Ukraine's Interior Ministry has confirmed two deaths during mass riots on Kyiv's Hrushevsky Street on Tuesday and said both fatalities were caused by bullet wounds but denied that either of the two men was killed by police.
A statement from the ministry cited Vitaliy Sakal, head of the ministry’s investigative department, as saying the police do not use bullets of the kind that had killed Sergei Nigoyan, a 20-year-old resident of Dnipropetrovsk region, and Mikhail Zhiznevsky, a 25-year-old national of Belarus.
Sakal said investigators suspected that the killings were “murders with the aim of provoking an escalation of the conflict and justifying the use of weapons by protesters.”
According to the statement, Nigoyan had two chest wounds that damaged the heart and lungs and a non-penetrative head wound, and Zhiznevsky was killed by a bullet that went through his chest and damaged the aorta in the vicinity of the heart.
Nigoyan was hit by “shrapnel made on the basis of a lead alloy” and Zhiznevsky by “a sporting gun bullet,” the statement said.
Sakal said: “Neither the police nor the Interior Forces troops who are maintaining public order have government-issued firearms on them there.”
“It is in the interest of law enforcers,” said the statement, “to find out all the circumstances of these crimes as it has been confirmed that the bodies were moved over and there are no witnesses of the incidents. Moreover, protesters were interfering with the work of the police detective team, tried to seize the video camera that was being used for recording, etc.”
Investigators asked television channels for footage made on Hrushevsky Street at what are believed to have been the minutes Nigoyan and Zhiznevsky were killed.
