Revenge is mixing with blood in the Odessa air after May 2 violence that killed 46 people when pro-Ukrainian activists defended themselves against an assault by armed pro-Russian activists.
Social network groups of the rival groups show that the sides are far from making peace.
Public groups in Vkontakte, the Russian counterpart of Facebook and Ukraine’s most popular social network, are major communication tools for both the pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian activists. It was in Vkontakte where, on the eve of the fateful May 2 events, one of the Odessa AntiMaidan groups published a call for pro-Russian activists to forcefully stop the scheduled peaceful march of the pro-Ukrainian football fans.
They did and that triggered the hours-long street fight that claimed the most lives in a single day since the Feb. 20 assassinations of EuroMaidan activists killed 70 people.
In this atmosphere of anger, grief and revenge in the tragedy’s aftermath, the pro-Euromaidan groups haved posted snapshots from the videos taken on May 2 and asked the subscribers to identify the pro-Russian aggressors.
Their opponents went even further.
Several pro-Russian, AntiMaidan Vkontakte group have been posting photos, names and personal data of EuroMaidan supporters from Odessa, as well as local members of the militantly nationalist Right Sector who allegedly participated in the violence on May 2.
The photos are often accompanied with the calls to “find and destroy” the person.
The Odessa AntiMaidan page has posted a collage of photos of local EuroMaidan activist Vitaliy Ustymenko and photos of burned corpses found in the Trade Unions House that caught fire. It encourages people to print them out and distribute them as leaflets.
The cutline blamed Ustymenko for organizing the fire and said: “You know what to do” in big red letters. His home address was published too, as well as photos of his girlfriend.
Many of those who AntiMaidan groups listed as “beasts” who “organized the mass murder on May 2” were young women.
Anna Kuzmina, 20-year old student and pro-Ukrainian activist from Odessa, deleted her Vkontakte page after the AntiMaidan group published her name, photo and phone number, calling her a participant in the deadly clashes.
Diana Berg, a EuroMaidan Revolution supporter from Donetsk, was one of many pro-Ukrainian activists whose data was published on one of the AntiMaidan pages.
With no evidence offered, a group called “Russians Don’t Give Up” said she participated in starting the fire in the Trade Unions House. The group published her home address in Donetsk, described where she usually leaves her car and explained how to find the windows of her apartment.
“It is terrible. The worst thing is that they terrorize my family, my parents. They call them and message them with threats all the time. I can’t go to police in Donetsk, here the police officers wear St. George ribbons (pro-Russian sign),” Berg told Kyiv Post.
A special Vkontakte group called DarkFaceMan lists and shares the information about pro-Ukrainian activists, who allegedly participated in the May 2 clashes. The group posted a photo of young women who mixed Molotov Cocktails for the pro-Ukrainian activists during the fight and called to identify “the beasts.”
A pro-Russian blog shared among Vkontakte Antimaidan supporters lists many pro-Ukrainian participants of the May 2 protests with their photos, home addresses and often comments like, “She will die soon, hopefully.”
At least three of the similar groups were blocked by Vkontakte administration in the past days for extremism and direct calls for murders.
The same aggressive pro-Russian groups have been sharing fake quotes of Ukrainian politicians, including interim President Oleksandr Turchynov saying “I won’t stop until I destroy Sloviansk,” referring to the separatist-controlled city in Donetsk Oblast, and ex-Prime Minister and current presidential candidaet Yulia Tymoshenko promising to “kill off World War II veterans.”
Kyiv Post editor Olga Rudenko
