PREVIEW： Realpolitik #27 ｜ The Truth about Maidan with Ivan Katchanovski
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
144.49364
Summary
In this episode, Professor Ivan Kachnowski joins me to talk about the Maidan massacre in Ukraine in 2014, and why he believes that it was not the work of the government forces, but the actions of the opposition.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hello, and welcome to a new episode of RealPolitik. I am your host, Firas Mardad. I am
00:00:06.240
joined today by Canadian-Ukrainian professor Ivan Kachnowski. I hope I didn't butcher his name too
00:00:13.280
badly. Ivan is a professor of political science in Canada. He's quite the expert on the Russia-Ukraine
00:00:20.400
issue. I know you've been very interested in this, so I wanted to get someone of his stature
00:00:26.240
to help us understand the conflict in context and help us understand where we are in the war right
00:00:32.000
now. Ivan, thank you very much for joining me. Thank you for the invitation. My pleasure. My
00:00:38.880
pleasure. You recently put out a book arguing that the narrative around the Euromaidan protest
00:00:47.520
was very misleading and inaccurate. To remind our audience, the Euromaidan protest in 2014
00:00:55.520
kicked off over the issue of whether Ukraine was going to side with Russia or side with the
00:01:00.800
European Union. The objective was really to force the Ukrainian government of the time to side with
00:01:08.560
the EU, and this is why they added the appellate euro to the Maidan protest. There was a significant
00:01:15.520
amount of violence there. Something like 80 to 100 people were killed by gunfire, and it's not fully
00:01:24.160
clear who was responsible for the killing. Ivan, you've done some research into this, and you looked a
00:01:30.640
lot into the different angles from where people were killed and things of that nature. Tell us a little bit
00:01:37.520
what you found, and then I'm going to ask you, how were your findings received?
00:01:43.040
Yes, I did research about the Maidan massacre in Ukraine since it was live, since I watched it live
00:01:51.360
on February 20, 2014, since I specialize in researching conflicts and political violence in Ukraine. I did
00:02:00.400
this for a very long time, so I was looking into this mass murder checking place live on television. I was
00:02:07.600
watching this from my home in Canada, looking into live streams from the internet. And since then,
00:02:18.080
for more than 11 years, I did research by looking into all publicly available evidence, all the videos,
00:02:25.440
all audio recordings, all photos from this massacre, all witness testimonies. I examined all Maidan massacre
00:02:35.200
trial broadcasts which were made public on YouTube, which were also shown live. So I looked into what kind
00:02:44.320
of evidence government investigation produced and what was reported by eyewitnesses, by Maidan activists who were
00:02:54.080
wounded and testified for the Ukrainian trial, which was taken place since 2015. So I checked all this evidence,
00:03:06.320
and based on my research, I can say there is no doubt that this massacre was conducted not by the government
00:03:13.760
forces. This massacre was conducted by elements of the Maidan opposition, specifically to falsely blame the
00:03:21.920
government forces of Viktor Yanukovych and his security and police forces in order to overthrow him and to
00:03:30.560
take power in Ukraine. And they were successful in this crime, in this mass murder, because they
00:03:37.920
overthrew Yanukovych. All media basically reported that he was the one who was responsible for this massacre, and
00:03:45.200
he was blamed for this massacre. He had to flee Ukraine because of his power basically vanished after
00:03:54.720
his security forces withdrew from the area of downtown Kyiv as a result of agreement after this massacre. And he
00:04:03.280
also was subject to assassination attempts shortly after the massacre. Again, this is almost never reported
00:04:10.480
by the media in the West. And so I published since then, I published four peer-reviewed journal articles,
00:04:16.720
and I published my book, open access book, which means free book, freely available for everyone who
00:04:23.200
interested to get information about my research and about this important massacre. And since the book is
00:04:30.480
available, I provided hyperlinks, so anybody can check this. It is free for everyone to read and download.
00:04:40.640
Well, thank you for that. What specific evidence did you find? So you said that you looked at the
00:04:45.680
evidence and you looked at the court processes in Ukraine. Tell me what you found in that evidence,
00:04:52.080
and tell me about some of the testimony that you cited in your work.
00:04:56.720
Yes, I found videos of this massacre which are synchronized according to the start of the massacre
00:05:06.080
when you have first police officers who were killed from locations which were controlled by the Maidan
00:05:12.240
opposition. So there are videos which show this, how this took place. In the morning of February 20th,
00:05:19.680
I found that then police forces retreated and fled basically from Maidan Square in Kyiv because of this
00:05:29.600
murder and killing and wounding of many police officers on Maidan. And after this, when they fled,
00:05:38.720
Maidan activists moved after them and they were shot as well by snipers located in buildings which were
00:05:45.680
controlled by Maidan opposition, such as Hotel Ukraine and other buildings which were nearby,
00:05:51.840
which were controlled by the elements of the Maidan opposition.
00:05:56.400
How do you know that they were controlled by elements of the Maidan opposition?
00:06:00.480
Because, again, I look very carefully. So there are videos which show, including videos by BBC,
00:06:06.560
which are included in my video appendixes, which are available online on YouTube. So anybody can watch them.
00:06:12.560
They are synchronized. And you see also videos of BBC, which show that Hotel Ukraine entrance was
00:06:19.360
controlled by actually Maidan opposition, specifically by members of the far-right Svoboda party.
00:06:27.360
They were standing in front of an entrance to the Hotel Ukraine, to elevators. And you see inside of this
00:06:34.720
hotel, which I actually lived, in which I stayed many, many times myself. In this hotel, you see that they
00:06:43.520
are Maidan activists in the lobby of this hotel. You see also security guards in front of an entrance to
00:06:52.080
elevators. And you can see also that there were no other, nobody else was there because I also cited
00:07:00.880
testimonies of a leader of the Maidan group, which guarded this hotel. And he said that this hotel
00:07:08.000
was controlled by the Maidan opposition. And specifically, he was in charge of guarding this
00:07:12.880
hotel even before the massacre and during the massacre and after the massacre. And he was filmed,
00:07:19.040
including by BBC, in this hotel, actually, during the massacre.
00:07:22.480
By this point, the hotel lobby was being used as a makeshift hospital. It was chaos.
00:07:29.360
No one controlled access. Anyone could have got in.
00:07:37.760
Later that night, Andri Paroubi's Maidan security men were roaming the upper floors of the hotel,
00:07:44.000
knocking on doors, including our own, looking for a sniper.
00:07:47.680
There's no question that government security forces did have snipers positioned on tall buildings
00:08:10.480
overlooking Maidan and the surrounding area. But their intercepted radio communications suggest
00:08:16.800
confusion at the very least, or possibly, that they were not alone.
00:08:21.200
In addition to this, there was a statement, public statement by opposition,
00:08:34.160
far-right suborda leaders, at the end of January, that they took control and guard of this hotel
00:08:40.960
themselves. And this is just, this is what is clear. And there are also reports by journalists,
00:08:47.920
by eyewitnesses, who were at the hotel and there were no other, nobody else, no government forces.
00:08:55.120
And this is also stated that this hotel was controlled by Maidan opposition in the verdict,
00:09:01.120
which was issued by the Ukrainian court after the Maidan massacre trial took place. So this is now
00:09:07.360
official recognition by the Maidan massacre trial verdict that this hotel was controlled by the Maidan
00:09:14.480
opposition opposition, and in particular by this far-right link party. And there are also videos which I found
00:09:22.160
that there were groups of armed Maidan activists in this hotel, during the massacre which took place.
00:09:27.840
And they were located in the same, on the same floors of the Hotel Lucina, in the same locations from which
00:09:34.000
snipers shot at the Maidan activists from this hotel, including, including the ones who shot at the BBC
00:09:43.760
television crew. And this famous video of BBC, which shows that the sniper was shooting at the
00:09:50.400
direction of BBC journalists and Maidan activists would point their hands to this hotel and would
00:09:57.840
shoot sniper and they would run away. And this was filmed by BBC television. Earlier that morning,
00:10:04.400
we too had seen someone firing out of the upper floors of the Hotel Ukraine.
00:10:08.400
Uh, what is that? What? That window? Yeah. Facing directly to us? Yeah.
00:10:20.080
F**k. That is coming straight out of that window.
00:10:34.480
Which one? Up there. Okay. Yeah. Our hotel. That window.
00:10:39.440
Um, okay. One, two, three, four. Fifth row from the left. Second from the top. One that was open.
00:10:50.080
Uh, journalist, uh, television, uh, crew, and it was published, uh, after the Maidan massacre online,
00:10:57.840
this video is available. And so now, uh, the, uh, official, uh, verdict of Ukrainian court stated that
00:11:05.600
this, uh, shooting was done by Maidan activists from the Hotel Ocarina, which was controlled by
00:11:11.200
Maidan opposition. So this is now stated officially and supported what I found in my own research,
00:11:16.480
uh, which is now published as a book and publishes for PRU journal articles.
00:11:23.120
And in addition to this, in addition to videos, there are videos of snipers, uh, again, with Maidan
00:11:28.320
activists inside of this hotel, there are videos of shooting from this hotel by snipers, eyewitness
00:11:34.720
testimonies. So I found about 100 eyewitness testimonies during the massacre themselves itself,
00:11:40.720
in which people would point to Hotel Ocarina and other locations, like music conservatory and other
00:11:47.120
locations, which were controlled by Maidan opposition and said that there were snipers in these locations.
00:11:53.520
But the conservatory building several hundred meters away was firmly in the hands of the protesters.
00:12:00.000
Just after eight o'clock that morning, a news photographer had managed to get into the building
00:12:04.560
with his camera. When I come inside, uh, I was saw the guys, uh, one come after me, uh, was just a
00:12:14.480
hunter gun. Hunting rifle. Hunting rifle. And, uh, I, I saw the guy with the Kalashnikov. And, uh, after that,
00:12:22.720
uh, I come outside and, uh, saw the other guys who was also with the guns. Some of them lying on the floor,
00:12:31.600
some of them hiding after, uh, behind the columns on the second floor. And, uh, uh, after that,
00:12:38.400
the guys who saw me and said, go out, go out. On the morning of the 20th, there were persistent
00:12:44.480
reports of gunfire coming from the conservatory building. Now, for the first time, one of those
00:12:50.000
gunmen has spoken on camera. He was part of the protest movement, he said, and agreed to talk to us
00:12:56.000
on condition that we disguise his identity. We will call him Sergei. It was the Maidan security
00:13:03.200
people who gathered us and asked, if it comes to it, who here can shoot? And I said, I can shoot.
00:13:09.360
So they said, okay, if there's no other way out, then you will do this work.
00:13:14.800
That was on the 19th. Earlier that day, Sergei had been told to meet a man on the edge of the protest
00:13:20.720
camp who appeared carrying a box. He had brought a 12 caliber shotgun, lots of ammunition and a Saiga.
00:13:30.480
That's a rifle that fires high velocity rounds similar to a standard Kalashnikov.
00:13:36.640
I took that weapon off him. It had a sight attached. I know how to use this gun because I served in the
00:13:42.400
army. There are also videos by Belgian television video, which was, um, uh, the most famous video
00:13:50.560
of the Maidan massacre. And this video was shown by all television networks around the world, but they
00:13:57.120
show only about one minute of this video in which you see Maidan activists being shot and killed, uh, on,
00:14:04.800
and this was, uh, again, a very famous video shown around the world to hundreds of millions of people.
00:14:11.440
But actually what they did not show, this was what happened before this. And, and before this,
00:14:17.040
I got this entire video from this Belgian journalist because this video was made public at the Maidan
00:14:22.400
massacre trial in Ukraine, but again, never reported by any media,
00:14:27.840
because this video shows that this Maidan activists before they were shot and killed and massacred in
00:14:33.760
this area were led to this exact spot by two other Maidan activists who were, again, leading them and
00:14:41.840
calling them to go there for no apparent reason. And these activists who led them, again, were not killed
00:14:48.640
themselves. So this is, again, and, and when this Maidan activists would go to the area before they would
00:14:55.680
be shot, there is also video which shows that they, um, that there was a gunshot from the direction from the
00:15:01.840
back, from the Hotel Lucina into their direction, which hit a tree behind them. And they would turn to this
00:15:08.080
hotel and would shoot, uh, do not shoot at us. Basically, they were shooting at snipers, not to
00:15:13.360
shoot at them. So this is, again, this was, this was never reported by the media. This was never reported
00:15:20.560
by and denied by even, uh, official government investigation. Even so, it's very clear that this,
00:15:26.560
this, uh, again, was shooting from the back, from the Hotel Lucina direction. And in addition to this,
00:15:31.840
I found also, like, testimonies, eyewitness testimonies of several hundred witnesses, eyewitnesses who
00:15:38.240
testified about Maidan snipers located in these locations in the Hotel Lucina and other locations,
00:15:45.280
shooting in Maidan. What were the, what were the other locations?
00:15:48.800
This was, like, Music Conservatory on the Maidan, Hotel Kozacki, uh, main post office. Um,
00:15:56.000
uh, there was also, uh, Zhoknevi Palace, Oktober Palace, and Bank Arcada, and buildings on the left and
00:16:03.280
right side of, um, of, uh, the massacre site, uh, Hotodecki, and Museini Street. So these locations
00:16:10.640
basically included snipers when, this was not just a single man or single sniper. This was specifically
00:16:17.040
organized and well-prepared operation just to, to place snipers in advance in these locations and know
00:16:24.560
what they would be doing basically. And this is what they, this was done. And they, and these snipers
00:16:28.960
would move from one location to another location freely in the area which was controlled by Maidan
00:16:34.080
opposition. So this is another evidence that, uh, this was, uh, involvement of Maidan opposition.
00:16:39.680
In addition to this, uh, I've, I cited in my, uh, in my book, in my articles and also published online,
00:16:48.240
testimonies by, uh, hundreds of eyewitnesses who testified about snipers located in this
00:16:54.080
locations. Uh, I also, uh, published and, uh, and posted online, uh, testimonies of absolute
00:17:01.760
majority of Maidan activists who were wounded during this Maidan massacre. And most of them testified,
00:17:07.840
absolute majority of them testified to the Ukrainian government investigation and to the Maidan massacre
00:17:13.440
trail that they were shot from locations like Hotel Ukeina, which were not controlled by the Maidan,
00:17:19.120
uh, uh, uh, which were controlled by the Maidan opposition and were not controlled by government
00:17:24.240
forces. So this was anybody. Sorry. Was anybody shot by government forces?
00:17:33.120
According to my research, there were only a few cases in which it's not clear if, um, or it's uncertain,
00:17:41.040
because of lack of evidence or because of, um, uh, of, uh, shots from, uh, which coincide.
00:17:47.760
So you see only in a few cases, uh, when I synchronize all the videos of shooting and shooting by the
00:17:53.440
police and specific protesters killed and wounded, the only in few such cases, uh, they are, they are
00:18:01.120
shooting by the police coincided or gunshots with police coincided with, um, uh, this wounding or
00:18:08.080
killing of Maidan activists. But at the same time, you can hear two gunshots with very different sound.
00:18:14.800
So it's not possible to determine precisely who actually shot them, but, um, in a few cases,
00:18:21.040
but I think it's very likely that they were also shot by Maidan opposition and not by, not by the police,
00:18:28.800
whose members were blamed for this massacre because wounds in almost all activists who were shot and
00:18:35.600
wounded and killed were from a very steep direction. And most of them were from the side and from the
00:18:41.920
back, uh, uh, again, at a very steep angle, which means they were shot from, uh, from buildings like
00:18:48.000
Hotel Ukeina and not on the ground, uh, which was located by, uh, in which you have police shooting.
00:18:54.960
And police were shooting basically in, uh, on, on the ground, on, on, in the walls or in the teeth,
00:19:01.120
specifically to stop advance of Maidan activists. So this wasn't warning shots, basically.
00:19:05.200
This was not to kill them. And also police were shooting in snipers in Hotel Ukeina.
00:19:10.240
There were a lot of, um, gunshot, uh, bullet holes in Hotel Ukeina in the, in floors located
00:19:17.600
at the second floor and above. But there were basically just one gunshot, which was below one,
00:19:24.080
before, below the second floor. So this means at the height of Maidan activists who were shot.
00:19:28.640
So this, this means police were shooting in snipers above,
00:19:32.080
Maidan, above the height of Maidan activists who were in blind spot, uh, basically because
00:19:37.920
police even could not see them, uh, behind a barricade, which, which was, uh, from where,
00:19:44.160
from which they were shooting after they retreated from that area. So this is like testimonies of,
00:19:49.440
even Maidan activists who were shot, they testified about this. There are also like forensic,
00:19:54.160
ballistic and medical examinations. I already mentioned that medical examinations by government
00:19:59.360
experts found that absolute majority of Maidan activists were shot, uh, not from the front,
00:20:04.320
from horizontal level, which was location of the police, but, uh, they were shot from,
00:20:09.600
from behind or from, uh, left or right side, or from, uh, very steep and from very steep angle.
00:20:17.200
If you enjoyed this piece of premium content from the Lotus Eaters, head to our website where you can find more.