Service for Emergency Situations of Ukraine,
V. Bodelan, who told the journalists that the majority of those who perished in the Trades Union building died as a result of intoxication by an unknown substance.
Also on May 3rd, after some hesitation, the self-proclaimed Kiev authorities declared two days of mourning in Ukraine to mark the deaths of the people in Odessa.
May 4, 2014. over a thousand Odessa residents besieged the City Department of Internal Affairs building, demanding the release of the federalisation supporters arrested on May 2nd. Picketers told the journalists that over 60 activists from ‘Kulikovo pole’ were taken away in police vans after they had escaped the burning building and were brutally beaten by radical nationalist militants. Some of them were wounded and burnt and required medical help; 11 of the arrested were women. The picketers also demanded the resignation of the Governor of the Odessa region, V. Nemirovsky. They called him a ‘murderer’, blaming him for the deaths of those who had burnt alive in the Trades Union building.
After the protesters tried to seize the building, the police started to release the arrested federalisation supporters. 67 protesters were discharged. However, 42 of the Kiev political opponents who were arrested on May 2nd, had already been transferred to a pre-trial detention facility in central Ukraine.
That same evening, ‘Right Sector’ radicals and representatives of the so-called ‘Maidan Self-defence’ besieged the regional police headquarters protesting against the earlier release of the federalisation supporters.
May 4, 2014. During his visit to Odessa, Ukrainian Prime Minister A. Yatsenyuk, appointed by the Ukrainian parliament — the Verkhovna Rada — pre-emptively laid the blame for what had happened on ‘terrorists’ and the police, ordering the Prosecutor General to look for the ‘Russian trace’.
On the same day, the Odessa region prosecutor’s office opened a case against police officers, holding them responsible for the deaths of 46 people during the clashes with the radicals on May 2nd.
May 4, 2014. The U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, G. Pyatt, stated in his interview with CNN that the USA had no proof of Russia’s involvement in the tragic events in Odessa on May 2nd.
May 5, 2014. After examining the Trades Union building in Odessa, OSCE monitoring mission members presented a report in which they concluded that the fire within the building spread along the hallways of the first two floors. According to their estimates, three days after the tragedy ‘the situation in the city remained tense’. The report also said that the majority of victims were identified as residents of Odessa and the neighboring regions of Ukraine. However, the OSCE staff didn’t get the chance to establish the events that led to the deaths of several dozen people in the Trades Union building as they were forced to leave the town in the afternoon due to personal security threats.
May 6, 2014. The Ukraine Ministry of Internal Affairs stated that no Russian passports were discovered on the people who perished in the Odessa Tradess Union building fire on May 2nd, despite previous announcements of this kind made in the Ukrainian media.
May 6, 2014. The Odessa Regional State Administration chairman, V. Nemirovsky, was relieved of his duties by the decree of the acting president of Ukraine, A. Turchinov.
He was replaced by I. Palitsa. On the same day, the newly-appointed Odessa region governor said that the tragedy of May 2nd in Odessa was caused by internal factors.
May 6, 2014. In Vienna, speaking at the Council of Europe ministerial meeting, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, S.V. Lavrov, noted that the events of May 2 were a frank display of fascism, but none of the radical nationalists who committed this terrible crime had been arrested. He feared that the investigation started by Kiev authorities might be “folded up” — as had happened with the fatal sniper shooting in the Ukrainian capital in February.
May 6, 2014. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights N. Pillay made a statement in which she expressed deep concern about the surge of violence in Ukraine, which led to an increase in destruction and the number of casualties. The tragedy in Odessa caused particular concern for the High Commissioner. She urged the Kiev authorities to carry out a quick but thorough investigation of the events, both in Odessa and in the Donetsk region.
N. Pillay demanded that Kiev ensures full compliance of the military and police operations with international standards, noting that the police must protect peaceful demonstrators, regardless of their political views. The most important thing, the High Commissioner emphasized — is that the authorities set an example of full compliance with the principle of the supremacy of law and of the rigorous protection of the rights of the country’s entire population, especially its Russian- speaking citizens.
N. Pillay strongly condemned the acts of violence and harassment of journalists in Ukraine and demanded that freedom of speech be ensured in the country. However, she urged journalists to be objective and avoid inciting enmity.
May 7, 2014. T. Ivanenko, an Odessa resident who survived the fire in the city’s Trades Union building a week earlier, shared in an interview with RT that she had been inside the building and, along with other Odessa residents, carried plywood sheets into the building to block the entrance door. She said that the ‘Right Sector’ and the so-called ‘Maidan Self-defense’ militants were arriving from all directions. ‘Nobody expected such cruelty, and we had nowhere to escape,’ she said. In her words, after having burnt the tents of Euromaidan’s opponents on ‘Kulikovo pole’ square, the militants started throwing gasoline bombs at the Trades Union building. They were throwing noise grenades as well.
She could not be certain that the grenades contained any sort of poison, but said that ‘it was impossible to breathe’. According to her, ‘firefighters arrived very late; there were a lot of casualties by that time,’ and noting that ‘the Fire brigade is stationed 700 metres from the Trades Union building; out of 10 engines only 2 arrived. People blocked inside the building started shouting from the windows, asking that the elderly women be evacuated first. I was the last one to descend and I was wearing a St. George ribbon on my sleeve. There was no protection from the police, and the firefighters just handed me over to them,’ said Ivanenko, adding that seven activists remained on the roof during the night and, once taken down, ‘they didn’t get any medical help and were just driven to a detention cell’. Ivanenko believes that ‘those who allowed it to happen, namely the new Ukrainian authorities
steadily working towards the country’s break up’ are the one responsible for the tragedy of May 2.
7 May, 2014. A. Kuzhel, a member of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada from the ‘Fatherland’ party, announced that parliament intends to create a temporary committee of inquiry to investigate the tragedy on May 2 in Odessa. Kuzhel admitted that the circumstances of people’s deaths raised multiple questions. She wondered in particular why the victims had only their faces burnt, but woollen clothes remained untouched by the fire.
On May 7, 2014 the Deputy Chief of the Regional Interior Ministry, D. Fuchedzhi, was detained on accusations of nonfeasance during the May 2 riots. He was also held responsible for releasing federalization supporters that were blocked in the Trades Union building. Later there was information that, on May 7, Fuchedzhi secretly left Ukraine.
The number of victims in Odessa after the events of May 2 reached 48 people, officials announced on May 11, 2013. Two more people died in hospital from gunshot wounds.
The Party of Regions fraction Ukraine’s Verhovna Rada demanded creating an interim committee to investigate civilian deaths in Odessa, Mariupol and other cities.
The grave of a victim of the Trades Union building fire on May 2 was violated in Odessa on May 13, 2014. Vandals burned wreaths and left a derogatory note. The cross was also damaged by the fire.
On May 15, 2014 Ihor Palytsia, the new Governor of the Odessa region, criticized the ‘Right Sector’ in his speech. Commenting on the tragic events of May 2 in Odessa, he said the members of this radical organization shouldn’t be present on the streets of the city. ‘Unfortunately, people died. And, unfortunately, during big rallies there are always some radical groups who come have a different agenda in mind. As for the radicals of today, they shouldn’t be allowed on the streets of the city. This is what I think about ‘Right Sector’. I think this group is funded by some people who pursue certain goals. There were no ideas in sight — wherever they appeared only provocations ensued,’ said Palytsia said at a meeting with the public initiative group ‘Odessa intellectuals’ Forum (Forum Odesskoy Intelligentsii)’.
On May 19, 2014 Chief of the main investigations section of Ukraine’s Department of Internal Affairs, Vitaly Sakal, told a press conference that investigators had discovered traces of chloroform in the Trades Union building.
On May 19, 2014 Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov wrote to the Secretaries General of the UN, the OSCE and the Council of Europe, as well as the Chairman-in- Office of the OSCE and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. In the letters he called on them to carry out an internationally-controlled, open, just and unbiased investigation of the events in Odessa. The Russian representatives suggested the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) should also be involved in the investigation as the substances used during the attack on the Trades Union building may equate to chemical weapons.
On May 20, 2014 Tatjana Zhdanok, a Latvian member of the European Parliament, requested that the Ukrainian radical organization ‘Right Sector’ be prosecuted for using chemical weapons during the Odessa tragedy on May 2.
On May 21, 2014 Ivan Katerynchuk, the Odessa region’s newly-appointed Head of the Main Department of Internal Affairs, accused police officers of being unprofessional. He claimed that ‘everyone knew the rioters had weapons and gasoline bombs,’ and that ‘If they had confiscated them, there wouldn’t have been so many victims.’ The Odessa police chief also reported the arrest of girls who had prepared bottles with an incendiary mixture for the militants, noting that they were paid to do it.
Dmitry Fuchedzhi, the former Deputy Head of the Internal Affairs in the Odessa region, said on May 22, 2014 in an interview with the NTV channel that the events of May 2 in Odessa were the result of the Kiev government’s provocation. He claimed that, three days prior, Vladimir Nemirovsky, the Governor of the Odessa region, was summoned to the ‘acting president’s administration’ and received detailed instructions. Afterwards, A. Parubiy, the Secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, came to Odessa. Since mid-April ‘Euromaidan’ militants began arriving in the city. Dmitry Fuchedzhi maintained the police weren’t able to prevent the tragedy in a timely manner, since all staff members of the City’s Internal Affairs Ministry headquarters were called to a meeting. ‘I believe the meeting was part of the provocation,’ he said.
On June 5, 2014 Herman Van Rompuy, President of the European Council, told a press conference after the G7 Summit in Brussels that the Group of Seven demanded ‘an independent investigation of the serious episodes in Ukraine, including the Odessa tragedy’.
The Snipers’ Case: a mock investigation, violation of the right to the presumption of innocence and of the right to a fair trial
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
Article 7. All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.
Article 11. Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defense.
Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1950)
Article 2. Everyone’s right to life shall be protected by law. No one shall be deprived of his life intentionally save in the execution of a sentence of a court following his conviction of a crime for which this penalty is provided by law.
Article 6.1. In the determination of his civil rights and obligations or of any criminal charge against him, everyone is entitled to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal established by law.
Judgment shall be pronounced publicly but the press and public may be excluded from all or part of the trial in the interests of morals, public order or national security in a democratic society, where the interests of juveniles or the protection of the private life of the parties so require, or to the extent strictly necessary in the opinion of the court in special circumstances where publicity would prejudice the interests of justice.
Article 6.2. Everyone charged with a criminal offence shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law.
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966)
Article 6. Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.
Article 9.1. Everyone has the right to liberty and security of person. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention. No one shall be deprived of his liberty except on such grounds and in accordance with such procedure as are established by law.
Article 9.2. Anyone who is arrested shall be informed, at the time of arrest, of the reasons for his arrest and shall be promptly informed of any charges against him.
Article 9.3. Anyone arrested or detained on a criminal charge shall be brought promptly before a judge or other officer authorized by law to exercise judicial power and shall be entitled to trial within a reasonable time or to release. It shall not be the general rule that persons awaiting trial shall be detained in custody, but release may be subject to guarantees to appear for trial, at any other stage of the judicial proceedings, and, should occasion arise, for execution of the judgment.
Article 9.4. Anyone who is deprived of his liberty by arrest or detention shall be entitled to take proceedings before a court, in order that that court may decide without delay on the lawfulness of his detention and order his release if the detention is not lawful.
Article 9.5. Anyone who has been the victim of unlawful arrest or detention shall have an enforceable right to compensation.
Article 14.2. Everyone charged with a criminal offence shall have the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law.
Article 26. All persons are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to the equal protection of the law.
April 2, 2014. the Ukrainian President V. Yanukovych, ousted as a result of a coup d’état, spoke to the Russian and foreign media, commenting on the February events in Kiev and the so-called ‘snipers case’. He said that he had not issued orders to break up the rally and that ‘shots were fired from the buildings that were controlled by the opposition at that time’.
Previously, a recording of a telephone conversation between the Estonian Foreign Minister U. Paet and the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, C. Ashton, dated February 2014 was posted on the Internet. While discussing the results of his the visit to Ukraine, Estonian Foreign Minister Paet referred to the information he’d received from O. Bogomolets, the principle doctor of ‘Maidan’, regarding the incidents of people having been shot by snipers during the February protests in Kiev. According to him, all the evidence suggests that both protesters and police officers were killed by the same snipers. He also said that the new coalition didn’t want to investigate the circumstances of what had happened, and that more and more people understand that it was not V. Yanukovych who masterminded the shooters, but rather someone from the new coalition.
This version was later confirmed by the former Chief of the SSU (Security Service of Ukraine) A. Yakimenko in his interview with the ‘Russia 1’ TV channel on March 12, 2014. He said that unidentified snipers shooting at people from both sides (’Berkut’ members and civilians from the opposition alike) on February 20, 2014 were based in the Philharmonics building that was controlled by opposition forces and the so-called ‘Commandant of Maidan’, A. Parubiy, who was appointed Secretary to Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council after the events of 21–22 February 2014. A. Yakimenko also noted that A. Parubiy had full control over the turnover of arms on Maidan, and not a single pistol, let alone a sniper rifle, could be brought in or out of the square without him knowing. A. Yakimenko said that, when the shootings began, he was approached by the ‘Right Sector leader D. Yarosh and the ‘Freedom’ leader O. Tyahnybok requesting to use the ‘Alpha’ Special Unit forces of the SSU (Security Service of Ukraine) to mop up the snipers from the buildings. However, in order to do that, they first had to obtain permission from the ‘Commandant of Maidan’ A. Parubiy; otherwise the Maidan protesters would start shooting the Alpha agents in the backs. A. Yakimenko requested A. Parubiy’ consent to have the unidentified snipers mopped up from the buildings, however,
A. Parubiy strongly opposed that.
According to the former Chief of the SSU, the snipers who fired shots from the Philharmonics building on February 20 were there to support the assault on Interior Ministry forces, ‘whose members were already demoralised and have, in fact, fled in panic, for fear of being shot like ducks in a shooting gallery,’ Yakimenko said in an interview with Russian television. They were chased by a group of armed people. At that point, Yakimenko said, snipers started firing at the pursuers of the police themselves, and they suffered losses. All of the shots were fired from the Philharmonics building.
When the first wave of shootings ended, many witnessed 20 peculiarly-dressed people leaving the building. They were carrying sniper rifle drag bags and Kalashnikov machine guns with optical sights. Yakimenko claimed that not only the law enforcers, but members of the opposition, such as ‘Freedom’, ‘Right Sector’, ‘Fatherland’, and ‘Udar’ parties witnessed it too. The snipers who had shot at people split into two groups of 10. One of the groups was lost track of by the SSU, the other one assumed a position in the Hotel “Ukraine”. The killings continued.
Yakimenko also stated that, according to intelligence, the snipers could be foreigners, such as mercenaries from the former Yugoslavia, as well former Special Forces agents from Ukraine’s Defence Ministry. Moreover, he called the events in Ukraine the result of external forces (and the U.S. in particular) playing out a scenario laid out for the 2015 Presidential vote ahead of time. Yakimenko also mentioned that A. Parubiy, V. Nalivaichenko and other ‘Euromaidan’ leaders are strongly associated with U.S. secret services.
April 3, 2014. Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office reported the detention of 12 former Berkut fighters on suspicion of using firearms in Kiev on 18–20 February.
On the same day Ukraine’s top officials — Acting Prosecutor General Oleg Makhnitsky, Acting Minister of the Interior Arsen Avakov and Head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) Valentin Nalivaichenko said at a joint news conference that on 18–20 February Alpha Group snipers from the SBU Special Operations Centre and Berkut special police units fired at Euromaidan in Kiev on the order of President Viktor Yanukovych. Journalists and experts noted numerous discrepancies and contradictions in the facts quoted by the law enforcement officials and the lack of conclusive evidence to back their accusations.
April 3, 2014. Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office issued a warrant for the arrest and delivery to court of former SBU Head Alexander Yakimenko on the grounds of organising the so-called anti-terrorist operation.
April 4, 2014. Former Ukrainian Minister of the Interior Vitaly Zakharchenko said in an interview with Channel One (Russia) that police officers were not to blame for massive shootings on Maidan Square. In his opinion both the Euromaidan protesters and Berkut fighters were hit by fire from the building that was controlled by so-called Maidan Commandant Andrei Paruby. According to Zakharchenko, Paruby controlled some other buildings in the city centre that had torture chambers,among other things .
April 6, 2014. Channel One broadcast a report where Berkut fighters in Kiev asked the cameraman: “Why have the trees with sniper bullets been cut down in Institutskaya Street?”
April 9, 2014. The media carried a statement of Georgian General Tristan Tsitelashvili to the effect that four Georgian snipers operated in Kiev on the order of former President Mikheil Saakashvili and under direct guidance of Givi Targamadze and Gia Baramidze.
April 10, 2014. Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Ad Hoc Investigating Commission that inquired into the causes of death of protesters on Kiev’s Independence Square in February 2014, MP Hennady Moskal spoke about a number of omissions made by the Prosecutor General’s Office and other law enforcement agencies during the inquiry into this case. He blamed them for their failure to provide ballistic and other essential evidence or seize the snipers’ rifles that may have been involved in the February events. He emphasised that “no material evidence has been collected; bullets are in different hospitals and nobody is conducting any expert examinations.”
Earlier Head of Ukraine’s Interior Ministry Medical Service Oleg Petrash also said that “no material evidence has been collected up to this day,” while the bullets extracted by doctors from corpses “are either in hospitals, or were given to the victims’ families or simply lost.”
April 10, 2014. During a meeting of the Verkhovna Rada Ad Hoc Investigating Commission, Deputy Head of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry Sokol Task Force Alexander Yershov admitted that two of its snipers were in the Government building on 20 February. He emphasised that they were not on the building’s roof and did not shoot at protestors. He added that no ballistic examinations were conducted on the weapons seized from the snipers — only an agency check was made.
April 15, 2014. Right Sector radicals blocked 60 former Berkut fighters from entering the Court of Appeal. The fighters had come to support their colleagues charged with “involvement in mass shootings on 18–20 February”.
Nationalist radicals in masks and with sticks threw eggs at the former Berkut fighters and demanded that they fall on their knees and “apologise to the people”. The conflict lasted for about two hours and was resolved only after the arrival of the Kiev police chief.
April 22, 2014. A group of hackers who call themselves “CyberBerkut” published on their website the hacked correspondence between Acting Minister of the Interior Avakov and his former Press Secretary journalist Dmitry Bruk. It followed from it that the murder of Alexander Muzychko (Sashko Bily), Right Sector coordinator, on 25 March 2014 in Western Ukraine had been planned by Avakov. Right Sector leader Dmitry Yarosh demanded by way of compensation for his death that Berkut fighters (5–7 people and most importantly the platoon commander) should be put behind bars. On these conditions the Right Sector agreed not to take revenge on Avakov for the death of their mate.
May 13, 2014 Having analysed the snipers’ ammunition the ad hoc commission announced that Berkut fighters did not shoot at protesters during the tragic events in Kiev in February. Its Head Hennady Moskal said the shots could have been fired by representatives of public organisations that had gone out of control. Without specifying which organisations he was referring to, Moskal said “the first shot was fired at the police.” He pointed out that, like the Kennedy case, the inquiry into these shootings may never be closed.
Ethnic and linguistic discrimination, xenophobia and aggressive nationalism.
Instigation of racism
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966)
Article 20
Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.
International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965)
Article 4
States Parties condemn all propaganda and all organisations which are based on ideas or theories of superiority of one race or group of persons of one colour or ethnic origin, or which attempt to justify or promote racial hatred and discrimination in any form, and undertake to adopt immediate and positive measures designed to eradicate all incitement to, or acts of, such discrimination and, to this end, with due regard to the principles embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the rights expressly set forth in article 5 of this Convention, inter alia:
Shall declare an offence punishable by law all dissemination of ideas based on racial superiority or hatred, incitement to racial discrimination, as well as all acts of violence or incitement to such acts against any race or group of persons of another colour or ethnic origin, and also the provision of any assistance to racist activities, including the financing thereof;
Shall declare illegal and prohibit organizations, and also organized and all other propaganda activities, which promote and incite racial discrimination, and shall recognize participation in such organizations or activities as an offence punishable by law;
Shall not permit public authorities or public institutions, national or local, to promote or incite racial discrimination.
April 1, 2014. 77 year-old Professor of Russian Philology at Kharkov National University, Doctor of Philology Alexander Mikhilev had to resign under pressure from his superiors, who forced him to teach and write academic papers on the Russian language and philology in Ukrainian only.
April 2, 2014. A movement to boycott Russian goods began to unfold in some regions of Ukraine, especially in the West. Its activists urged Ukrainians not to buy clothes in Russian shops or visit Russian-owned restaurants. They put up stickers in supermarkets: “Boycott the occupants! Protect Ukraine by buying Ukrainian products.” The Magnat cinema in Kiev refused to screen Russian films. Activists also developed a “Boycott the occupants” mobile application for telephones for scanning the bar code of products to see where they were made.
April 2, 2014. SBU detained two Russian citizens in the Lvov Region for an alleged attempt to take hostage several Ukrainians, including a presidential candidate.
April 3, 2014. Top managers of the Vesyolka supermarket chain in the Sumy Region made a decision to identify Russian-made products on all price tags. In this way customers were given a choice to buy Russian products, thereby “supporting the aggressor”, or ignore them.
April 3, 2014. Speaking about the situation on the border with Ukraine, Transnistria Foreign Minister Nina Shtanski said that the Ukraine-imposed restrictions on Russian residents in Transnistria were “not just sanctions but also discrimination on several grounds, including ethnicity and citizenship”. She said “people are ordered to leave trains and buses — even at night, and are treated with disrespect.”
April 4, 2014. Ukraine’s State Consumer Rights Inspectorate prohibited local shops to sell some Russian products. It blacklisted the confectionaries Krasny Oktyabr, RotFront, Russky Shokolad and the Babayevsky concern. The ban also applied to cheese and tinned fish. The investigation into Russian products was initiated by Oleg Tyahnybok, leader of the Freedom Association in the Verkhovna Rada. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s State Veterinary and Phytosanitary Service had no complaints about Russian goods.
April 9, 2014. Unidentified individuals desecrated a monument to Holocaust victims in Odessa. They painted a swastika and a “wolf’s hook”, a neo-Nazi symbol, on it in white. Several dozen Jewish gravestones at the Tairovsky Cemetery were also desecrated with black swastikas. Inscriptions on the cemetery’s fence read: “Death to Yids,” “Right Sector” and “Glory to Ukraine.”
April 9, 2014. SBU reported the detention of 23 year-old Russian citizen Maria Koleda. SBU accused her of “destabilising the region on FSB’s orders” and taking part in the assault on the regional administration building in Nikolayev, during which she ostensibly wounded three people.
Early hours of April 14, 2014. An unidentified group threw stones at the door of the Honorary Consulate of the Russian Federation in Chernigov. They tore off and stole the signboard with the name of the institution and put up offensive leaflets. The consulate’s property was damaged.
April 15, 2014. The media reported that about 12,000 Russian citizens had not been allowed to enter Ukraine since the adoption of tougher border control measures.
April 17, 2014. Ukraine’s State Border Service banned all male citizens of the Russian Federation between the ages of 16 and 60 from entering the country on all modes of transportation. The ban also applied to Ukrainian citizens registered in the RF Republic of Crimea.
April 18, 2014. Ukrainian border guards did not allow about 600 Russian citizens to cross the border.
April 18, 2014. Several soldiers conscripted from Crimea before its reunification with Russia were put into disciplinary cells in Odessa for their reluctance to continue service in the Ukrainian Army.
April 20, 2014. Border guards at Ukrainian airports did not allow four passengers to enter Ukraine during the Easter holidays.
April 20, 2014. Right Sector radicals staged an Easter march in the centre of Kiev under the slogans: “Glory to the nation — death to the enemies,” “Stab a Moskal” (derogatory name for Russians), and “Let’s kill our enemies — Moskals.”
April 21, 2014. An SBU representative reported the detention in Kharkov of a Russian “spy” ostensibly posing as a beggar.
April 22, 2014. Chief of the Press Department of the Ukrainian Border Service Oleg Slobodyan said that over a thousand Russian citizens had not been allowed to enter Ukraine since 17 April 2014.
April 23, 2014. The antifashist.соm reported quoting famous Israeli public figure and publicist Avigdor Eskin that Ukrainian anti-Semites committed another act of vandalism at a cemetery that Jews consider sacred — a swastika was painted on the mass grave where the Nazi-murdered brother of the last Lubavitcher Rebbe lay buried.
April 23, 2014. Acting Head of the Kremenchug Police in the Poltava Region Denis Zakharchenko promised at a news conference “to punish inflammatory speech with prison”, including “statements that life in Russia is better than in Ukraine”.
April 25, 2014. Billboards with swastikas made of St. George’s ribbons and accompanied by offensive statements appeared on the Kiev-Chop Motorway and in the city of Mukachevo (Trans-Carpathian Region). A number of public figures in the region and the majority of commentators in social media qualified such actions as incitement of ethnic hatred and urged those responsible to stop the hysteria over St. George’s ribbons.
April 25, 2014. A monument to separatists was installed in Uzhgorod (Trans- Carpathian Region). It represented a figure of a man in a uniform jacket with Russian flags and a suitcase in hand. The monument was named “Suitcase-Railway Station- Russia!” It is planned to install a “separatist’s dictionary” next to the monument in the near future.
April 26, 2014. The installation “Beware of Russians” was presented as part of the Ukrainian Cultural Front project organised by Euromaidan activists. The installation consisted of three people wearing St. George’s ribbons in a cage with the warning sign: “Don’t feed the animals.” These people were sitting on the floor filled with rubbish; they drank vodka, played a balalaika, hurled obscenities at the visitors and threatened them. The organisers of the installation explained that they wanted to depict the character of the Russian people.
May 1, 2014. Ukrainian border guards and SBU officers detained and beat up а citizen of Belarus and two Russians who accompanied him at the Dovzhansky checkpoint at the Ukrainian border with Russia’s Rostov Region. A resident of Gomel was returning home from a mountain climbing trip in Russia. Ukrainian border guards qualified his climbing gear as “equipment of a subversive group”. The travellers were beaten up and expelled from Ukrainian territory with a 3-year entry ban.
May 1, 2014. Ukrainian border guards ordered S. Ivanov, a resident of Odessa, to leave his bus at the Moldovan-Ukrainian border. He was returning home after visiting his relations in Moldova. Ivanov was interrogated for an hour on suspicion of involvement in massive disturbances and propaganda of separatism. He tried to explain that he was an ethnic Bulgarian on his father’s side and Ukrainian on his mother’s, that he was born in Moldavia, had Ukrainian citizenship and was registered as residing in Odessa. He said he had never taken part in any rallies. The border guards told him that their orders were to check all visitors with Russian- sounding surnames. After an hour’s brainwashing the Ukrainian of Moldavian- Bulgarian origin was allowed to enter Ukraine.
May 2, 2014. NIBULON Director, Hero of Ukraine Alexei Vadatursky delivered a speech at a meeting on defence issues at the Nikolayev Region Council. He announced his readiness to pay monetary awards for assistance in catching “collaborationists, conspirators and pro-Russian separatists trying to violate Ukraine’s constitutional system and territorial integrity”. He promised to speak with every employee of his company that is registered as Russian in a corporate form. Vadatursky also favoured a ban on pro-Russian rallies in Nikolayev.
May 4, 2014. Unidentified individuals set fire to the Russian Cultural Centre in Lvov.
May 6, 2014. A number of leading media in Lvov broadcast features on identifying “Russian provocateurs”. A group of journalists from the local 24 TV Channel organised a search for “suspicious young people” at suburban hotels. Although it produced zero results, the journalists said that hotel employees told them privately about visitors “with Russian or Transnistrian registration”. They urged everyone to report information on suspicious visitors to the People’s Self-Defence or the police. The city organisation of the Freedom Association also spoke about provocations ostensibly prepared by “subversive groups” arriving in the city from “the direction of Transnistria and Moldova”.
May 7, 2014. Deputy Chairman of the Freedom Association Oleg Pankevich urged the acting Minister of the Interior, head of SBU (the Security Service of Ukraine) and secretary of the Council for National Security and Defence to determine whether it was appropriate to let Mikhail Fabrin head the Kherson Region Police. In 2010 Fabrin took part in the elections to the Verkhovna Rada from the Russian Unity party.
May 7, 2014. Unidentified individuals damaged the memorial plaque to Soviet military leader Georgy Zhukov located in the street named in his honour. This is not the first time that vandals have tried to destroy this plaque. They are particularly active on the eve of the dates linked with the Great Patriotic War.
May 9, 2014. Governor of the Kherson Region and member of the Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) Party Yury Odarchenko called Hitler “a liberator” at the meeting devoted to Victory Day.
May 14, 2014. The Verkhovna Rada MP Oleg Tsaryov published a scanned copy of a top secret SBU memorandum. Dated 29 April 2014 and signed by First Deputy Head of SBU Vasily Krutov, this document was sent to SBU regional departments. It read, in part:
“To discredit the actions of the Russian Federation, help the Ukrainian Government, stabilise the socioeconomic and political situation in the country, neutralise threats to security emanating from pro-Russian terrorists and curb the activities of separatists, I order the implementation of a package of counterintelligence and outreach measures:
To consistently identify citizens of the Russian Federation arriving on the territory of Ukraine’s border areas in March-April 2014.
To single out those from this category that do not have family members in Ukraine and that sympathise with pro-Russian terrorists.
To establish operational and technical surveillance over those individuals. To create the conditions for outreach measures for presenting them as heads of subversive groups sent by the secret services of the Russian Federation to assist the separatist movement in Ukraine’s border areas and conduct subversive and terrorist acts against the units and facilities of the Defence Ministry, the Ministry of the Interior and the Security Service of Ukraine. To establish cooperation with the media; to report via the SBU Press Service that the said persons underwent special training in the Russian regions bordering on Ukraine; had firearms and explosives in their possession; involved Ukrainian citizens in cooperation with them; conducted active intelligence and subversive operations to inflict damage to Ukraine’s security; admitted being agents of Russian secret services preparing subversions.
Implementation of these measures must be reported by an encrypted telegram at 6 p.m. on a daily basis.”
Thus, the SBU executives ordered their subordinates to detain innocent people and falsify their evidence in order to fan anti-Russian hysteria to set Ukrainian citizens at loggerheads with the Russian Federation.
Early hours of May 15, 2014. Unidentified individuals desecrated a stele in Kharkov, which was installed as a symbol of friendship between Ukraine and Russia. It was partially damaged. The vandals sprayed it with red paint, covering the word “friendship”, and wrote obscenities instead.
May 16, 2014. Assistant to the Head of Ukraine’s State Border Service Sergei Astakhov said at a news conference that Ukrainian border guards had stopped about 20,000 people from Russia from entering Ukraine. About 200 people suspected of extremist activities were detained and transferred to SBU.
May 17, 2014. During the televised debates of presidential candidates, Right Sector leader Dmitry Yarosh called for a “large-scale guerrilla war” in the south-east of Ukraine and Crimea.
May 29, 2014. SBU arrested Sergei Bugayev, a school principal in the village of Alexandrovka, Kherson Region. Two days earlier his son Andrei, a third-year student at the Nakhimov Black Sea Naval Academy, told him by phone that he had obtained a Russian passport. The teacher was instantly brought from the school to Kiev’s pre-trial detention centre.
Early hours of May 30, 2014. Unidentified individuals threw Molotov cocktails at the Kiev office of Russian Radio.
Manifestations of religious intolerance, including threats to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
Article 5. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Article 18. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
Article 19. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights (1966)
Article 7. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Article 18. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right shall include freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice, and freedom, either individually or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching.
Article 19. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.
Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1950)
Article 3. No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Article 9. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance.
Article 10. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.
April 2, 2014. The Odessa Diocese of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) addressed the Verkhovna Rada Speaker Alexander Turchinov with an open letter in connection with the search conducted by SBU investigators on 1 April 2014. They searched the house of the Head of the Diocesan Department of the Odessa Diocese for Education, Missionary Activities and Catechism, rector of the Holy Martyr Tatiana’s Church, merited clergyman and head of a family with three children Archpriest Oleg Mokryak. The letter ends with
the words: “We express our resolute civil protest against the actions by the Security Service of Ukraine, which is guided by principles of intimidation and reprisals. We demand that as Speaker of Ukrainian Parliament you intervene immediately to stop anti-Constitutional actions and violations of the rights and freedoms of Ukrainian citizens, including clergymen of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. It is impossible to unify Ukraine by speaking in the language of threats, ultimatums, intimidations, provocations, political reprisals and harassment of dissenters. We do not want public unrest to become massive and upset peace in our multi-ethnic and multi- cultural state. We hope for a fair and sensible resolution of the issue.”
April 3, 2014. Metropolitan Agafangel of Odessa and Izmail and Alexandra Hudokormoff, head of the monitoring mission of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in the Odessa Region, met to discuss the issues with the rights of Orthodox believers in Ukraine. The Metropolitan handed to the UN representative an appeal of the clergy and parishioners of the Odessa Diocese to the UN Secretary-General to defend Archpriest Mokryak, who is being subjected to political reprisals and illegal harassment by Ukraine’s security services.
April 10, 2014. Secretary of the Odessa Diocese of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Archpriest Andrei Novikov was forced to move from Odessa to Moscow fearing harassment by Ukrainian law enforcement bodies. He said he was accused of connections with anti-Maidan activists and summoned for questioning to Kiev. His telephones were tapped by Ukrainian security services.
Several days earlier Head of the Diocesan Department of the Odessa Diocese for Education, Missionary Activities and Catechism Archpriest Oleg Mokryak also had to leave Odessa. For a long time he was subjected to harassment and intimidation by SBU for his convictions. SBU searched his house.
Early hours of April 19, 2014. Unidentified individuals attempted to set fire to the synagogue in Nikolayev. They threw two Molotov cocktails at the front of the building.
May 7, 2014. Metropolitan Agafangel of Odessa and Izmail made an open appeal to UN and OSCE representatives in Ukraine and the Kiev authorities with a request to protect the Church against extremists that have been threatening the clergy.
“A wave of attacks on clergymen of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church and attempts to seize Orthodox churches has swept Ukraine. The Kiev Cave and Pochayiv lavras were under siege. Threats were made in Sumy to burn Archbishop Eulogius alive (with Molotov cocktails) along with the cathedral and the diocesan department. Some of the priests of the canonical church, including me, the
governor of the Odessa Diocese, have been threatened with physical violence,” the Metropolitan said.
In his opinion, attempts to drive Orthodox believers out of their churches “are splitting society and fanning religious strife” and also “violating the fundamental and inalienable human rights to freedom of religion”. He emphasised that “massive unrest and the threat of military action have already generated a spiritual confrontation”.
May 7, 2014. Speaker of the Crimean State Council Vladimir Konstantinov told journalists that after the bloody events in Odessa refugees from Ukraine started arriving in Crimea. They included clergymen who “virtually fled from reprisals that “Right Sector” militants had planned against them”.
May 8, 2014. The press service of the Sumy Diocese had to make a statement to refute inflammatory rumours to the effect that pro-Russian activists were staying in the Transfiguration Cathedral of Sumy and clergymen were giving them weapons. Based on these unfounded accusations, the law enforcement bodies of the Sumy Region searched the cathedral and demanded explanations from Head of the Sumy Diocese Archbishop Eulogius as regards suspicions of hiding and arming “separatists”. A man dressed in the military uniform of the territorial defenсe department threatened the archbishop that he would “shoot to kill” separatists that were ostensibly hiding in the cathedral.
The Diocese of Sumy pointed out in a statement that inflammatory rumours and aggressive actions against the clergy and parishioners of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church are aimed at “appointing” Orthodox believers the enemies of the Ukrainian statehood.
May 9, 2014. Archpriest of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and rector of the Dmitry Donskoi Cathedral in the town of Druzhayevka Father Pavel (Zhuchenko) was murdered near a checkpoint. He provided spiritual support to the residents of Slaviansk and self-defence fighters.
May 10, 2014. Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, Chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations, was denied entry to Ukraine with no explanation at the passport control in Dnepropetrovsk Airport. He arrived in Dnepropetrovsk to congratulate Metropolitan Irinei of Dnepropetrovsk and Pavlograd on his 75th birthday, convey to him a message of greetings from Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia and award him with the Order of Holy Prince Daniel of Moscow.
May 13, 2014. Archpriest Alexei Yefimov, rector of the Cathedral of St Antony and St Theodosius of the Kiev Cave Lavra, in Vasilkovo near Kiev, told the media that nationalists had threatened him with physical violence for giving communion to Berkut fighters and internal troops on Euromaidan in February 2014.
May 31, 2014. Archpriest of the St. Nicholas Cathedral in the town of Novoaidar (Lugansk Region) Vladimir Maretsky said Ukrainian military tortured him after arresting on 25 May on suspicions of attacking ballot stations. Father Vladimir showed traces from handcuffs. Father Vladimir showed the media the evidence of having been handcuffed. He said he was cuffed and that “they kicked the handcuffs closed with their feet”.
Conclusion
The upsurge of protests in the south and east of Ukraine was a direct consequence of the change of power in Kiev as a result of the anti-constitutional violent coup that was carried out by Euromaidan advocates with active support of the United States and a number of European Union countries. After the Verkhovna Rada was forcibly and roughly reset to suit the goals of the former opposition leaders, including radical nationalists, those who did not accept the new Ukrainian order have been subjected to a serious threat, including the threat to their lives.
The tragic events in Odessa, Mariupol and other cities of the southeast have become yet another confirmation of the Kiev authorities’ criminal use of crude force and intimidation in violation of the commitments stemming from the agreement of February 21, 2014 and the Geneva statement of April 17, 2014.
The facts quoted in the White Book are evidence of the criminal nature of the “anti- terrorist operation” with its treacherous shelling of civilian facilities and killings of Ukrainian civilians, including women, old people and children.
We are gravely concerned that the majority of crude violations of human rights and the principle of the rule of law have not evoked an adequate and clear response from the international community and international human rights bodies. This creates the impression that the punitive operation by the Ukrainian law enforcement bodies against their own people enjoyed the tacit support of some European capitals from the very start. Naturally, this state of affairs is creating a feeling of impunity in those who are issuing cynical and criminal orders, be it to throw bombs at peaceful cities and villages, abduct dissenting journalists or conduct political censorship of the media. After his inauguration President Petro Poroshenko announced the need
for a ceasefire in southeast Ukraine but the bloodshed continued and civilians were still dying at the moment this publication was sent to print.
We hope that the Western patrons of the Ukrainian authorities will finally prompt Kiev to stop the annihilation of people in the southeast, who have the legitimate right to have an equal say in determining the future of their country. We also hope that profile international agencies will fulfil their mandates by conducting an unbiased and politically neutral inquiry into numerous violations of human rights and the principle of the rule of law in Ukraine. The culprits must be brought to justice.
On June 17, journalists from the VGTRK TV channel — Anton Voloshin and Igor Kornelyuk — killed performing their job while covering the situation near Lugansk. According to an eyewitness, a mortar shell fired by ukrainian forces landed at their feet. On June 30, Channel One cameraman Anatoly Klyan killed near Donetsk
Journalists from the Russian «Zvezda» TV channel — Evgeny Davydov and Nikita Kanashenkov — were lucky: after several days of torture and abuse, militants from the «Pravyi sektor» finally handed their victims over to representatives of the Kiev authorities. The russians survived
Ukrainian police «did not notice» when «peaceful protesters» tore flags down at the Russian embassy in Kiev
In Slavyansk, a family hides in the basement from more artillery fire conducted by ukrainian forces. Meanwhile, Petro Poroshenko talks of a ceasefire
Relatives of ukrainian conscripts do not want Kiev authorities to send their loved ones to participate in the punitive operation in Donbass
6, 7. After lengthy negotiations, officers from a military unit near Lugansk agree to «hand over» conscripts to their mothers
A shell fired by ukrainian forces hit a hall of school No. 13 in Slavyansk. Children and teachers were lucky to have enough time to hide in the school’s basement
In Slavyansk, parents hide children in cellars from missile attacks. There are no real bomb shelters. Who would have thought such a time would come when people have to hide from air strikes conducted by their own aviation?
Radio amateurs intercepted talks between a ukrainian Su-25 pilot and his command during a military mission in Donetsk
In Donetsk, miners from five mines protest against the actions of ukrainian servicemen
This woman died in artillery fire aimed at Donetsk railway station
The «Pravyi sektor» militants brought death to Slavyansk
The presidential election in Ukraine did not stop the civil war
Nowadays, a mobilisation of volunteers to punitive detachments is held at Independence Square in Kiev in order to «clean up» South-East Ukraine of dissidents
A mine launched by ukrainian security forces hit a common dwelling house in the village of Andreevka
Ukrainian members of punitive detachments treat russian journalists from the «Life News» TV channel as terrorists
After two months of detention, Pavel Gubarev, the people’s Governor of the Donetsk Republic, was released
Ukrainian servicemen used helicopters bearing UN symbols in punitive operations, which is prohibited by the international organisation’s regulations
Alexander Malykhin, chairman of the Central Election Commission of the Lugansk region, announces the results of the referendum: most people support the separation of the region from Ukraine
As well as four schools, ukrainian security forces occupied a local parliament building in Krasnoarmeysk
As is seen in the photo, one of the militants aims a gun at an unarmed Krasnoarmeysk resident
But people did not disperse. Firing began. One local citizen received leg injuries
The citizens of Mariupol defended their city from Kiev’s punitive detachments. The assailants armoured vehicles were captured as war trophies
25, 26. Mariupol police officers, who ignored illegitimate orders from Kiev, were shot point-blank by militants from the Ukraine National Guard. Local citizens helped to take them to hospital. A police station in Mariupol was completely burned out
There were queues at polling stations in Mariupol — people wanted to vote in a referendum on the status of the Donetsk region
British reporter Graham Phillips confirmed that the armoured train struck by the Ukrainian army was, in fact, an old rusty wagon. But Kiev officials did not like this evidence. Euromaidan activists promised a $10,000 reward for Phillips’s head
Many citizens carry flowers to the burnt-out Trades Union building in Odessa
The Trades Union building in Odessa was almost burnt out as a result of arson. Supporters of federalisation, who were hiding inside, had no chance to escape
«Pravyi sektor» militants in Odessa first burned St. George ribbons, and then those who were wearing them
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First, «Pravyi sektor» activists blocked the doors of the Trades Union building in Odessa. Then they started throwing «Molotov cocktails» at the building. Hundreds of people died. Those who survived and sneaked out of the building, which was set on fire by fascist thugs, were finished off in cold blood with clubs
«Pravyi sektor» activists prepare «Molotov cocktails» for the arson attack at the Trades Union premises
Dmitry Fuchedzhi, the acting head of Odessa’s regional Internal Affairs department, is behind an armed militant. One of the attackers wears a St. George armband — a provocation. The ukrainian fascists also have red armbands in order not to be confused by friends of being the federalisation supporters. When the inciters began to burn the Trades Union building, they removed the St. George ribbons. The red armbands seem to have been forgotten. They continued throwing «Molotov cocktails» wearing the red ribbons
The inciters in Odessa (who purposely wore St. George ribbons and red armbands — so as not to be confused among the «Pravyi sektor» activists) were armed and just strolled among the militia
Dnepropetrovsk region Governor Igor Kolomoiskiy (pictured right) was behind the cynical initiative
After visiting the Prosecutor General following the attack by «Pravyi sektor« militants, Oleg Tsarev announced his withdrawal from the Ukrainian presidential election
Who shot Gennady Kernes, the mayor of Kharkov? According to experts, it is unlikely that the current ukrainian authorities will succeed in identifying either the clients or executors of this crime. After all, the organisers of the attempted assassination might occupy senior positions ukraine’s security services
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