Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko has said the case involving Maidan shootings during the Revolution of Dignity will be given to defendants to acquaint themselves with and to the court immediately after Ukraine’s parliament extends the procedure for in absentia prosecution. He made the pledge on Facebook on Wednesday, February 20, 2019, the fifth anniversary of the Revolution of Dignity.
“Today, on the fifth anniversary of those events with bloodshed, I can firmly say: the investigation established not only 66 persons suspected in the killings (46 of them fled to the Russian Federation, the rest are in custody). Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO) this year has actually completed the investigation in relation to those who gave criminal orders leading to the murders and injuries on the Maidan,” Lutsenko said.
“A commission of experts and specialists on the basis of 988 volumes of investigation materials concluded that the death and injury of participants during peaceful protests on the Maidan was directly caused by decisions and actions of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, ex-head of the SBU State Security Service Yakymenko and his subordinates Totsky, Hanzhi, Potiyevsky, Scheholiev, ex-Minister of Internal Affairs Zakharchenko and his subordinates Shuliak, Konoplianyk, Mykolenko, ex-Defense Minister Lebedev and ex-Chief of the General Staff Zamana,” Lutsenko said.
In interviews with Ukrainian TV channels, Lutsenko said Russia was involved in the events on the Maidan and tried to influence Ukraine’s foreign policy. He said experts analyzed hundreds of volumes of evidence and found “systemic facts showing the obvious complicity of Yanukovych, Yakymenko, Shuliak, ex-acting Kyiv police chief Valeriy Mazan and other officials with Russian officials, who, through their agents of influence in Ukraine, attempted to influence Ukraine’s foreign policy in an unlawful and unconstitutional way, and then to violate Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
“Experts and invited specialists concluded that those persons named had unlawfully abandoned posts – in some cases in an organized manner together with subordinates and with weapons, leaving borders unprotected with the aim of evading legal responsibility in Ukraine and fleeing to the country they worked for, i.e. Russia,” Lutsenko said.
“I am speaking for the first time about the influence of Russia on the Maidan events. The investigators have established telephone calls between all participants in the violent acts on the Maidan and Russian leaders,” the prosecutor general said.
Lutsenko said the investigators had documents that had not been destroyed after Yanukovych’s orders, according to which ex-Ukrainian Defense Minister Pavlo Lebedev had given an order to deploy a rather large number – 1,790 – Ukrainian soldiers to the Maidan.
“Fortunately, because of the principled position of many servicemen and due to the victory of Maidan protesters over Yanukovych, the Armed Forces were not used for dispersal, although military equipment and special equipment were illegally involved in keeping with orders by Yanukovych, Lebedev and Yakymenko,” Lutsenko said.
As earlier reported, Ukraine on February 20 marked Heavenly Hundred Heroes Day.
Five years ago, 78 Maidan activists were killed in the center of Kyiv from February 18 to February 20. They were subsequently called the Heavenly Hundred.
