Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) accused former Prime Minister Sergiy Arbuzov and former Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Klymenko of financing the thugs who provoked riots in Odessa of May 2, which led to at least 46 deaths. Arbuzov and Klymenko served in the administration of disgraced former President Viktor Yanukovych, who was overthrown in the EuroMaidan Revolution on Feb. 22.
The Odessa clashes involved local EuroMaidan activists and football fans against pro-Russian activists, who reportedly fired weapons at the unarmed pro-Ukrainian side before the crowd started fighting back.
More than 200 people were wounded in the clashes and 144 were arrested by police.
Most of the people killed died from suffocation when being barricaded at the Trade Union House that was set on fire.
“Subversion in the Ukrainian city of Odessa that was financed by former top officials was targeted at disruption of stability on the south of Ukraine,” said Kateryna Kosareva, SBU press spokeswoman. “Its organizers were planning that it would be the beginning of full scale instability on the rest of southern regions of our country.”
Kosareva said the people who instigated the clashes came from the breakaway Moldovan region of Trasnistriaand were coordinated by Russian subversives.
Bordering with Odessa Oblast, Transnistria as been for years a stronghold of pro-Russian forces and have thousands of Russian troops on its territory.
Arbuzov and Klymenko, members of Yanukovych’s inner circle, headed the finance bloc of the former government, and escaped from the country along with Yanukovych in late February. Ukraine’s new authorities believe that both are now hiding in Russia.
Ukraine’s acting Prosecutor General Oleg Makhnitsky in an interview with the Financial Times on April 28 said that Yanukovych and his entourage took $32 billion in cash to Russia.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at [email protected]
