This chapter analyzes the Maidan massacre in Kyiv on February 18–19, 2014 and other related cases of violence in Ukraine during the EuroMaidan. Various evidence, such as videos, live streams, SBU and police radio communications recordings, and witness testimonies, shows that the violent attack of the Ukrainian parliament and the Party of Regions headquarters was initiated on February 18 by the Maidan leadership and Maidan Self-Defense, including the far-right Svoboda and Right Sector, and that the Security Service of Ukraine and police launched an attempt to clear the Maidan by force in response. Such evidence and the lack of convictions for such mass killings suggest the false-flag massacre of both Maidan activists and police and Internal Troops members by Maidan snipers and involvement of some of the Maidan leaders. Such evidence and in part Ukrainian government investigations and forensic examinations by government experts suggest a false-flag massacre of three Maidan protesters in January 2014 and in Khmelnytskyi on February 19 and that kidnapping, torture, and crucifixion of Dmytro Bulatov, beating of Tetiana Chornovol, and partly violent dispersal of Maidan protesters on November 30, 2013, were staged with Maidan opposition involvement in order to galvanize dwindling anti-Yanukovych government protests.

7.1 The Maidan Massacre on February 18–19, 2014

The violent clashes of protesters with the police and “titushki” and the mass killing started when the protesters tried to break police barricade and tried to attack the parliament on February 18, 2014. These clashes and mass killing happened during a “peaceful march,” organized by the Maidan opposition leaders, specifically Oleksandr Turchynov, a leader of the Fatherland Party Andrii Parubii, the commander of the Maidan Self-Defense, and Dmytro Yarosh, the leader of the Right Sector. They called it a “peaceful march,” but the paramilitary Maidan Self-Defense companies, including the Right Sector Company, led the Maidan activists towards the parliament.Footnote 1 At the Maidan massacre investigation, some Maidan Self-Defense company commanders testified that Parubii had ordered to start “a bloodshed” during this “peaceful march” towards the parliament around noon on February 18, 2014 (Dopros, 2018).

The live streams recordings of the rally showed that the Maidan activists led by Svoboda deputies tried to break through and attacked police barricades near the parliament. Footage disclosed that another group of the Maidan protesters attacked and set the Party of Regions headquarters on fire nearby (Shturm, 2014). The head of the Kyiv branch of the SNA later stated that they burned this building (Chimiris & Bratkova, 2014). Footage from the scene also revealed that Tetiana Chornovol, a former activist of the far-right UNA-UNSO, was among the attackers. During this attack and during the burning of the headquarters of the Party of Regions, a Party of Regions computer specialist was killed, becoming the first casualty of the Maidan massacre. The Maidan government investigation accused the Yanukovych government agents provocateurs for the attack and burning of the Yanukovych Party headquarters without any evidence and included the computer specialist among the killed Maidan protesters. After Zelensky was elected the president of Ukraine, the State Bureau of Investigations of Ukraine in 2020 charged Tetiana Chornovol with the deadly arson of the Party of Regions office and the murder of a computer admin there during the Maidan massacre on February 18, 2014, but there has been no trial (Tatiane, 2020).

The court decisions and the investigation also revealed that several protesters were misrepresented in the media for a long time as victims of the lethal police violence. The GPU investigation, court decisions and a verdict, and a long-withheld video revealed that a Svoboda company commander was driven over by another protestor after this protester seized a truck and tried to slam it into the police. This was the only case with a verdict in the Maidan massacre case, but the protester was not charged with killing but with traffic violations and was granted an amnesty under the amnesty law for Maidan participants. Unreported court decisions revealed that one of the protesters was killed on the Maidan by slushing his throat, and that the GPU investigated UNA-UNSO commanders and members for this killing (Ukhvala, 2014). These two protesters along with a number of other protesters, who according to the GPU investigation died in other locations and not as result the violence during the Euromaidan are presented as victims of the police violence by the government officials and the media, and they were awarded Hero of Ukraine titles by President Poroshenko as victims of the government violence during the Euromaidan.

A member of the Maidan leadership from the Fatherland Party was filmed on February 18 evacuating a car with a hunting rifle, equipped with a silencer and optics, of a Maidan activist, who was stopped by other Maidan activists. Such evacuation of the masked activist and his rifle with scopes during the deadly clashes might also indicate certain kind of involvement and knowledge concerning the Maidan snipers. A person who helped in the evacuation became an aide to one of leading members of Fatherland, who became the Minister of Internal Affairs after the Euromaidan, and whose ministry was involved in investigations of killings of the protestors and the police on the Maidan (Zubritsky, 2015).

There are statements by some protesters that the owner of this rifle was identified as on the “snipers” and seized by a group of the protesters from a roof of a building on Instytutska Street (De snajper, 2014). It would be irrational for a leading member of this main Maidan Party to evacuate without checking an armed masked person, who was reportedly identified as a “sniper” by Maidan protesters and was then stopped by them in area of deadly clashes. The owner of this hunting rifle said in his interview that he participated in the violent clashes with police in that area on February 18, 2014, was wounded there, and that he arrived on the Maidan with other hunters after hunting with his group of a few dozen “hunters” in Western Ukraine (Koshkina & Bazar, 2015). The GPU stated that he was not involved in the massacre simply because his hunting rifle did not fire then. There were no reports in the media or in the official court decisions database about investigation of these “hunters” even though all three protesters were killed and up to 33 wounded with hunting pellets in the same area around the same time.

The official investigation determined that out of five protesters killed in the same area near the parliament and near Kriposnyi Lane three were shot with pellets, one driven over by a car by a Maidan activist, and another was severely beaten or died as a result of a heart attack (Cholovik, 2015). Moreover, one of these killed protesters reportedly was shot from roof of a building in the back of his head and not from the ground-level positions of the Berkut. This incident took place near intersections of Kriposnyi Lane and Instytutska Street after a deadly attack and burning by a large group of the Maidan activists, in particular, the far-right, of a nearby Party of Regions headquarters, which resulted in killing of a computer specialist in this office. (See Try, 2017).

Anatolii Strelchenko, the commander of the Omega unit of the Internal Troops, stated in his Ukrainian media interview that they knew on February 18 before the attack of the parliament that Maidan activists had weapons. He said  that the Maidan shooters started to use live ammunition on that day and that a member of his Omega unit was wounded from a Makarov handgun, three Internal Troops soldiers were wounded by pellets, and a Berkut officer was wounded by a gunshot around the time and place of the incident involving the evacuation of the suspected Maidan sniper by a member of the Maidan leadership (Chapter 4; Hripun, 2015).

Investigations and trials of the massacre of the Maidan protesters on February 18–19, 2014, were even much less effective and more delayed than those involving the massacre on February 20, 2014. One Kharkiv Berkut member was arrested in June 2016 and charged with killings of the first three protesters on February 18, 2014. Another Kharkiv Berkut officer was arrested at the same time and charged with wounding of 33 protesters on the same day. They, like their accused counterparts in the February 20th massacre case, continued to serve in the police at the times of their arrests. This would be irrational if they committed such high-profile crimes. Their cases went to trials only in around the third anniversary of this massacre in 2017 and the actual trials have not started.

However, both these Berkut policemen were released from the detention by Kyiv courts in spite of such serious charges. One of them, who was charged with attempts to kill 33 Maidan protesters, fled along with three other Berkut members to Russia soon after being released from arrest by the Kyiv Appeals Court in March 2017. Since such a court-ordered release is unlikely without a directive from the top, this decision suggests that some government leaders wanted to hinder the trial of the Berkut officers charged with killings of the Maidan protesters on February 18 (Avakov, 2017).

The investigation reported that four protesters died from head trauma and related injuries during the counterattack by titushki and the police. However, no one was identified and charged for their killings, and evidence concerning specific circumstances of their killings has not been made public, even though videos show many protesters gravely beaten by titushki and the police around the same time and place. Similarly, the investigation did not identify any suspects in killings of 12 protesters during a storming of the Maidan by the police in the evening of February 18 and around the midnight. The GPU, the special parliamentary commission, a media report based on the GPU investigation, and other evidence reported that about half of them were killed by pellets or hunting bullets (Rassledovanie, 2016).

There is no information about any investigations of involvements of groups of concealed Maidan shooters in Hotel Ukraina and the Trade Union building and other nearby buildings in killings of these protesters in spite of various such evidence and in spite of similar killings of the police around the same time and place, in particular, by hunting pellets and bullets. For instance, a Hotel Ukraina employee said that he witnessed a group of snipers in Maidan-style uniforms and with weapons in cases entering the hotel shortly before the massacre started on February 18 (Sekretni, 2014). A Fatherland deputy said that he witnessed protesters killed near him on the Maidan by shooters from Hotel Ukraina and Kozatsky Hotel on the same day (Shuster, 2015).

The GPU attributed killings of a Vesti newspaper journalist and a Maidan protester on Volodymyrska Street to “titushki.” However, a named suspect in the journalist killing was himself killed in the separatist-controlled Donbas. A Maidan lawyer stated that the evidence against this suspect was problematic (NSZhU, 2017). No specific suspect was identified in the killing of a protester nearby, even though the moment of his shooting was captured on video. No specific evidence was released by the investigation in both these cases with the exception of information that the protester was shot by a small caliber bullet.

The Maidan massacre trial verdict and GPU stated that nine policemen and Internal Troops servicemen were killed on February 18–19 during the attempts to disperse the Maidan (Vyrok, 2023). The failure to identify suspects or their affiliation in these killings is clearly not due to lack of evidence but is a part of cover-up.

Kyiv court rulings specifically refer to two Right Sector activists, who were wounded during a Right Sector attack of a separatist checkpoint in Sloviansk on April 20, 2014, and many other Right Sector members as suspects in GPU investigation in killings and wounding the police on the Maidan. The court decisions stated that the weapons used by the wounded checkpoint attackers were the same weapons from which two Internal Troops servicemen were killed and three other policemen wounded on the Maidan on February 18 (Ukhvala, 2016).

There is also evidence that there were armed Maidan shooters linked to the oligarchic Fatherland Party. A top person in the security of the Fatherland Party admitted in the Ukrainian media shooting the police on the Maidan (see Chapter 4). The Ukrainian media reported five years afterward that Kyiv prosecutors found that killers of two traffic policemen in Kyiv on February 19 were among Maidan snipers. These killers received phone calls from prominent female and male parliament deputies from one of the oligarchic Maidan parties after killing these policemen during a traffic stop. The investigation after these findings was transferred to the police and completely stalled (Rasstrely, 2019). This description matches the member of the Maidan leadership and a female activist, who were then deputies from the Fatherland Party and were involved in other cases of violence on the Maidan on February 18. The two killed policemen were included in the “Heavenly Hundred” of killed Maidan protesters, and their killing was publicly attributed to pro-Yanukovych government “titushki.”

A video showed Maidan activists with a Kalashnikov-type weapon behind a barricade on the Maidan during a standoff with the police. A little-know photo by an Italian journalist showed a protester using a cover from shields of other protesters and targeting advancing police on Maidan with an AK-74 type Kalashnikov assault rifle in the evening of February 18 (Rocchelli, 2014).

The radio intercepts of Internal Troops units and SBU Alfa commanders and snipers confirm that their attempts to seize the Maidan and the Trade Union building on February 18 were stopped by the burning of this building by its defenders and by use of live ammunition by the Maidan Self-Defense and the Right Sector (see Katchanovski, 2015). These seizures of the Maidan and its headquarters were authorized by the Yanukovych government as a part of the “Boomerang” and “Khvylia” plans (Moskal, 2014). These plans were put in force after an attempt by the opposition led by the Maidan Self-Defense and the Right Sector to storm the parliament and their burning of the Party of Regions headquarters resulting in a death of an employee working there in the morning of the same day. An Alfa officer, who led one of the SBU groups during storming of the Trade Union Building, stated that their task was to seize the 5th floor, which contained a lot of weapons (Okrema, 2014). The Right Sector occupied the entire floor which served as both its headquarters and a base of the Right Sector company of the Maidan Self-Defense (Fig. 7.1).Footnote 2

Fig. 7.1
A top-angle photo presents a panoramic view of the maidan massacre site. It has several multistoried buildings with a few tents erected on the road. One of the buildings on the right is covered with a giant flex poster with text in a foreign language.

(Photo by the author)

Burned Trade Union Building covered with the OUN-UPA “Glory to Ukraine. Glory to Heroes” greeting

Full size image

A radio intercept of Alfa commanders contains their report about deploying SBU snipers after two “snipers” or spotters from the Maidan side were noticed on a Maidan-controlled building, their preparation to storm this building, and an order from their superior to Alfa jointly with the Internal Troops to start this attack (see Katchanovski, 2015). This would be consistent with the announcement of the “anti-terrorist” operation by the head of SBU on February 19, 2014. While this order was canceled on the same day following the Yanukovych decision, such plans by him and his government to use force to disperse and arrest the Maidan leaders and activists, and specifically armed protesters, created another incentive to the massacre organizers and armed protesters to use live ammunition against the police and their fellow protesters in a high-stakes game in order also to avoid their planned arrest by the Yanukovych government.

There is no evidence of any order by Yanukovych or his police and SBU commanders to massacre the Maidan activists on February 18 or 19. The Maidan massacre trial verdict in 2023 confirmed this (see Chapter 8).

The SBU Kyiv Region head was charged with responsibility for killings of 10 protesters during this “anti-terrorist operation” by the Berkut police, the Internal Troops, and the SBU Alfa, which attempted to seize the Trade Union building that served as the headquarters of the Maidan, including the Right Sector. The specific names of the victims in this case have not been made public. But the GPU stated that the head of the Kyiv Region SBU was responsible for death of two protesters, one of whom was reportedly a neo-Nazi, in a fire in the Trade Union building even though the investigation de facto admitted that the fire was started by the protesters during an attempt by the SBU Alfa to seize this building. A UN report stated that a court returned charges against him to the GPU because they were not specific. He was tried but there is no verdict in his case.

The GPU reported that 19 Maidan activists were killed on the Maidan on February 18, including 12 by firearms, and 120 were wounded on that day. Six activists were killed on February 19 on the Maidan, including 3 from firearms, and 20 were wounded. Eight police and Internal Troops members were killed and 113 wounded on February 18 on the Maidan, and respectively, one killed and 14 wounded on February 19 on the Maidan (Vyrok, 2023). Two Maidan protesters were also shot dead on February 19 during  storming of the SBU headquarters in Khmelnytskyi. As noted, two traffic policemen were killed elsewhere in Kyiv on February 19, reportedly by Maidan snipers. In addition, two Berkut members were killed in Lviv on February 20 during storming of the Berkut base by Maidan activists. Nobody has been convicted for killings and wounding these Maidan activists and law enforcement members. A rational explanation for such failure to identify and convict the mass murderers for more than 10 years suggests cover-up of involvement of Maidan snipers and clearly not lack of evidence (see Chapter 8).

7.2 Other Related Cases of Violence During the EuroMaidan

The Ukrainian government investigations in two related cases of political violence during the Maidan found that they were staged or false flag. An investigation by the Military Prosecutor Office in Lviv found that an elderly female Maidan protester was killed and several other Maidan protesters were wounded in Khmelnytskyi on February 19, 2014, by another Maidan activist from the SBU porch that was then occupied by Maidan protesters. Forensic ballistic examinations showed such bullet trajectories. However, the GPU reversed this investigation as politically inappropriate and charged an SBU Alfa officer for shooting the protesters from the second floor inside of the SBU building. But the Security Service of Ukraine publicly stated that the GPU investigation was falsified. This is consistent with the content analysis showing that the protesters were shot from the SBU porch and not from the second floor (see Video, 2023).

The Ukrainian police closed on March 27, 2020, its investigation of kidnapping, torture, and crucifixion of Dmytro Bulatov during the Maidan because the investigation determined that the crime “was absent” and could have been “staged.” The documents from his investigative criminal case show that associates of Bulatov in the Automaidan testified in 2014 after the Maidan and in 2019 that he staged his own abduction, torture, and crucifixion. One of them testified that Bulatov told him shortly before his disappearance that he planned to stage his own abduction. Another testified that she heard from Bulatov and other Maidan activists about need for some “fiery information” in order to regain popularity of the Automaidan, and that his staged abduction accomplished this.

Other Automaidan leaders testified that there was no rationale for Bulatov’s kidnapping and torture because he was removed from the Automaidan leadership a couple of days prior, and they regarded his staging his own kidnapping as a real possibility. Two of them also testified that the light wounds and his appearance did not match his statements about being kidnapped and tortured for a week without food. A government forensic expert determined in his expert report for the investigation after the Maidan that Bulatov’s wounds, including a cut of a piece of his ear, could have been inflicted by himself or by someone else with his agreement using sterile materials and disinfecting wounds, because they did not have any signs of infection. The government forensic expert also determined that there was no damage on his hands that would be consistent with Bulatov being handcuffed (Sharij, 2020). This is consistent with a testimony by David Zhvania, a former associate of Poroshenko and the head of the parliamentary committee during and after the Maidan. He stated that Maidan leaders, whom he names, staged the abduction and crucifixion of Bulatov and most other high-profile cases of violence, such as the Maidan massacre (Pravda, 2020).

The killings of the first three protesters at the end of January 2014 were attributed by the Maidan opposition and the media in Ukraine and the West to the government forces, despite the evidence that these were false-flag killings. These killings greatly escalated the conflict by turning it into conflict with fatalities.

However, unreported Pechersk court decisions suggested that the Prosecutor General Office investigated members and leaders of UNA-UNSO, one of the founding organizations in the Right Sector, for shooting these protesters (Ukhvala, 2015). The official investigation determined that these three protesters were killed from a few meter distances in the Maidan-controlled areas, while the police lines were several dozen meters away from the Maidan positions.

A Kyiv prosecutor said in 2019 that he spoke with the forensic expert who examined the body of Sergey Nigoyan, the Armenian protester, and that “there everything is unambiguous,” “the shot was from behind at a maximum distance of three-five meters and gun wads were found,” and “that is it definitely was not policemen who killed him” (Gubin, 2019). A popular Ukrainian blogger reported that the Security Service of Ukraine knows who in fact shot dead this Armenian protester on the Maidan in January 2014 because it has a video recording of a group of people in the Maidan-controlled Trade Union building hiding a firearm and discussing his killing right after it happened. The Trade Union building was the headquarters of the Maidan leadership and the Right Sector during the Maidan. He revealed a Security Service of Ukraine report concerning its covert video surveillance of a Right Sector chemical explosions lab in the Trade Union building during the Maidan (Sharij, 2019).

Another evidence that these were false-flag killings is the absence of the moments and exact locations of killings of two of these protesters in livestreams, videos, photos, and confirmed eyewitnesses of these killings in the heavily covered area of a violent confrontation between the protesters and the police. A video published by a Ukrainian media outlet five years after these killings also provided evidence that a Belarusian far-right protester was killed from a Maidan-controlled area and not by the Berkut police. The video shows that he was shot while he was behind a barricade from burned buses that covered him from the Berkut police (Gubin, 2019).

The investigation confirmed that the Armenian protester was shot by pellets used in hunting. The killed Belarusian protester was a member of the UNA-UNSO. The ethnicities of these killed protesters also suggest that they were not random victims but were selected in order to propagate Euromaidan as ethnically inclusive and diverse and to garner support for Euromaidan among people from Armenia and Belarus. A Ukrainian reporter wrote on her Facebook page that a leader of the neo-Nazi White Hammer told her off the record that these two protesters were killed by their own and that this one of the reasons for the subsequent split of the White Hammer from the Right Sector (Melnikova, 2015).

Like in the case of the Maidan massacre, the prosecution stated that forensic examinations four years after the massacre reversed the previous examination findings without any explanation and claimed that these three protesters were killed from a distance between 7 to 21 meters. But the same investigation stated before that the police was then further from the protesters (4 goda, 2018). Various live streams and videos, which were viewed by the author, showed the same.

Nobody is charged with the killings of these Armenian, Belarusian, and Western Ukrainian protesters for more than 10 years since their murders, which were used by the Maidan leaders and the far-right to mobilize mass protests and justify their violence. The evidence suggests that they were killed in a false-flag operation with possible involvement of the far-right and that the investigation of their killings after the Maidan was stonewalled and fabricated for this reason and the actual killers were the covered-up. The Ukrainian and Western media with a few notable exceptions did not report such evidence and continued to propagate fake news about killings of these and other Maidan protesters by the Berkut police or government snipers.

The Ukrainian trial sentence of the men for beating Tetiana Chornovol, a prominent female Maidan activist from the Fatherland Party and a former far-right UNA-UNSO activist, at the end of December 2013 stated that this was a traffic-related conflict. Various Ukrainian media reported during the Euromaidan that the same attackers, which were identified by the investigation when Yanukovych was still president, were linked to the Maidan opposition leaders. Davyd Zhvania, a former member of the Maidan leadership, stated several years afterward that her beating was staged by the Maidan leaders, similarly to the abduction of Bulatov. A similar statement was made by the former commander of the Maidan Self-Defense company. This is consistent with the disappearance of the crucial part of her dash camera recording of this incident and speedy disappearance of most of her head injuries. Zhvania also stated that the abduction of two other protesters, one of whom perished, was also staged by the Maidan leaders (Pravda, 2020).

The tipping point of the Euromaidan violence and mass protests was a highly publicized violent dispersal of a few hundred protesters by the anti-riot Berkut special police force on the Maidan on November 30, 2013. Videos, photos, and later admissions and testimonies by Right Sector and Maidan opposition leaders, and Maidan activists showed that it was orchestrated by oligarchic politicians from the Yanukovych government and by the oligarchic Maidan opposition with involvement of the far-right Right Sector. Such evidence revealed that the Maidan opposition leaders knew in advance about the police dispersal, that the head of the Yanukovych presidential administration from a rival oligarchic clan was involved in orchestrating the dispersal by the Berkut police and its filming and misrepresentation by his Inter TV channel, and that the Right Sector activists attacked the Berkut police during this dispersal (Katchanovski, 2020, 2020, Forthcoming).

The various evidence suggests that these highly publicized cases of violence against Maidan activists were rationally organized and staged with involvement of elements of the Maidan leadership and in part of the cases the far-right in order to reignite the anti-government Euromaidan protests by using the mechanism of state repression backfire.

Table 7.1 summarizes the key evidence of the Maidan massacre on February 18–19, 2014, and other related cases of violence during the Maidan.

Table 7.1 Summary of the Maidan massacre on February 18–19, 2014, and other related cases of violence during the EuroMaidan
Full size table