This
report from Russian Vesti news, not without sentiments of sympathy
towards the Ukrainian PEOPLE is devastating.
SHOCKING
Poll Results: Only 2% of Ukrainians Pleased With Results of
Euromaidan!
It's
late November, practically the 5th anniversary of Ukraine's so-called
Euromaidan. Five years later, many details have become clear, like
how Europe tricked the people on the Maidan. Who was shooting at the
deceived, and how, in order to make the crowd that was getting bored
rage at the sight of blood? Who managed to benefit from this con job,
and who lost everything?
Kids
Digging Trenches: Poroshenko’s Martial Law Turns Macabre as Panic
Begins to Set In
Vesti Sweeping
searches on the roads in Mariupol, Russian heavy trucks captured in
Odessa region, an attack on a shopping mall in downtown Kiev. That's
how Ukraine is getting used to living with martial law. Today,
Poroshenko visited Chernigov: the first of the 10 regions to
introduce martial law. And the reason for the introduction became
clear at once: the president, who wants to be reelected, basically
made an election tour out of this trip. Those who are too young to
vote were sent to dig trenches at this moment.
“Gunfire
aimed at protesters on Kiev’s Independence Square, also known as
the Maidan, was delivered in winter 2014 by the mercenaries who had
arrived in Kiev for the purpose of organizing disorders,” lawyer
Alexander Goroshinsky told 112.Ukraina channel on Tuesday, as
reported in Tass on December 13h.
In
a dramatic development in the trial in Kiev of several Berkut police
officers accused of shooting civilians in the Maidan demonstrations
in February 2014, the defence has produced two Georgians who confirm
that the murders were committed by foreign snipers, at least 50 of
them, operating in teams. The two Georgians, Alexander Revazishvili
and Koba Nergadze have agreed to testify by video from Tbilisi, if
permitted, as they feared for their lives if brought to Kiev.
The
defence lawyer stated,
“The
eyewitnesses said they had seen with their own eyes a group of people
who had received weapons and cartridges and who would deliver fire
afterwards from the building of the Conservatoire. Nergadze also saw
snipers at the roof of Hotel Ukraine. They know the individuals
personally. Besides, they know the organizers and clients and are
ready to give their names, as well as the names of the perpetrators.”
“In
all, about fifty mercenaries arrived in Kiev then and they were
involved in the events on the Maidan afterwards and fired at the
protesters on February 20,” Goroshinsky went on. “The mercenaries
split into groups of ten men each and were dispatched to different
spots where from they delivered fire.”
“Each
of them [the mercenaries] received $5,000 for the job done,” he
said. “In other words, these people had been brought [to Kiev] with
a well-specified task to create a conflict.”
This
dramatic and explosive evidence was first brought to light by the
Italian journalist Gian Micalessin on November 16 in an article in
the Italian journal Il Giornale and is again brought to the world’s
attention by a lawyer with some courage picking up on that report and
speaking with the witnesses himself. These witnesses stated to Gian
Micalessin, even more explosively, that the American Army was
directly involved in the murders.
The
clear objective of the Maidan massacre in Kiev on February 20, 2014
was to sow chaos and reap the fall of the democratically elected,
pro-Russian Yanukovych government. People were slaughtered for no
other reason than to destroy a government the NATO powers, especially
the United States and Germany, wanted removed because of its
opposition to NATO, the EU, and their hegemonic drive to open Ukraine
and Russia to American and German economic expansion. In other words,
it was about money and the making of money.
The
western media and leaders quickly blamed the Yanukovych government
for the killings during the Maidan demonstrations, but more evidence
has become available indicating that the massacre in Kiev of police
and civilians – which led to the escalation of protests, leading to
the overthrow of the Yanukovych government – was the work of
snipers working on orders of government opponents and their NATO
controllers using the protests as a cover for a coup.
One
of the snipers already admitted to this in February 2015, thereby
confirming what had become common knowledge just a few days after the
massacre in Kiev and in a secretly recorded telephone call, the
Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet reported to the EU head of
Foreign Policy, Catherine Ashton, in early March 2014, that there was
widespread suspicion that “someone from the new coalition” in the
Kiev government may have ordered the sniper murders. In February
2016, Maidan activist Ivan Bubenchik confessed that in the course of
the massacre, he had shot Ukrainian police officers. Bubenchik
confirmed this in a film that gained wide attention.
In
the September 2015 issue of Oriental Review, Dr. Ivan Katchanovski,
at the University of Ottawa, published a devastating paper on the
Maidan killings setting out in extensive detail the conclusive
evidence that it was a false flag operation and that members of the
present Kiev regime, including Poroshenko himself were involved in
the murders, not the government forces. His paper contains all you
need to know and I highly recommend it. Here is a summary of his
findings:
“The
paper analyzes a large amount of evidence from different publicly
available sources concerning this massacre and killings of specific
protestors…“This academic investigation concludes that the
massacre was a false flag operation, which was rationally planned and
carried out with a goal of the overthrow of the government and
seizure of power. It found various evidence of the involvement of an
alliance of the far right organizations, specifically the Right
Sector and Svoboda, and oligarchic parties, such as Fatherland.
Concealed shooters and spotters were located in at least 20
Maidan-controlled buildings or areas. The various evidence that the
protesters were killed from these locations include some 70
testimonies, primarily by Maidan protesters, several videos of
“snipers” targeting protesters from these buildings, comparisons
of positions of the specific protesters at the time of their killing
and their entry wounds, and bullet impact signs. The study uncovered
various videos and photos of armed Maidan “snipers” and spotters
in many of these buildings.
Dr.
Katchanovski makes a very pertinent point in his conclusion;
No
reliableevidence about “third
force” foreign snipers or organizers of the massacrehas
been found… Because of various
evidence of US government backing of the Maidan opposition,
itsinvolvement in the Maidan
government selection and policy decisions, and its past record
of supporting or organizing regime change in other countries,
additional research is needed toexamine if there was any involvement
of the US government in the violent overthrow of theUkrainian
government. “
Well,
now we have that evidence.
In
the November 16 article in the Italian journal Il Giornale, and
repeated on Italian TV Canale 5, journalist Gian Micalessin revealed
that 3 Georgians, all trained army snipers, and with links to Mikheil
Saakashvili and Georgian security forces were ordered to travel to
Kiev from Tbilisi during the Maidan events. It is two of these men
that are now being called to testify in Kiev.
On
the 18th of February they were given weapons and two of them took up
positions at the Hotel Ukraina overlooking Maidan Square while the
third was positioned in the Conservatory. Other snipers were
positioned in other buildings to fire into the square. Prior to that
they met with, among other people, an American soldier in uniform, a
claimed “former” member of the US Army’s 101st Airborne
Division, who gave them orders on what to do, which it turned out to
be was to shoot into Maidan Square randomly targeting people,
protestors and police alike, to create fear and confusion, to
implicate the government forces as the shooters, to create the chaos
necessary in order to undermine the government of President
Yanukovych, who fled shortly after the event realising his own life
was in danger.
The name of the American soldier, or the alias he
used, was Brian Christopher Boyenger. He showed up later as an
adviser to the Ukrainian Georgian Legion.
One of the snipers stated,
“Once,
I guess around February 15, Mamulashvili personally visited our tent.
There was another guy with him wearing a uniform. Mamulashvili
introduced him to us and told us he was an American military guy and
will be our instructor.”
Another
stated,
“This
American was Brian Christopher Boyenger, a “former” soldier, a
sniper, from the 101st Airborne Division.”
“He
was the one who gave us orders.”
Questions
naturally arise on how this “former” American soldier entered the
country and took command of a murderous sniper unit and it is highly
probable that the word “former” was used to give the Americans
plausible deniability if their men were found out, as has now
occurred. No one can seriously doubt that his presence was known to
the US ambassador in Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt, who, according to then
Vice President Joe Biden, was in hourly contact with Andriy Parubiy,
the Ukrainian fascist who was in charge of “self defence units”
made of heavily armed fascist thugs at Maidan. According to the
Italian report, Parubiy was going in and out of the Hotel Ukraina
from where many shots were fired and was aware of the presence of the
American soldier so the American ambassador must have been aware and
his government. The Americans have yet to explain Boyenger’s
presence or what rank he held in the US Army. Parubiy’s role in the
events has never been explained either but Poroshenko appointed this
mass murderer as head of Ukraine security and intelligence forces
after the coup and he now sits as President of Ukraine’s parliament
since April 14, 2016, in which position he can use to give the
Germans and Americans the cooperation they want.
The
massacre at Maidan, therefore, is revealed to be a carefully planned
military operation organised in detail, with teams of snipers brought
in from various NATO allied countries, unknown to each other, but
organised on arrival, given orders and assignments and each sniper
team being assigned spotters to help in their deadly work. This is
the tactic military sniper teams use so it has to be assumed that
each of the sniper teams was controlled by the same people as the
team the Italians talked to, that is by American soldiers trained in
these techniques and who themselves operate in teams. This operation
therefore had to be planned and organised on a high level by the
American forces and allied NATO governments.
It
is an extraordinary video to watch, as these men matter of factly
talk about what they did, for whom they did it; to watch them pull
back the veil so that we can see what callous brutality the NATO
alliance is capable of. We have seen this of course in all their
wars. They are deliberately brutal and always ruthless. But in the
interviews with these men we are shown the capacity of US military
machine-and here I mean the entire NATO alliance and all its allies
and agents-to randomly murder ordinary people, to murder them as if
they were stepping on ants, and with the same feeling of sadistic
satisfaction.
The
western media has so far ignored the Italian interviews, as they have
Dr. Katachanovski’s detailed paper and all the other evidence that
exists; as it must or face the prospect of the entire anti-Russian
propaganda campaign from unravelling. For now it is clear that the
entire justification of the Kiev regime for its existence, that it
got rid of Yanukovych to get rid of killers, is now proved to be a
cover for the fact that it is the very members of the present Kiev
regime who were complicit in the killings and directed them.
But
as these developments further evolve the international mafia known as
NATO that is responsible for the Maidan Square massacre have not
stopped slaughtering civilians. In Ukraine to this day the fascist
riddled, NATO -backed Kiev regime continues it siege of the Donbass
republics in violation of the laws of war and custom, in violation of
all humanity, while the British and American intelligence services
put out false stories about the shooting down of Flight MH17, using
NATO connected websites like Bellingcat, which only serves to add to
evidence that it is NATO and its Kiev allies that are responsible for
that slaughter as well. For why make up stories except to cover
yourself? The more they shift the blame the more it falls on them.
But
the reality is that the new evidence reported by the Italian press
will change nothing in the narrative of the general western media
which will conspire to suppress or better, ignore this evidence. In
fact no other media, anywhere, has included the crucial information
of the presence of American soldiers in Maidan in their coverage of
the Italian report, a fact which itself is more than curious.
The
International Criminal Court should investigate this new evidence,
lead where it may. They have jurisdiction. But we can expect nothing
from the ICC even if a countervailing pressure is put on the
prosecutor by the world public demanding that she act on this
information. We know whose interests the ICC serves. No, justice for
those murdered in Ukraine will have to wait for the return of true
democracy in Ukraine, a Ukraine no longer under the control of the
US, Germany and their allies, a Ukraine that is no longer a puppet
state of the west, and no longer used as a pawn in the long war
against Russia. For that is the ultimate objective, Russia.
Hybrid
warfare, war without limits, is accelerating against her. Last week
Russia was banished from the Olympics to damage her prestige, and the
bizarre allegations about rigging the US elections continue. To add
to the insults, the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly voted
a few days ago on a resolution condemning “violations of human
rights in Crimea;” a resolution demanded by Petro Poroshenko, one
of those implicated in the murders in Maidan Square. You have to give
it to them. They’ve got a lot of nerve.
But
Russia is not alone. She has allies. When the Poroshenko resolution
came up for a vote the EU and NATO allied countries obeyed orders and
supported the resolution but 77 countries abstained and 25 voted
against it including the BRICs and Iran,
Syria, North Korea, Armenia, Belarus, Philippines, Venezuela,
Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Burundi, Cuba, Eritrea, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Nicaragua, Uganda, Sudan, Serbia, Uzbekistan, and Bolivia.
Russia
is going to need these allies because the evidence, now coming in a
flood, about what the NATO forces did in Kiev on February 20, 2014
show us that they are capable of anything, and will stop at nothing.
Christopher
Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is
known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently
published his novel “Beneath
the Clouds.
He writes essays on international law, politics and world
events, especially for the online magazine “New
Eastern Outlook.”
As
news of the bizarre antics in Kiev involving former Georgian
President Mikheil Saakachvili – now released again this time by a
court after having been arrested for a second time – continues, I
recently read an article about Ukraine which gives just about as
bleak a picture of the state of the country as it gets
….the
news out of Ukraine over the past few weeks has been dire. The
country’s prosecutor general has disrupted investigations by its
National Anti-Corruption Bureau with the apparent consent of Mr.
Poroshenko. The interior minister has intervened to protect his son
from similar scrutiny. Officers in the security service, the SBU,
have tried to arrest Mikheil Saakachvili, the former Georgian
President turned Ukrainian corruption fighter, only to be driven back
by protesters. Prosecutors are targeting anti-corruption activists;
the army, interior ministry troops and private militias work at
cross-purposes, answering to different politicians or oligarchs. Mr.
Poroshenko’s government has been seriously weakened.
This
is in fact an accurate description of the sort of things that happen
in Ukrainian politics in any given week. The only thing that makes
these events at all unusual is that they are being written about in
this way by a journal which up to now has been one of the most fervid
supporters of Ukraine’s Maidan “revolution” (aka “the
Revolution of Dignity”).
That
journal – from whose latest article on Ukraine the above extract is
taken – is The Economist.
The
Economist is not the only pro-Maidan anti-Russian journal to write
recently about Ukraine in this way. An article in the website of the
rigidly Atlanticist Atlantic Council makes the same points.
Hand-wringing
about continued corruption in Ukraine following the Maidan
“revolution” is nothing new. Former US Vice-President Joe Biden
said many of the same things about corruption in Ukraine and the need
for ‘reform’ there during a visit to Ukraine in September last
year.
The
latest flurry of Western complaints about the state of Ukraine come
alongside publication of data about the disastrous decline of
Ukraine’s economy. Here is how an article from RT sums it up
The
latest research shows the people of Ukraine have the worst living
standards among all of Europe.
An
average Ukrainian earns just €190 per month, or just a little over
$220, according to the study by Texty.org.ua. The highest average net
salary, according to the analysts, is in Switzerland. An average
Swiss earns no less than $5,000 per month after taxes.
In
November, Ukrainian Economy Minister Stepan Kubiv admitted the
economy lost $15 billion annually after Russia closed its borders to
consumer goods from Ukraine, almost a fifth of the country’s GDP.
The
current gross domestic product of Ukraine is $93 billion. Before the
Maidan revolution at the end of 2013, Ukraine’s GDP was $183
billion.
The
RT article overstates the extent of the contraction of Ukraine’s
GDP. The figures given are based on calculations of Ukraine’s GDP
based on the exchange rate of Ukraine’s currency relative to the US
dollar. This is an artificial measure of GDP vulnerable to changes
in the exchange rate.
If
the more accurate purchasing power parity measure of GDP is used then
Ukraine’s GDP increases to $368 billion, which however is still
less than a tenth of Russia’s.
This
is a precipitous decline for what was once one of the most
economically developed regions of the USSR, and which because of its
Soviet legacy of strong industries, rich farmlands, large population,
abundant natural resources and access to the sea ought to be a rich
country.
Suffice
to say that whilst living standards in Russia are now significantly
higher than they were before the Soviet collapse, Ukrainian living
standards – which have never recovered to their Soviet levels –
have since 2014 fallen back still further.
Ukraine’s
tragedy is that there appears to be no route out of this crisis.
As
it happens every so often one comes across claims that the situation
in Ukraine is ‘stabilising’. Then something happens – such as
the bizarre antics involving Mikheil Saakashvili – which shows the
opposite.
On
the question of the economy, I remember having identical discussions
in the mid 1990s with various people about the ‘economic
stabilisation’ which was supposed to be happening in Russia.
When
an economy has contracted as severely as Russia’s did in the early
1990s and as Ukraine’s did in the period 2014 to 2015 even minimal
amounts of economic activity – such as always happen even in the
most collapsed economies – can distort the statistics to make the
situation look better than it really is.
The
mere fact for example that Ukraine this year has received $4 billion
from abroad – $3 billion which it borrowed itself at very high
interest, $1 billion which it was given by the IMF – which is a
very considerable amount of money for a country like Ukraine (4.3% of
GDP calculated on a nominal basis, 1% of GDP calculated on a
purchasing power parity basis) will have made the GDP statistics
about the economy look better than actual economic conditions in the
country really are.
This
is of course always assuming that the statistics are being collected
and collated properly, which in countries such as Russia was in the
1990s and such as Ukraine is now they never are.
That
Ukraine’s statistics are not reliable has in fact been confirmed by
studies of its population statistics, which show massive distortions
intended to conceal how bad the country’s demographic situation has
become. There is no reason to suppose that the same distortions do
not affect the economic data.
Again
the example of 1990s Russia is useful. It is now generally
acknowledged that Russia’s real economy continued to contract every
year throughout the period from 1994 to 1998 when Boris Yeltsin’s
government and the IMF were claiming to see in the statistics
evidence of a ‘stabilisation’. The truth became clear in 1998
when the whole House of Cards, which was what the Russian economy had
by then become, simply collapsed.
The
event which precipitated the Russian economic collapse in 1998 was a
collapse in oil prices. The event which averted a total collapse of
Ukraine’s economy in the period 2014 to 2015 was also a collapse in
oil prices.
The
benefits of that oil price collapse have however been squandered.
The
Maidan regime used the space the collapse in oil prices gave it to
increase spending on the military and to reduce further Ukraine’s
economic ties to Russia.
This
is the exact opposite of what a Ukrainian government really concerned
about the economy would have done. If Ukraine’s government had
really been concerned about stabilising the economy it would have
sought a rapprochement with Russia – Ukraine’s obvious energy
supplier and the traditional market of its goods – and sought
Russia’s help to bring the war in eastern Ukraine to an end.
None
of that can however happen whilst the present Maidan regime remains
in power since it would represent a repudiation of the Maidan
movement’s entire programme, which is to distance Ukraine as far
from Russia politically, culturally and economically as possible.
Which
brings me back to the cause of Ukraine’s crisis.
Notwithstanding
protestations to the contrary made by various people – including by
the way President Putin – the issue behind the political conflict
which in February 2014 brought the Maidan movement to power was not
corruption; it was Ukraine’s relations with Russia.
In
2014 Ukraine’s oligarchs overwhelmingly backed the Maidan movement
and bankrolled its protests since they were adamantly opposed to
closer relations with Russia but wanted instead closer relations with
the West.
This
was because – diametrically opposite to what Western commentators
say – they were alarmed by the way Putin’s government after 2000
managed to rein in Russia’s oligarchs, and were alarmed that if
Russian influence in Ukraine grew so that Ukraine became fully
integrated in the Eurasian institutions the same thing would be done
to them.
The
Western powers backed Ukraine’s oligarchs in 2014 because their
entire policy since the USSR broke up in 1991 has been to detach
Ukraine from Russia. This was what the benighted association
agreement between the EU and Ukraine – the nominal issue behind the
2014 Maidan protests – was ultimately all about.
It
was this mutual opposition to closer ties between Ukraine and Russia
which created the commonality of interest between Ukraine’s
oligarchs and the Western powers, both in 2014 and earlier, which set
the scene for the 2014 Maidan ‘revolution’.
That
‘revolution’ of course needed its foot-soldiers who were to be
found in Ukraine’s various ultra-rightist and neo-Nazi groups.
However as The Economist slips out in the article which I have quoted
from above, these “private militias….answer to different
politicians or oligarchs” ie. they are ultimately controlled by the
oligarchs as well.
Needless
to say the great majority of Ukraine’s people were not involved in
the 2014 events, and based on what I am hearing from people who know
about the situation in Ukraine today, they have now become utterly
cynical and disillusioned.
To
imagine that such a system created as a result of what it is not
altogether wrong to call a criminal conspiracy (after all it did
result in the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s constitutional and
democratically elected government) is capable of carrying out
‘reform’ or ending corruption in Ukraine is beyond fanciful, and
it is testament to the seemingly unlimited detachment from reality of
some people in the West that they still appear to expect it.
The
trouble is that though the people of Ukraine are utterly cynical and
disillusioned, the extraordinary violence the Maidan regime can be
counted on to use against people who it is able to define as
‘pro-Russian’ makes it all but impossible to see how a change of
course can be brought about.
This
opens the way for chancers and adventurers like Mikheil Saakashvili
to make their pitch, which is what we are seeing in Ukraine now.
Needless
to say if Ukraine had a properly functioning political system someone
like Saakashvili would be making no impact there at all. The fact
that he is making an impact despite the minimal level of his public
support (no more than 2% according to some polls) shows how
dysfunctional Ukraine’s political system actually is.
I
would add that given how corrupt and politicised the Ukrainian
judiciary has become, the fact that a court has now ordered
Saakashvili’s release is a sure sign he is getting support from
elements within the Ukrainian power system (Tymoshenko? Kolomoisky?)
who are hostile to Poroshenko, and who are using Saakashvili as a
weapon against Poroshenko.
The
victims in all this are of course the people of Ukraine, who are
trapped in a nightmare created for them by Western policy in exactly
the same way and to the same extent that the people of Libya say are.
No
wonder that with their living standards having collapsed and with all
hope of things getting better having gone they are now voting with
their feet, leaving Ukraine in growing numbers, causing Ukraine’s
population to collapse, just as its economy has.
Georgian
snipers reveal who sent them to the Maidan
Russ Fort, 13 December, 2017 The shooting of people on the Maidan in Kiev in February 2014 was organized by snipers, who were specially brought to Ukraine . There were 50 of them. And they were divided into groups of 10 fighters, each of which acted on its own command. They were promised $ 5,000 each for such work.
This was said on the air of the TV channel "112" by a Ukrainian lawyer of the former employees of the unit "Berkut" "Alexander Goroshinsky. The Ukrainian authorities, who received their posts after the victory of the Maidan, have so far been accused of shooting at the protesters. However, Goroshinsky claims that he managed to obtain testimonies from two Georgian citizens, Alexander Revazishvili and Koba Negradadze, who confessed that they were among the mercenaries. Goroshinsky met with them in Tbilisi and they agreed to give evidence on December 12 at the trial of the Berkut case.
- Groups of mercenaries were brought to Kiev, who began to operate on February 20. They were given weapons and ammunition and distributed 10 people at different points. They, at the command of their commanders, were supposed to open fire indiscriminately at everyone - protesters and security officials, in order to raise panic," Goroshinsky told of the details of the testimonies. These mercenaries were promised $ 5,000 each. But now they are ready to name the names and executors of the crime, and the organizers.
As evidence, the lawyer showed a video in which former mercenaries named their names and signed the testimony. They expect by disclosing the crime, since they claim that two of their group, who were also at the Maidan, have already mysteriously disappeared.
Earlier, Italian "Channel 5" aired a documentary in which the same Koba Nergadze, Alexander Revazishvili and another mercenary - stated that they were mercenaries in 2014 and were sent to Kiev by ex-President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili . Among the snipers were also the Balts and American instructor.
In
this pre-recorded edition, the debate focuses on the Kiev regime,
which is stuck between a rock and a very hard place. With the
Europeans and Russians pushing Ukrainians to implement the Minsk
accords, there is growing evidence the Maidan political forces are
turning against themselves in disarray. In fact, during the recording
of this show, Kiev reversed its position on the expulsion of Western
journalists. Meanwhile, NATO continues to target Russia. CrossTalking
with Mark Sleboda, Alexander Mercouris, and Nebojsa Malic.
First Athens, now Moscow. This is the second time the people have come out.
The Russian people have spoken
In
them meantime in Moscow there was a "anti-Maidan"
demonstration planned for 10,000 people. 35,000-50,000 showed up to
say "we will not forget, we will not forgive" and "no
Maidan in Russia". This anti-Maidan movement which was just
formed very recently has a very bright political future because after
watching the horrors right across their border and accepting close to
a million refugees from the Ukraine, the vast majority of Russians
want nothing to do with a Maidan-like event in Russia. Combine that
with the still 80%+ popularity of Putin in spite of western
sanctions, and you will see that Russia is safe from the kind of
events which happened in Kiev a year ago.
The
virus which killed the Ukraine will act as a vaccine for Russia.
---the Saker
40,000
take to Moscow streets in ‘Anti-Maidan’ demo
Up
to 40,000 people have joined a so-called “Anti-Maidan” demo to
mark the first anniversary of the bloody events during the Ukrainian
coup on Kiev’s Independence Square, Russian police reported on
Saturday.
The
40,000-strong march against violence and revolutions, organized by
the “Anti-Maidan” movement in the center of the Russian capital
has been approved by local authorities, Moscow police said in a
statement.
“The
number of participants was declared as not exceeding 10,000 people,
but currently it is already far higher than stated before,” said
Aleksey Mayorov, the head of the city’s police department,
according to RIA-Novosti.
The
march had a slogan: “A year since Maidan. We won’t forget, we
won’t forgive!” The banners people were carrying read: “No to
Maidan – no to war”, “Russia against Maidan”, “Maidan is
deceit”. According to its organizers, the rally numbered 50,000
people.
Aleksandr
Zaldostanov, the leader of Russian motorcycle club “The Night
Wolves”, said: “When the mobilization of Russia’s enemies takes
place, I call to rally round Russia’s president,” TASS reported.
The
“Anti-Maidan” movement was founded this January in Moscow by a
group of social activists to counter what they believe could pose a
threat to Russia. Its main goal is to prevent so-called “color
revolutions” in the country.
People
attend an "Anti-Maidan" rally to protest against the 2014
Kiev uprising, which ousted President Viktor Yanukovich, in Moscow
February 21, 2015 (Reuters / Sergey Karpukhin)People attend an
"Anti-Maidan" rally to protest against the 2014 Kiev
uprising, which ousted President Viktor Yanukovich, in Moscow
February 21, 2015 (Reuters / Sergey Karpukhin)
Last
February, central Kiev saw several days of bloody clashes between
rioters and the police at the ‘EuroMaidan’ rallies, where
approximately 100 people were killed on a single day – February 20,
2014.
Events
led to then-President Viktor Yanukovich fleeing the country and the
opposition forming a new government. In April, the new Kiev
authorities started an anti-terrorist operation against breakaway
regions in eastern Ukraine, who didn’t recognize the coup-imposed
authorities in Ukraine. According to the latest UN estimates, the
resulting civil war has claimed the lives of at least 5,600 people
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