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Conflicting Narratives of the Maidan Massacre in Ukraine

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Abstract

This chapter examines different narratives concerning the Maidan massacre of the Maidan activists and the police on February 18–20, 2014, and previous scholarly studies of this massacre. The dominant narrative promoted by the Ukrainian and Western governments and with some exceptions the media attributed the Maidan massacre of the protesters to the Yanukovych government and his security forces and Berkut anti-riot police.
Ivan Katchanovski
RETHINKING POLITICAL VIOLENCE
The Maidan Massacre
in Ukraine
The Mass Killing that Changed the World
Rethinking Political Violence
Series Editor
Roger Mac Ginty, School of Government and International Affairs,
Durham University, Durham, UK
This series provides a new space in which to interrogate and challenge
much of the conventional wisdom of political violence. International
and multidisciplinary in scope, this series explores the causes, types and
effects of contemporary violence connecting key debates on terrorism,
insurgency, civil war and peace-making. The timely Rethinking Polit-
ical Violence offers a sustained and refreshing analysis reappraising some
of the fundamental questions facing societies in conflict today and
understanding attempts to ameliorate the effects of political violence.
This series is indexed by Scopus.
Ivan Katchanovski
The Maidan Massacre
in Ukraine
The Mass Killing that Changed the World
Ivan Katchanovski
School of Political Studies & Conflict
Studies and Human Rights Program
University of Ottawa
Ottawa, ON, Canada
ISSN 2752-8588 ISSN 2752-8596 (electronic)
Rethinking Political Violence
ISBN 978-3-031-67120-3 ISBN 978-3-031-67121-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-67121-0
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“Il est défendu de tuer; tout meurtrier est puni, à moins qu’il n’ait tué en
grande compagnie, et au son des trompettes; c’est la règle.”[It is forbidden
to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large
numbers and to the sound of trumpets; it is the rule].1
Volta i re
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our
inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of
facts and evidence.’2
John Adams at the Boston massacre trial
1 Voltaire. (1817). Complete works of Voltaire: Philosophical Dictionary. Chez Th.
Desoer, 788. There was a Maidan activist playing his trumpet during the Maidan massacre.
He came under live ammunition fire from the snipers in Maidan-controlled Hotel Ukraina.
(See Video A).
2 Diggins, J. P. (Ed.). (2004). The Portable John Adams. Penguin Books, 255.
To my mother
Preface
This book analyzes the Maidan massacre of the protesters and the police
during the “Euromaidan” mass protests in Kyiv in Ukraine on February
20, 2014. This massacre is crucial case of political violence in Ukraine and
the world because it led to the overthrow of the Ukrainian government
and ultimately to the start of the civil war in Donbas, Russian military
interventions in Crimea and Donbas, the Russian annexation of Crimea,
and conflicts of Russia with Ukraine and the West which Russia escalated
dramatically by launching the illegal invasion and war with Ukraine in
2022.
This is the first scholarly book which analyzes comprehensively the
Maidan massacre in Ukraine. It is based on more than 10 years of my
research of this massacre and trials and investigations of this mass killing.
I am a Ukrainian and Canadian political scientist. I teach at the School
of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa. Previously, I was Visiting
Scholar at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard
University, Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics at
the State University of New York at Potsdam, Post-Doctoral Fellow in the
Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto, and Kluge
Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress. I
received my Ph.D. from the Schar School of Policy and Government at
George Mason University under the direction of Seymour Martin Lipset,
one of the greatest political scientists and political sociologists.
ix
xPREFACE
My academic publications include 4 books, 12 book chapters, and 20
articles in peer-reviewed journals, as well as this book and two forth-
coming books concerning the Russia-Ukraine war and its origins and
modern Ukraine that will be published by major American and British
academic presses. I am one of the most cited political scientists who
specialize primarily in politics and conflicts in Ukraine. My research-based
publications, interviews, and comments appeared in more than 3,000
media reports in over 80 countries.
I am a life-long supporter of liberal democracy, human rights, and
peace in Ukraine and was one of the first to publicly call for the European
Union accession of Ukraine. I attended in 1988 the first small opposition
rally in Kyiv in some 80 years since Ukraine became Soviet. I was born
in Western Ukraine and educated in the Kyiv National Economic Univer-
sity, Central European University, and George Mason University. I faced
expulsion from the university in Kyiv in 1990 and was prevented from
pursuing graduate education in the Soviet Union because my undergrad-
uate thesis, which was in Ukrainian, was based on theories of Max Weber
and Western economists and concluded that the Soviet system was bound
to collapse.
I presented my studies of the Maidan massacre at the following
academic conferences: The Annual Meeting of American Political Science
Association in San Francisco, September 3–6, 2015, the 22nd Annual
World Convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities in
Columbia University, New York, May 4–6, 2017, the Annual Meeting
of the American Political Science Association in Boston, August 29–
September 2, 2018, the Regimes and Societies in Conflict: Eastern
Europe and Russia since 1956 conference by the Institute for Russian
and Eurasian Studies at Uppsala University and the British Association
for Slavonic and East European Studies in Uppsala, Sweden, September
13–14, 2018, the Virtual 52nd Annual Convention of the Association for
Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, November 5–8 and 14–15,
2020, and the virtual 10th World Congress of the International Council
for Central and East European Studies, August 3–8, 2021.
Parts of my open-access articles in Russian Politics, Cogent Social
Sciences, and Journal of Labor and Society peer-reviewed journals, a
forthcoming open-access Routledge book, and, with publisher’s permis-
sion, my ar ticle in Canadian Dimension are republished in this book with
updated, revised, and greatly expanded content. Most of the book content
was previously not published. I received no outside financing for my
PREFACE xi
research of the Maidan massacre, with the exception of small travel and
publication grants and crowdfunding making my articles open access. I
am grateful to all those who supported my academic study of this crucial
massacre that changed Ukraine and the world.
Ottawa, ON, Canada Ivan Katchanovski
Contents
1 Introduction: The Massacre That Changed Ukraine
and the World 1
1.1 The Maidan Massacre and Its Impact 2
1.2 Data and Methodology 6
1.3 Theoretical Framework 8
2 Conflicting Narratives of the Maidan Massacre in Ukraine 21
2.1 Conflicting Government Narratives of the Maidan
Massacre 21
2.2 The Media Coverage of the Maidan Massacre 28
2.3 Misrepresentation of the Maidan Massacre by Wikipedia 32
2.4 Previous Academic Studies of the Maidan Massacre 34
3 Video Reconstruction and Content Analysis
of the Maidan Massacre on February 20, 2014 49
3.1 The Reconstruction of the Snipers’ Massacre
of the Police and the Protesters on the Maidan
in Ukraine 50
3.2 Shooting at Western, Polish, and Russian Journalists
During the Maidan Massacre 82
3.3 Overthrow of the Yanukovych Government 83
xiii
xiv CONTENTS
4 Testimonies of Several Hundred Witnesses and 14
Self-Admitted Maidan Snipers 91
4.1 Testimonies by Over 300 Witnesses Concerning Maidan
Snipers 92
4.2 Confessions by 14 Self-Admitted Members of Maidan
Sniper Groups 121
5 Trial and Investigation Testimonies of Wounded
Maidan Activists and Witnesses 145
5.1 Testimonies of Wounded Maidan Activists Concerning
Snipers in Maidan-Controlled Locations 146
5.1.1 Hotel Ukraina Snipers 146
5.1.2 Zhovtnevyi Palace Snipers 154
5.1.3 Bank Arkada Snipers 155
5.1.4 Muzeinyi Lane, Music Conservatory,
and Other Maidan-Controlled Locations Snipers 156
5.1.5 Staged Wounding of a Female Maidan Medic 158
5.1.6 Government Forces-Controlled Buildings
and Areas Snipers 159
5.2 Testimonies by Prosecution Witnesses and Relatives
of Killed Maidan Activists Concerning Snipers
in Maidan-Controlled Locations 161
5.3 Testimonies of Defense Witnesses Concerning Maidan
Snipers 168
6 Forensic Ballistic and Medical Examinations
by Ukrainian Government Experts 177
7 The Maidan Massacre on February 18–19, 2014,
and Related Cases of Violence During the EuroMaidan
in Ukraine 195
7.1 The Maidan Massacre on February 18–19, 2014 196
7.2 Other Related Cases of Violence During the EuroMaidan 203
8 The Maidan Massacre Trial Verdict, and Cover-up,
Stonewalling, and Evidence Tampering 211
8.1 The Maidan Massacre Trial Verdict 212
8.2 Coverup, Stonewalling, and Evidence Tampering 224
CONTENTS xv
9 Conclusion and Implications for the Russia-Ukraine
War and Other Conflicts in Ukraine 249
Index 259
List of Figures
Fig. 3.1 Music Conservatory and the Main Post Office
on the Maidan (Independence Square) (Photo
by the author) 52
Fig. 3.2 Hotel Ukraina (Photo by the author) 53
Fig. 3.3 Zhovtnevyi Palace (Photo by the author) 57
Fig. 3.4 Gunshot impact marks from the directions
of Maidan-controlled Hotel Ukraina, Zhovtnevyi Palace/
Kinopalats and Muzeinyi Lane on the tree (Photo
by the author) 66
Fig. 3.5 Bank Arkada (Photo by the author) 69
Fig. 3.6 Hotel Kozatsky (on the right) (Photo by the author) 75
Fig. 3.7 Main Maidan massacre epicenter in front of Hotel
Ukraina (Photo by the author) 76
Fig. 3.8 Makeshift memorial to Serhiy Melnychuk on the site
of his killing (Photo by the author) 79
Fig. 4.1 Hotel Ukraina (Photo by the author) 101
Fig. 5.1 Hotel Ukraina (Photo by the author) 147
Fig. 6.1 The visual reconstruction of shooting at Maidan
protesters and Western, Polish, and Russian journalists
during the Maidan massacre in Ukraine and locations
of snipers in Hotel Ukraina: a view from a Berkut
barricade (based on Google Street Map) 185
Fig. 6.2 Bullet holes in the electric pole from the government forces
direction and one exit hole from the Maidan-controlled
Hotel Ukraina direction (Photo by the author) 186
xvii
xviii LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 7.1 Burned Trade Union Building covered
with the OUN-UPA “Glory to Ukraine. Glory
to Heroes” greeting (Photo by the author) 201
Map 3.1 Maidan massacre map (Based on Google Satellite Map) 51
List of Tables
Table 3.1 Summary of the video reconstruction and content
analysis of the Maidan massacre on February 20, 2014 85
Table 4.1 Summary of witness testimonies concerning Maidan
snipers 130
Table 5.1 Summary of trial and investigation testimonies
of wounded Maidan activists and witnesses 172
Table 6.1 Summary of main findings of forensic examinations
of the Maidan massacre 188
Table 7.1 Summary of the Maidan massacre on February
18–19, 2014, and other related cases of violence
during the EuroMaidan 207
Table 8.1 Summary of the Maidan massacre trial verdict,
and cover-up, stonewalling, and evidence tampering 241
xix
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: The Massacre That Changed
Ukraine and the World
The chapter describes importance of the Maidan massacre of the police
and the Maidan protesters in Kyiv in Ukraine on February 18–20, 2014,
and its role in the overthrow of the Ukrainian government and ultimately
in the start of the war in Donbas, the Russian annexation of Crimea,
and conflicts of Russia with Ukraine and the West that Russia esca-
lated dramatically by launching the illegal war with Ukraine on February
24, 2022. The question is whether the Yanukovych government, the
Maidan opposition, in particular, the far-right, or any “third force,”
such as Russia, was involved in the mass killing of protesters and the
police. Methodology and data combine content analysis of thousands
of videos, photos, and audio recordings of the massacre in Ukrainian,
Russian, English, and Polish with analysis of several hundred testimonies
of witnesses and wounded Maidan activists and results of forensic ballistic
and medical examinations by Ukrainian government experts. The analysis
of the primary data includes about 1,000 hours of video recordings of
the Maidan massacre trial, nearly 1,000,000-word trial verdict, and over
2,500 other court decisions. This chapter describes the theoretical frame-
work of rational choice and the Weberian theory of rational action and
develops the moral hazard theory of the state repression backfire.
© The Author(s) 2024
I. Katchanovski, The Maidan Massacre in Ukraine, Rethinking Political
Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-67121-0_1
1
2I. KATCHANOVSKI
1.1 The Maidan Massacre and Its Impact
The mass killing of 74 Maidan protesters and 17 police and Internal
Troops members in Ukraine during the mass “Euromaidan” protests on
February 18–20, 2014, and wounding of respectively over 300 activists
and about 200 police and Internal Troops members is a crucial case of
political violence. This mass killing of the protesters and the police led
to the overthrow of the democratically elected and pro-Russian govern-
ment of Viktor Yanukovych and gave the start of a civil war in Donbas,
Russia’s military intervention in Crimea and Donbas, the Russian annexa-
tion of Crimea, and an interstate conflict between the West and Russia and
between Ukraine and Russia. Russia drastically escalated these conflicts
by launching its illegal invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The
Russia-Ukraine war also escalated into a proxy war between the West and
Russia (see Black & Johns, 2015; Katchanovski, 2015, 2016a, 2016b,
2017, 2022a, 2023a, 2023b, Forthcoming; Kudelia, 2016; Hahn, 2018;
Sakwa, 2015).
This book uses the theory of rational choice, a Weberian theory of
instrumental rationality, and state repression backfire theories and analyses
a variety of evidence to determine whether the Yanukovych government,
the Maidan opposition, or any “third force” was involved in the mass
killing of protesters and the police. The research question is which party
or parties of the conflict massacred Maidan protesters and the police.
The Maidan massacre was immediately attributed to government
snipers and the Berkut police by the Maidan opposition, Western leaders,
and the media in Ukraine and the West. The far-right commander of the
same special Maidan company of snipers called from the Maidan stage on
the evening of February 21, 2014, to reject a signed agreement, which
was mediated by foreign ministers of France, Germany, and Poland and
a representative of the Russian president. He issued a public ultimatum
for President Viktor Yanukovych to resign by 10:00am the next day, justi-
fied it by blaming Yanukovych and his forces for the massacre, stated that
his Maidan company was responsible for the turning point of the Euro-
maidan, and threatened an armed assault if Yanukovych would not resign
(Yakshho, 2014). The commander of the Maidan Self-Defense said that
this ultimatum was a decision by “institutional bodies of the Maidan”
and that it was adopted by a military council set up by the Maidan
Self-Defense and the Right Sector on February 21, 2014 (Kalnysh, 2015).
1 INTRODUCTION: THE MASSACRE THAT CHANGED 3
The Maidan massacre undermined the legitimacy of Yanukovych as
president of Ukraine and the legitimacy of the incumbent government,
police, and security forces and their monopoly on the use of force. The
massacre prompted a part of the Party of Regions deputies to leave their
faction and support the Maidan opposition and the parliament vote on
February 20 to withdraw government forces from downtown Kyiv and
subsequent votes to dismiss then President Yanukovych and his govern-
ment, even though this was unconstitutional. Many deputies were forced
to vote or their cards were used to vote for them. For instance, the
commander of the far-right-linked group of the Maidan snipers admitted
that his group forced certain members of the parliament to participate
in the votes to dismiss Yanukovych and his government and to elect the
Maidan leaders in their place (Katchanovski, Forthcoming; Kovalenko,
2014).
An agreement signed on February 21, 2014, by Yanukovych, the
Maidan opposition leaders, and representatives of France, Germany, and
Poland stipulated withdrawal of the government forces from downtown
Kyiv, disarmament of the Maidan activists, early presidential elections, and
the investigation of the Maidan massacre with involvement of the Council
of Europe. But this agreement was violated by the Maidan opposition,
which seized control over the presidential administration, the Cabinet of
Ministers, the parliament, and other government buildings following the
withdrawal of the government forces.
Then US Vice President Joe Biden revealed in his memoirs that during
the Maidan massacre he called Yanukovych and told him that “it was
over; time for him to call off his gunmen and walk away” and “he
shouldn’t expect his Russian friends to rescue him from this disaster,” that
“Yanukovych had lost the confidence of the Ukrainian people,” and that
“he was going to be judged harshly by history if he kept killing them.”
Biden wrote that “the disgraced president fled Ukraine the next day
owing to the courage and determination of the demonstrators and
control of the government ended up temporarily in the hands of a young
patriot named Arseniy Yatsenyuk” (Biden 2017).
US President Barack Obama stated that “we had brokered a deal to
transition power in Ukraine” after the massacre and before Yanukovych
fled, but the US president or other American government officials did
not release any specific infor mation about the nature of this involvement
(PRES, 2015).
4I. KATCHANOVSKI
Russian President Vladimir Putin and other Russian leaders as well as
the Russian media called the overthrow of Yanukovych as a fascist or Nazi
coup. They justified support of separatism and annexation of Crimea by
protection of ethnic Russians from the Ukrainian ‘fascists’ or ‘Nazis’ and
by the Russian national security interests to prevent it from losing control
of the main Black Sea naval base and its falling under control of NATO.
Not only Russian President Vladimir Putin but also then US President
Barak Obama stated that the Russian annexation of Crimea was a reac-
tion to the violent overthrow of the Yanukovych government with the
US involvement. Obama said that “Mr. Putin made this decision around
Crimea and Ukraine, not because of some grand strategy, but essentially
because he was caught off balance by the protests in the Maidan, and
Yanukovych then fleeing after we’d brokered a deal to transition power
in Ukraine” (PRES, 2015). After initially denying the Russian military
intervention, Putin admitted in his 2015 documentary interview that he
proposed his plan to “return” Crimea and authorized the covert Russian
military intervention on February 23, 2014, following the overthrow of
Yanukovych (see Katchanovski, Forthcoming).
The violent overthrow of the pro-Russian Yanukovych government
gave a significant boost to separatism in Crimea. The Russian government
used this overthrow to reverse its previous policy and start backing both
pro-Russian separatists and the annexation of Crimea. Yanukovych fled
from Eastern Ukraine to Russia and then to Crimea on February 22,
2014, and the Russian military there on instructions from the Russian
government helped him to escape again to Russia (Katchanovski, 2015,
Forthcoming).
Previous studies show that conflicts between Russia and Ukraine and
Russia and the West started with the violent overthrow of the relatively
pro-Russian government in Ukraine by means of the Maidan massacre and
assassination attempts against then President Viktor Yanukovych (see
Bandeira, 2019; Black & Johns, 2015; Katchanovski, 2016a, 2016b,
2020, 2023a, 2023b, Forthcoming; Hahn, 2018; Mandel, 2016;Lane,
2016; Sakwa, 2015). The violent overthrow of the Yanukovych govern-
ment escalated into the civil war in Donbas with pro-Russian separatists
and an international conflict between Russia and Ukraine and the West
and Russia. Russia escalated the conflict by conducting military inter-
ventions in Crimea and Donbas and annexing in the violation of the
international law Crimea, which was populated primarily by ethnic
Russians, and by launching the illegal invasion and the war in Ukraine (see
1 INTRODUCTION: THE MASSACRE THAT CHANGED 5
Katchanovski, 2015, 2016a, 2022a, Forthcoming; Kudelia, 2016; Hahn,
2018; Sakwa, 2015).
The violent overthrow of the relatively pro-Russian government was a
tipping point in the conflicts in Ukraine and between the West and Russia
over Ukraine. Pr esident Putin used this overthrow and its backing by the
governments of the US and EU countries to radically change his policy
towards Ukraine. The Russian government started to pursue annexation
of Crimea with the help of direct military intervention since the end of
February 2014 and then annexed Crimea in March 2014 in a violation of
international law (see Katchanovski, 2015).
The Maidan massacre that resulted in the overthrow of the Yanukovych
government also spiraled into the separatist rebellion in Donbas in Eastern
Ukraine. The overthrow of the government led to a power vacuum in
the Donetsk and Luhansk Regions, which were until then strongholds of
Yanukovych and his Party of Regions.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, was illegal
and extreme escalation of conflicts of Russia with Ukraine and the West
and the civil war in Donbas that followed the Western-backed violent
and illegal overthrow with involvement of the oligarchic and far-right
elements of the Maidan opposition of the pro-Russian government in
Ukraine by means of the Maidan massacre and assassination attempts
against Viktor Yanukovych. The Russia-Ukraine war also escalated into
the proxy war between the West and Russia in Ukraine (see Katchanovski,
2022a, Forthcoming).
Ursula von der Leyen, the EU Commission President, stated in 2023
that “Today, war is back in Europe. But for many Ukrainians, this conflict
began already ten years ago. It began when peaceful protesters, just
waving the European flags in Maidan Square, were shot dead by snipers”
(Keynote, 2023). Putin, for instance, in his Tucker Carlson interview in
2024, made similar statements linking the Russian invasion of Ukraine to
the Maidan massacre (Carlson, 2024).
The identification and prosecution of those who perpetrated and orga-
nized the Maidan massacre could have helped to prevent or resolve peace-
fully the subsequent conflicts that it triggered, including the violent over-
throw of the Yanukovych government, the Russian annexation of Crimea,
the war in Donbas, and the Russia-Ukraine war (see Katchanovski, 2015,
2022a, 2022b, 2023a).
6I. KATCHANOVSKI
1.2 Data and Methodology
This book combines different social science research methods and anal-
ysis of vast amount of various type of data. It uses content analysis of
all publicly available videos, photos, and audio recordings of the Maidan
massacre on February 18–20 in English, Ukrainian, Russian, Polish,
and other languages with an analysis of several hundred testimonies
concerning this massacre based on qualitative interview methodology.
The manifest and latent content analysis covers over 2,000 videos and
recordings of live Internet and TV broadcasts of the massacre in nearly
50 countries, news reports, and social media posts by over 120 journalists
covering the massacre from Kyiv, more than 6,000 photos, and close to 30
gigabytes of publicly available radio intercepts of snipers and commanders
of the Security Service of Ukraine and Internal Troops.
The analysis is also based on nearly 1,000 hours of official video record-
ings of the Maidan massacre trial and the Yanukovych treason trial, the
nearly 1,000,000-word text of the Maidan massacre trial verdict in the
official online Ukrainian court decisions database. The data includes infor-
mation concerning GPU investigations of this massacre of the protesters
and the police in over 2,500 court decisions. These court decisions are
publicly available in the official online Ukrainian court decisions database.
The names of people being investigated are omitted in these decisions.
Media interviews of prosecutors, Maidan victims’ lawyers and Berkut
lawyers, and various media reports about the Maidan massacre trials and
investigations are also examined.
This study analyzed interviews and statements by several hundred
witnesses in media and social media. Most of these testimonies are by
eyewitnesses, mostly Maidan protesters, and Western and Ukrainian jour-
nalists. Testimonies of indirect witnesses concerning Maidan snipers are
primarily Maidan protesters, politicians, and pro-Maidan journalists. Such
“statements against interest” relayed by indirect witnesses are accepted in
criminal law and trials in the US, Canada, and other Western countries
(see Martin, 1994). Since it would be in rational self-interest for Berkut
officers and the Yanukovych government officials, who are charged with
the Maidan massacre, to deny their responsibility whether they are guilty
or not, the analysis does not rely on their testimonies.
The analysis also employs field research and photos by the author at
the site of the Maidan massacre in downtown Kyiv in July 2014, and
numerous visits before the massacre to the Maidan and most surrounding
1 INTRODUCTION: THE MASSACRE THAT CHANGED 7
buildings, such as Hotel Ukraina, the Main Post Office, Zhovtnevyi
Palace, Dnipro Hotel, and Kozatsky Hotel. A multimethod methodology
combining content analysis of videos, audio recordings, and photos of
the massacre with analysis of qualitative interviews with witnesses makes
the case study and its findings much more reliable than typical schol-
arly studies. Specific testimonies concerning specific events, in particular,
killings and wounding of specific protesters and locations of the shooters,
were corroborated by other evidence, such as other testimonies, video
and audio recordings of these events, and results of for ensic medical
and ballistic examinations by government experts of the same specific
events. The same concerns other types of evidence such as videos. In addi-
tion, the evidence is evaluated using other standard criteria in scholarly
methodology, such as validity, specifically, face validity and replication.
This study also introduced a digital event reconstruction methodology
for scholarly research on political violence. Digital event reconstruction
methodology, in particular, of mass killings and other cases of political
violence, is used in international criminal justice and by non-academic
researchers such as Bellingcat (see Zarmsky, 2021). It is revealing that
Bellingcat did not present an analysis of this massacre despite stating in
February 2015 that they were working on such investigation (Bellingcat
2015). The failure by Bellingcat to examine the Maidan massacre was
another dog that did not bark.
Seven online video appendixes include brief relevant compilations of
segments of videos of the February 20 massacre and the Maidan massacre
trial (see Video 2023a, 2023b, 2023c, 2023d, 2023e, 2023f, 2023g).
They are available on the author’s YouTube channel. Numer ous videos of
the massacre wer e synchronized based on the matching visual and audio
content of videos, in particular, speeches from the Maidan stage, and
on time-stamped video recordings, such as recordings of live TV broad-
casts, Internet streaming, and security cameras. These video appendixes
also contain maps that show the locations of the government forces and
buildings with snipers, locations, and times of killing and wounding of
specific Maidan protesters and policemen. The locations and positions of
the snipers are determined based on their videos, photos, and testimonies
of wounded protesters and witnesses.
The timing and video synchronization in these video compilations,
including the times and locations of killings and wounding of the specific
Maidan protesters, have some minor exceptions consistent with the time-
stamped compilations of videos of the massacre by the SITU architectural
8I. KATCHANOVSKI
company and Talionis group, which are based on their computer synchro-
nizations. The Talionis video compilation of the Maidan massacre was
presented as evidence by the prosecution and Maidan lawyers during the
trial (see Vysota, 2017a, 2017b). This compilation was produced by an
anonymous group with funding from the Prosecutor’s General Office
(Katchanovski, 2019). However, both SITU and Talionis omitted the
initial part of the massacre on February 20, in particular, the killing and
wounding of the police, and many videos regarding Maidan snipers that
were included in the present study.
The multimethod research and analysis of all publicly available data
sources enhance reliability and validity of the analysis and data. Only find-
ings that are corroborated by at the very least two independent sources,
excluding those with vested interest, are used. Typically, findings rely on
much greater number of such independent sources.
1.3 Theoretical Framework
This study relies on the rational choice theoretical framework and the
Weberian theory of rational action and state repression backfire theories.
The rational choice theory views people as acting in a calculated and self-
interested manner, and this theory was applied for various specific political
events (see, for example, Bates et al., 1998). However, rational choice
assumes that people have perfect infor mation to make such decisions and
that all of their actions are rational. In contrast, the Weberian theory of
social action regards instrumentally rational type of action as one ideal
type of action alongside value-rational, traditional, and affectual types
of action, and that such actions can be interpreted and understood by
scholars. The instrumentally rational type of action involves “the attain-
ment of the actor’s own rationally pursued and calculated ends” (Weber,
1978, 24–25).
While rational choice treats all actions as rational and calculated, Weber
recognized other types of actions, such as affective or emotional (Weber,
1978, 25). Irrational actions, particularly emotions and mistakes, can also
occur during violent conflicts and revolutionary events (see Beissinger,
2022). For example, an examination of the Maidan massacre by a pro-
Maidan journalist emphasized feelings of hate between protesters and the
police (Koshkina, 2015).
The Ukrainian and Western media and governments-promoted narra-
tive of the Maidan massacre appears irrational from both rational choice
1 INTRODUCTION: THE MASSACRE THAT CHANGED 9
and Weberian instrumentally rational action perspectives. Yanukovych and
his associates lost all of their power and much of their wealth, and
fled from Ukraine as a result of this mass killing, since this massacre of
protesters undermined his and his government’s legitimacy, even among
the many deputies of his Party of Regions who joined the opposition and
voted to remove him from the presidency. The same problem concerns
the irrational retreat of the police from their position at Maidan and the
mass killing of the protesters by the police, since Berkut and the internal
troop units had nonlethal weapons to stop unarmed protesters and it
was more rational to use live ammunition or snipers to deliver warning
shots or target armed protesters and the Maidan leaders, rather than to
kill advancing protesters. Similarly, the repeated attempts by protesters to
advance on the very small and relatively unimportant part of Instytutska
Street also seem irrational and hard to explain from these theoretical
perspectives, because a large number of people going under constant fire
would amount to a collective mass suicidal action. While some of the
government leaders, policemen, and protesters might have been driven
by value-rational actions, such as being motivated by ideology; affec-
tual actions, based on emotions; or miscalculations in their instrumentally
rational actions, it would be anomalous for all different actors to do this
at the same time.
The dominant narrative promoted by the Ukrainian and Western
governments and, with some exceptions, the Ukrainian and Western
media concerning the Maidan massacre is consistent with state repres-
sion backfire theories. State repression backfire means that attempts to use
violence to suppress protests instead produce a backlash against the state
in response to such violence. This means defeating vastly superior state
forces by peaceful protesters in an asymmetric conflict (see, for example,
Anisin, 2014, 2019; Chenoweth & Stephan, 2011;Hess&Martin, 2006;
Martin, 2007;Sharp, 1973).
The backfire requires that state repression be perceived as completely
unjustifiable, excessive, or disproportional, and that information about
state repression be communicated to the public and other actors,
such as foreign governments (see Martin, 2007). Examples of such
state repression backfires include the Bloody Sunday massacre of anti-
government protesters by the police, which spurred the Russian Revo-
lution in 1905, and the Jallianwala Bagh (Amritsar) massacre of pro-
independence protesters by the British Indian Army, which spur red the
10 I. KATCHANOVSKI
pro-independence movement in India led by Mahatma Gandhi (see
Anisin, 2014, 2019).
State repression backfire theories suggest that the Maidan massacre of
unarmed anti-government protesters in Ukraine was an extreme form
of state repression by the Yanukovych government and its forces and
was aimed at suppressing anti-government mass protests on the Maidan.
However, the state repression of peaceful Maidan protesters by means of
their unprovoked massacre s upposedly backfired after it was highly publi-
cized by media and social media in Ukraine and the West. The mass killing
of the protesters ostensibly produced a massive public outrage and a back-
lash against the incumbent government, delegitimizing its use of force
and leading to Yanukovych and his government leaders, who were blamed
for the massacre of protesters, fleeing from Ukraine to avoid prosecution
or other retaliation to order this mass killing.
State repression backfire also implies that the incumbent government
has rational incentives to cover up state violence and those responsible
for such violence to prevent or minimize the backfire. If the Yanukovych
government, its police and security forces, or any pro-Yanukovych “third
force” did perpetrate this mass killing one would expect cover-up by
them and speedy and effective investigations and the prosecutions by
Maidan governments. It was in the rational self-interest of the Maidan
governments, whose legitimacy was ultimately based on this massacre, to
conduct effective and speedy investigations and prosecutions of this one
of the most documented cases of mass killings in the history of the world.
However, previous studies have failed to consider that there is a moral
hazard in such mechanisms of state repression backfire. The mecha-
nisms of the repression backfire can be exploited by opposition or pr o-
opposition actors in their own self-interest based on rational calculations
of expected costs and benefits. The provocation of government violence
against protesters or the covert staging of such violence and attributing
it to state repression can be rational from the perspective of theories
of rational choice or Weberian instrumentally rational actions for actors
driven by self-interest and not concerned with ethical considerations.
The moral hazard contains an incentive for the opposition to produce a
transformative event that could not only create significant media coverage
and public outcry against the incumbent government inside and outside
of the country, but also dramatically increase popular mobilization and
domestic and international support, eventually resulting in concessions or
regime transition. Provoked or staged violence by pro-opposition actors
1 INTRODUCTION: THE MASSACRE THAT CHANGED 11
has the power to backfire to a government by undermining its legitimacy
and its use of security, police, and military forces, thus defeating them
in an asymmetric conflict. This greatly increases the chances that govern-
ment police, security, and military forces and high-ranking commanders,
officials, and politicians will defect from the incumbent government. Such
provocation of state violence or staging of false-flag violence means a very
high-stake and high-risk game. The incentive to minimize risk in case of
failure and detection of exposure implies that the use of provocation and
staged false-flag violence would be exceptional and rare, and would be
done covertly and with subsequent cover-up.
The moral hazard of the state repression backfire in the case of the
Maidan massacre would mean that certain elements of the oligarchic and
far-right Maidan opposition provoked the mass killing of the protesters,
for instance by killing and wounding the police, or covertly staged the
mass killing of the protesters themselves in order to blame the violence
on the incumbent government leaders and their security or police forces
and seize power in Ukraine as a result of this transformative event. This
would also mean very strong incentives for the Maidan governments to
cover such provocation or staged violence and stone wall investigations of
mass killing on the Maidan.
There is evidence of such precedent of provoked and staged violence in
Romania during the anti-communist “revolution” in 1989, which became
a transformative event in Romanian history. The former Romanian presi-
dent, prime minister, and a number of other leaders of the “revolution”
were charged by Romanian prosecutors in 2018 and 2019 with crimes
against humanity for using deliberate disinformation and diversion right
after they seized power in 1989 to provoke false-flag mass killings that
resulted in 863 deaths. The prosecution charges state that they used such
orchestrated killings and other violence to legitimize their power and
execute the Romanian communist government and party leader Ceaus-
escu for these mass killings in a mock trial that they helped to stage.
These and other leaders of the new Romanian government and military
commanders reportedly provoked and staged the killings of supporters
of the new government by other supporters of the new gover nment,
including in the military, by literally using false flags, deliberate diversions,
and misinformation that Ceausescu snipers from the security ser vices and
his other loyalists, called “terrorists,” were killing supporters of the new
government (Romanian, 2018).
12 I. KATCHANOVSKI
A similar state repression backfire can involve executions, assassi-
nations, poisoning, arrests, beatings, or torture by opposition leaders,
activists, and protesters. However, such repression also involves moral
hazard. For instance, videos and testimonies of various Maidan activists
and eyewitnesses show that violent dispersal of Maidan pr otesters on
November 30, 2013, was deliberately provoked by Maidan opposition
leaders, the far-right Right Sector, and the head of the Yanukovych
administration. His TV channel filmed and publicized it along with other
Ukrainian and foreign TV and other media as unprovoked police violence
against students on the Yanukovych order. Orchestrated police violence
was used to trigger mass Maidan protests against Yanukovych and his
government (see Katchanovski, 2020).
The moral hazard theor y of state repression backfire, rational choice,
and Weberian rationality-based analysis can be applied not only to the
analysis of the Maidan massacre in Ukraine. Such a theoretical framework
can also be used to conduct theory-based and evidence-based scholarly
analyses of possible cases of false-flag violence in Ukraine and other coun-
tries. There is a similar moral hazard in interstate violence and conflict
backfires. Similarly, there is a moral hazard in humanitarian intervention
that involves perverse incentives for political actors to engage in risky and
fraudulent actions against their own state to elicit violent state repression
and humanitarian intervention by foreign states in response (Kuperman,
2008).
Cases of false-flag violence included violent attacks staged by Nazi
Germany and disguised as Polish attacks in the German territory, for
instance, in Gleiwitz. They were used by Nazi Germany as a pretext to
invade Poland and start World War II and for propaganda purposes to
justify this invasion (see, for instance, Davies, 2006, 152). A false-flag
shelling with reported casualties by Soviet border guards near the village
of Mainila was used by the Soviet Union as a casus belli for a war with
Finland in 1939. This shelling was staged by Soviet forces on orders of
Soviet leadership and was falsely blamed on shelling by Finland to create
a pretext for the war (Spencer, 2018).
There is a documented history of such false-flag operations in poli-
tics and conflicts in Ukraine and other countries, specifically during
1 INTRODUCTION: THE MASSACRE THAT CHANGED 13
World War II, the Cold War, and since the Cold War.1 For instance, the
Ukrainian Insurgent Army units often used disguises of Soviet partisans
or Soviet military and security forces to carry their killings of Polish and
Ukrainian civilians in order to hide the UPA responsibility and impute
these killings on their adversaries. The Soviet secret police created many
fake UPA units to locate and neutralize actual UPA units and their sympa-
thizers among the local population in Western Ukraine after the Soviet
Union regained its control of this region at the end of World War II (see
Statiev, 2010).
The Soviet KGB cr eated fake underground organizations in Ukraine
as a part of its tactic against different factions of the OUN and the US
and British intelligence services that used the OUN during the Cold
War. Various academic studies and documents of the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) show that the US government was involved during the
Cold War in 1953 in organizing false-flag violent attacks in Iran as a
part of the US-led overthrow of a democratically elected government and
turning this country into a US client state run by an authoritarian govern-
ment (see Abrahamian, 2013; Gasiorowski, 1991). Some researchers and
journalists argue that clandestine networks, which were organized during
the Cold War by the governments in West European countries to form
underground resistance during their potential occupation by the Soviet
Union and which included many far-right elements, were involved in
various false-flag attacks (Ganser, 2005).
The dioxin poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko helped to mobilize
popular support for the “Orange Revolution” and win him the 2004
presidential elections, whose results were initially falsified in favor of
Yanukovych. While the opposition and the media initially presented
this as an assassination attempt by the Yanukovych side or the Russian
government, the case has not been solved. After becoming president,
Yushchenko indicated that politicians or oligarchs with whom he was
previously allied might have been involved (Katchanovski, 2008).
Some scholars and journalists presented the Moscow apartment bomb-
ings in 1999 as a false-flag operation carried out by the Russian domestic
security agency in order to create a pretext for the second Russian war
in then de facto independent Chechnya and increase popular support
1 In various cases, especially relatively recent, it is difficult to come to definite conclu-
sions if certain events constituted false flag operations or not, because of lack of publicly
available data to answer research questions or test various research hypotheses.
14 I. KATCHANOVSKI
for Vladimir Putin before the presidential elections (see, for example,
Dunlop, 2012). While such hypothesis cannot be excluded, the second
war in Chechnya then already started with invasion or radical Islamist
militias in Chechnya of the Dagestan region of Russia and the Islamic
terrorists carried out several similar large-scale attacks during the first and
second Chechen wars in Budenovsk, Makhachkala, Moscow, and Beslan
and later claimed responsibility for the Moscow apartment bombings (see
Sakwa, 2005).
Similarly, while Western governments and international organizations
concluded that a chemical attack near Damascus in Syria in 2013 was
most likely perpetrated by the Syrian government, there were claims that
this was a false-flag attack by Islamic rebels in order to draw a direct
US military intervention in the Syrian civil war. Some journalists argued
based on various evidence that the massacres of opposition protesters in
Venezuela and in Vilnius in Soviet Lithuania were falsely attributed to the
government forces but were perpetrated by snipers from the opposition
forces in order to frame the governments and to overthrow them (see
Jones, 2009; Sapozhnikova, 2018).
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, various government and oppo-
sition parties and leaders in Ukraine often used political technologies
against their political opponents, including false-flag political parties,
newspapers, and advertisements, specifically during election campaigns
(see Wilson, 2005). Ukrainian politics has been a high-stakes game
because the power it gives allows rent seeking for politicians and oligarchs
via the enrichment of themselves and their personal and political networks
via corruption, insider dealings and advantages over political and business
rivals. Power also grants de facto immunity from prosecution.
There are numerous “conspiracy theories” of false-flag opera-
tions which are generally promoted by political activists and amateur
researchers. For example, they dismiss the overwhelming evidence that 9/
11 attacks in the US were organized and carried out by Islamic terrorists
and claim without sufficient evidence that these attacks were a false-flag
operation.
Similarly, the Ukrainian government and media claimed that separatists
in Donbas have routinely used false-flag attacks by shelling cities and
towns under their control. Similar allegations about false-flag attacks by
Ukrainian forces were often advanced by separatist and Russian media
concerning shelling of cities and other areas controlled by the central
government. However, studies and OSCE mission reports indicate that
1 INTRODUCTION: THE MASSACRE THAT CHANGED 15
such claims generally either lacked evidence or relied on fake evidence
(see Katchanovski, 2016a).
Various separatist and Russian politicians and media claimed that a
downing of a Malaysian MH17 passenger plane in Donbas in 2014 was a
false-flag attack. However, publicly available evidence, which was reported
in the media, the social media, and a trial in the Netherlands, indicates
that the plane was shot down with a missile by separatists from a Russian-
supplied Buk because it was mistaken for a Ukrainian military plane. Such
evidence includes photos and videos of a Buk with antiaircraft missiles
near the time and estimated place of its missile launch and the location
of the Buk and launch spot in the separatist-controlled areas, SBU inter-
cepts of phone calls of separatist commanders concerning the Buk and the
shot-down plane (see Katchanovski, 2016a; Forthcoming).
There were also numerous claims of false-flag attacks during the
Russia-Ukraine war. However, contrary to claims by the Russian Defense
Ministry and Donbas separatists, there is no confirmed evidence of false-
flag bombings of the Mariupol maternity hospital and the Mariupol
theater by the Azov Regiment or other Ukrainian forces. The same
concerns claims by the Ukrainian government that the shelling of Donetsk
and the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant were false flags by the Russian forces.
There is no corroborated evidence of systematic false-flag shelling or
bombing of civilians by the Russian, separatist, and Ukrainian forces.
Similarly, contrary to the Russian government claims of staged killings in
Bucha, analysis of UN and Amnesty International reports, forensic expert
reports, videos, satellite images, eyewitness reports, media investigative
reports, and other sources shows that at least dozen civilians and terri-
torial defense members were summarily executed or shot indiscriminately
by individual Russian soldiers or Russian units during the Russian occu-
pation of Bucha and suggests that at least many of several dozen other
shot civilians and territorial defense members in Bucha were also victims
of such Russian war crimes, while most of about 400 victims were killed
by shelling (see Katchanovski, 2022a; Forthcoming).
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CHAPTER 2
Conflicting Narratives of the Maidan
Massacre in Ukraine
This chapter examines different narratives concerning the Maidan
massacre of the Maidan activists and the police on February 18–20, 2014,
and previous scholarly studies of this massacre. The dominant narrative
promoted by the Ukrainian and Western governments and with some
exceptions the media attributed the Maidan massacre of the protesters to
the Yanukovych government and his security forces and Berkut anti-riot
police. It was uncritically accepted by some scholars. In contrast, most
previous scholarly studies, which analyzed it specifically, found that this
was a false-flag operation with involvement of elements of the Maidan
oligarchic and far-right opposition.
2.1 Conflicting Government
Narratives of the Maidan Massacre
The dominant narrative promoted by the governments in Ukraine and
the West attributed the Maidan massacre of the protesters on February
18–20, 2014, to the Yanukovych government and his security and police
forces and generally disregarded killings of the police on the same day and
in the same place. The official investigation by the Prosecutor General
Office of Ukraine (GPU) charged the special Berkut police company with
the massacre of the Maidan protesters on February 20 on the orders
of President Viktor Yanukovych and his heads of the Security Service
© The Author(s) 2024
I. Katchanovski, The Maidan Massacre in Ukraine, Rethinking Political
Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-67121-0_2
21
22 I. KATCHANOVSKI
of Ukraine and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The GPU arrested and
charged two Berkut commanders and three members of this police unit
with terrorism and the murder of 48 out of 49 killed Maidan protesters
and attempted murder of 80 out of 172 wounded protesters on February
20, 2014, on Yanukovych’s orders. Shortly before the 10th anniversary
of the massacre, Yanukovych, his heads and other senior officials and
commanders of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), the Ministry of
Internal Affairs, and Berkut anti-riot police were charged in absentia for
the massacre of the Maidan protesters on February 18–20, 2014. The
head of SBU in the Kyiv Region, the head of the Ministry of Internal
Affairs, and commanders and members of Berkut units from Kharkiv and
Lviv were arrested and charged with the massacre of the Maidan activists
on February 18, 2014. However, the Maidan massacre trial verdict by a
Kyiv district court verdict in 2023 stated that there was no evidence of
any order by Yanukovych and his government ministers to kill the Maidan
activists on February 18–20 (Katchanovski, 2024).
Then President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, the head of the National
Security and Defense Council Oleksandr Turchynov, and the head of
the SBU Valentyn Nalyvaichenko alleged in February 2015 that Vladislav
Surkov, an aide of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was personally coor-
dinating foreign “snipers” on the Maidan but presented no suppor ting
evidence. However, Serhii Leshchenko, a member of the Poroshenko’s
faction in the parliament, revealed that Surkov arrived in Kyiv by plane
after the massacre was already over. The Prosecutor General of Ukraine
and the head of its department in charge of the Maidan massacre inves-
tigation stated later that they did not have evidence about such Surkov’s
and Russian snipers’ involvement in the massacre (SBU, 2015; Shershen,
2015).
Similarly, Andrii Parubii, who became after the overthrow of
Yanukovych the head of the National Security and Defense Council and
then the speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, claimed that Russian and
Belarusian snipers massacred the protesters and that they were located on
the roofs of the presidential administration and the National Bank, but
he was not certain if they were in Hotel Ukraina (Kalnysh, 2015). The
government investigation and the Maidan massacre trial verdict in 2023
determined that there was no participation of Russian snipers or agents
in this massacre (Katchanovski, 2024).
The Western governments and organizations, such as the European
Union (EU), either explicitly or implicitly, by threatening sanctions,
2 CONFLICTING NARRATIVES OF THE MAIDAN MASSACRE 23
blamed the Yanukovych government and the government forces for the
massacre of the Maidan protesters when and after it happened and before
any investigation was conducted. For instance, Joe Biden, then US vice
president, spoke to Yanukovych on February 20, 2014, right after the
massacre and demanded a withdrawal of the security forces, specifically
snipers and paramilitary units which he said were most responsible for the
violence and told Yanukovych to leave presidency and Ukraine (Biden,
2017).
However, Biden stated in his official address to the Ukrainian parlia-
ment that “snipers on the roofs” massacred the protesters (The Obama,
2015). The US ambassador to Ukraine told Biden during their visit to
the massacre site in 2015 that “snipers” were on surrounding buildings
(Baker, 2015). US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also stated that the
Maidan protesters were massacred by snipers from the buildings: “but
actually being there on the gr ound and sort of putting yourself where
these people had been, and looking up at the buildings where the snipers
had been shooting down at them gives you a pretty palpable feel for what
people had done to stand up for their own democratic right to choose
the future of their country” (Secretary, 2023). Biden, Blinken, and the
US ambassador to Ukraine blamed the Yanukovych government forces
for the massacre. But their statements that the Maidan activists were shot
by snipers located in surrounding buildings contradicted the GPU investi-
gation that protesters were massacred by the Berkut police on the ground
and not by any snipers in surrounding buildings.
The Prosecutor General of Ukraine stated in June 2014 that he gave
videos of the Maidan massacre to the FBI to enhance their quality
(Report, 2015a). However, the US and other Western governments
did not release their intelligence assessments and other information
concerning this massacre, and results of such reported involvement of
the FBI in the Maidan massacre investigation also were not revealed.
The Prosecutor General of Ukraine investigators, the Maidan victims
lawyers, and with some exceptions, the Ukrainian and Western media
denied that Maidan snipers massacred Maidan activists. On November
19, 2014, the Prosecutor General Office claimed during its press confer-
ence that their extensive investigation produced no evidence of “snipers”
at Hotel Ukraina, Zhovtnevyi Palace and other locations controlled by
the Maidan protesters.
However, in a leaked intercepted telephone call with the EU foreign
affairs head, the Estonian Minister of Foreign Affairs referred to one
24 I. KATCHANOVSKI
of the Maidan doctors, in particular, Olha Bohomolets, pointing to the
similarity of the wounds among the protesters and police, which served
as an indication that the massacre was organized by some elements
of the Maidan opposition (Bergman, 2014). Lawyers representing two
Berkut policemen stated in court on August 3, 2015, that the prose-
cution case was falsified and that relatives of victims should ask Andriy
Parubii and Petro Poroshenko about those who gave an order to massacre
protesters. Parubii was the leader of neo-Nazi Patriot of Ukraine in
the 1990s and the head of the Maidan Self-Defense during the “Euro-
maidan,” and he became the head of the National Security and Defense
Council of Ukraine and the speaker of the Ukrainian parliament after
the Maidan. Por oshenko, an oligarch and one of “Euromaidan” leaders,
became president of Ukraine in May 2014.
The Western governments and organizations generally ignored the
Maidan massacre trials and investigations even though this mass killing
was one of the most serious human rights violations in contempo-
rary Ukraine and Europe overall and it had crucial political significance
beyond Ukraine. Many top Western officials paid tribute to the killed
protesters on the site of the massacre during their visits to Ukraine. Such
Western governments’ stance concerning the Maidan massacre inves-
tigations and trials contrasts with their various public statements and
other forms of involvement concerning other politically important crim-
inal cases and trials, such as the Yuliya Tymoshenko trial during the
Yanukovych presidency, cases of corruption in the Ukrainian government
after the “Euromaidan,” and the successful US administration pressure to
remove Viktor Shokin as the GPU head.
Similarly, the EU did not show interest in investigations of this mass
killing even though in a leaked intercepted telephone call with the EU
foreign affairs chief, the Estonian minister of foreign affairs referred to
Olha Bohomolets, the head of the Maidan doctors team, pointing out
similarity of the wounds among the protesters and policemen, and indi-
cating that some Maidan leaders hired “snipers” and stonewalled the
investigation. The European parliament rejected 17 requests by one of
its members to include investigations of the Maidan and Odesa massacres
on its agenda (Evroparlament, 2017).
Videos of killings and woundings of many Maidan protesters and
shooting by the Berkut special company, along with videos and photos of
Omega unit snipers of the Internal Troops and audio recordings of Alfa
unit snipers of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), were presented
2 CONFLICTING NARRATIVES OF THE MAIDAN MASSACRE 25
by the government and the media in Ukraine and the West as definite
evidence that the police massacred the protesters. Statements, media inter-
views, and reports by numerous Maidan protesters and Ukrainian and
Western journalists have attributed the massacre to government snipers
on the ground and in various surrounding buildings. Similarly, numerous
bullet holes in trees, electric poles, and Hotel Ukraina walls from the side
of the Berkut and government snipers were presented by the prosecution
and the media as clear evidence that they shot protesters.
Conversely, ex-president Yanukovych and former top officials of his
government, who fled to Russia following the massacre, as well as the
Russian government and media, stated that the Maidan massacre was a
part of a coup d’état or a fascist coup by some of the Maidan leaders,
radical elements of the Maidan opposition, and the US government.
Yanukovych, his ministers, and Berkut commanders denied that they
had ordered the massacre and stated that the protesters and the police
were shot by Maidan snipers. However, they did not produce specific
evidence in support of their claims. Yanukovych along with his heads of
the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Internal Troops, and the Security Service
of Ukraine, and Berkut commanders were then charged in absentia for
ordering the Maidan massacre of the protesters. However, as noted
no such orders were revealed, and the Maidan massacre trial verdict
stated that there was no evidence of such orders (Katchanovski, 2023a,
2023b, 2024).
For instance, Yanukovych made such claims in 2017 in his letters to
the US President Donald Trump, leaders of Germany, France, Poland
and Russia, and the Council of Europe and the European parliament.
In these letters, he named such People’s Front leaders as Oleksandr
Turchynov (the acting president after the Yanukovych overthrow and then
the head of the National Security and Defense Council), Andriy Parubii
(the head of the Maidan Self-Defense and then the head of the Ukrainian
parliament), Serhii Pashynsky (the head of the presidential administration
under Turchynov and then the head of the National Defense and Secu-
rity committee of the Ukrainian parliament), and Arsen Avakov (then
the Minister of Internal Affairs) as organizers of the Maidan massacre.
Yanukovych stated in his interviews, in his Ukrainian and Russian court
testimonies, and in his letter to Trump and other foreign leaders that
he had documents and witnesses in support of his claims. But he did not
make such evidence public citing potential threats to witnesses in Ukraine.
26 I. KATCHANOVSKI
He called for international investigation of this mass killing and stated that
he would then provide such evidence (Pismo, 2017).
An edited version of a BBC interview with Yanukovych was misrep-
resented by BBC and the Ukrainian media as an admission of his and
his police forces responsibility for carrying out the Maidan massacre.
However, the transcript of the full Yanukovych interview published on
the BBC Russian website shows that he did not admit his and his police
forces responsibility for carrying the Maidan massacre and repeated his
previous statements about a “coup” by “radicals” but regretted his failure
to prevent the massacre (Viktor, 2015; Yanukovych, 2015).
Oleksandr Yakymenko, the SBU head under Yanukovych, testified in
a Russian court concerning the “Maidan coup,” that the SBU identified
by name several Maidan snipers who massacred the police and protesters,
and that they included some Georgians and a former SBU Alfa officer,
who then reportedly worked in the Fatherland Party security. He also
named Volodymyr Parasiuk, who headed the special Maidan company,
established in the Music Conservatory with help of the Right Sector,
and his father as Maidan “snipers.” The ex-SBU head stated that during
the Maidan massacre on February 20 the SBU located 10 snipers in the
Music Conservatory, obtained their photos, and then tracked five of them
entering Hotel Ukraina but lost track of other five snipers (Pokazaniya,
2016).
Andriy Klyuyev, the former head of the Yanukovych administration,
stated in the end of 2016 that one of the Maidan leaders hired snipers
from Georgia and the Baltic States. He identified Pashynsky as this
leader and one of the Georgian snipers identified in a protocol of his
interrogation by senior Right Sector activists. Reported position of this
“sniper” matches a sole uninhibited Maidan area building, which is
located near Dnipro Hotel and was identified in Katchanovski (2015a,
18–19). Klyuyev also stated that Turchynov, Parubii, and Pashynsky orga-
nized the massacre of the police and the protesters and used the Right
Sector and leaders of Maidan parties, including far-right Svoboda, in the
dark (Eks-glava, 2016). However, he did not provide specific evidence in
support of his statements.
The Russian government made similar claims based primarily on
statements of Yanukovych, his government ministers, and self-admitted
Georgian snipers. It did not produce specific evidence in support of their
claims. For example, Putin stated that “the neo-Nazi regime” “had taken
2 CONFLICTING NARRATIVES OF THE MAIDAN MASSACRE 27
hold in Ukraine after the 2014 coup,” “that was a bloody, anti-state and
unconstitutional coup” (Presidential, 2023).
Some international organizations examined the Maidan massacre trial
and investigations in their reports, but they did not conduct their own
investigations of this mass killing and ignored academic studies of the
massacre. They did not question the official investigation conclusions
that the government forces on the orders of the Yanukovych govern-
ment were responsible for the massacre of the protesters and relied on
the investigation findings.
An International Advisory Panel of the Council of Europe report in
2015 found that the investigation was stalled, in particular by the Ministry
of Internal Affairs and the GPU. The report revealed that contrary to the
public statements, the official investigation had evidence of “shooters”
killing at least three protesters from Hotel Ukraina or the Music Conser-
vatory and that at least 10 protesters were killed by unidentified “snipers”
from rooftops of buildings. The initial prosecution charges against the
Berkut policemen for killing 39 protesters simply omitted the killings of
the other 10 protesters, even though at least 8 of them were shot dead at
the same time and place. However, the Council of Europe commission,
which did not conduct its own investigation, repeated the official investi-
gation conclusions that Berkut policemen were responsible for killings of
the absolute majority of the protesters (Report, 2015a).
Interpol rejected GPU requests to put ex-president Yanukovych, a
number of his ministers, and the commander and members of the Berkut
special company on its wanted list on murder-related charges for the
Maidan massacre because this international police organization deemed
that these charges constituted political persecution (Tucker, 2015). The
Ukrainian parliament asked the International Criminal Court (ICC)
immediately after the overthrow of Yanukovych to investigate this and
other cases of political violence during the “Euromaidan.” However,
the GPU reportedly informed the court representatives in the fall of
2014 that the Ukrainian law enforcement agencies were not interested
in assisting such an ICC investigation (see Katchanovski, 2015a, 8). The
ICC did not pursue the Maidan massacre case and other cases of political
violence during the “Euromaidan.”
In spite of accusations of their involvement in the Maidan mass killings
to seize power in Ukraine, oligarchic and far-right Maidan leaders and
organizations were hailed by Western and Ukrainian politicians and the
28 I. KATCHANOVSKI
media as heroes and defenders of democracy. They were invited for
government visits and talks at universities in the West.
The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in 2022 to the Center for Civil
Liberties. This Ukrainian NGO, which is funded by the Western govern-
ments and foundations, run the Euromaidan SOS during the Maidan and
after the Maidan. It attributed the Maidan violence, including the Maidan
massacre, to the government forces and advocated for the prosecution of
the Berkut policemen for the Maidan massacre in Ukraine. A report by
Euromaidan SOS, other Maidan organizations, and lawyers of the killed
protesters in June 2015 concluded that the government investigation was
ineffective and was stonewalled.
The Maidan-led government used the Maidan massacre as a source
of its legitimacy and widely commemorated this mass killing and its
victims among the protesters. The killed protesters were posthumously
awarded Hero of Ukraine titles by President Petro Poroshenko, and his
government established February 20 as a day in their honor.
2.2 The Media Coverage of the Maidan Massacre
The Ukrainian and Western mainstream media, with some notable excep-
tions, explicitly or implicitly attributed the Maidan massacre to the
Berkut police or government “snipers,” dismissed the false-flag massacre
as a conspiracy theory, and generally repeated the Ukrainian govern-
ment statements and prosecution charges at face value (Schwartz, 2018).
For example, the New York Times stated for the 10th anniversary
of the massacre in 2024 that “in the uprising’s violent, final days
police killed more than 100 protesters” (Kramer, 2024). However, the
mainstream Western media often follows their reporting concerning
conflicts in foreign countries, in particular, Ukraine, based on uncritical
indexing of the narratives of their own governments or political elites
and the reporting is biased by political factors, such as relationship of
foreign countries with the Western countries (see Boyd-Barrett, 2016;
Katchanovski & Morley, 2012).
Several dozen journalists from more than dozen countries reported in
the media or the social media about witnessing snipers in Hotel Ukraina
and other Maidan-controlled buildings and areas, including shooting of
Maidan protesters by these snipers, cited eyewitnesses among Maidan
protesters about such snipers, or based their reports on such testimonies.
For example, journalists from such major Western and Ukrainian media
2 CONFLICTING NARRATIVES OF THE MAIDAN MASSACRE 29
as ABC, CNN, New York Times, BBC, Guardian, ARD, Bild, Spiegel,
La7, TT News Agency, TVP, 1+1, 5 Kanal, ICTV, Novyi Kanal, 24
Kanal, and Kyiv Post reported about witnessing snipers in Hotel Ukraina,
cited Maidan protesters about snipers there, or based their reports on
such testimonies. Journalists from ITV, TVP, Spiegel, 1+1, ICTV, and
other Western and Ukrainian media similarly repor ted witnessing them-
selves or cited Maidan protesters about witnessing snipers in other
Maidan-controlled buildings and areas, such as Bank Arkada, Zhovtnevyi
Palace, the Main Post Office, and Muzeinyi Lane and Horodetsky Street
buildings (see Chapters 3 and 5).
With just some exceptions, these reports without any evidence
presented these snipers in the Maidan-controlled buildings or areas as
Ukrainian government snipers or implied that they were the govern-
ment snipers. But soon after the massacre, with some partial exceptions,
these and other major media outlets referred to snipers in these Maidan-
controlled locations as “a conspiracy theory,” denied their existence, or
omitted this and other evidence of such snipers.
The New York Times concluded that the police forces and Yanukovych
himself fled because of their fear that protesters could use weapons that
were seized during the attacks on the police and SBU headquarters in
several regions of Western Ukraine but did not report evidence of the
Maidan snipers and assassination attempts agents Yanukovych (Higgins &
Kramer, 2015). Similarly, the Daily Beast reported that pr esented videos
and photos of the armed SBU Alfa unit are proof that the Alfa snipers
killed the protesters, even though the photos and videos were made at
the SBU headquarters after the massacre had already unfolded and the
Maidan government investigation found that Alfa snipers did not fire a
single shot during the massacre (Dettmer, 2014).
The Western mainstream media with some exceptions, primarily
involving a testimony by Yanukovych, did not cover the Maidan massacre
trials and investigations. Google news searchers produced no reports
of major revelations from these trials and investigations or evidence of
the massacre of the protesters by “snipers” from the Maidan-controlled
buildings and the massacre of the police by the far-right organizations.
Ukrainian media reports generally, with some notable exceptions,
presented the Maidan government and GPU prosecution version of the
massacre. This coverage, with some exceptions, omitted major evidence
revealed by these trials and investigations that suggested the massacre
of the protesters by shooters in the Maidan-controlled buildings and
30 I. KATCHANOVSKI
the massacre of the police by the far-right. While the Ukrainian media
reports during and soon after the massacre contained various evidence
of “snipers” in Hotel Ukraina and other Maidan-controlled locations,
such reports have since became very rare even though the February 20th
massacre trial revealed much more such evidence. A book by a pro-
Maidan Ukrainian journalist concluded that the Maidan massacre was
organized by Yanukovych aides and carried out by the government units,
but it mostly relied on r esults of government investigation and interviews
with Maidan politicians (see Koshkina, 2015).
The Ukrainian media and with a few exceptions Western media
presented at face value the Maidan massacre trial verdict in October
2023 and the conviction in absentia of three Berkut policemen for the
killing of 35 out of 49 of the Maidan protesters as a definite proof that
they massacred all protesters. Many media misrepresented the Maidan
massacre verdict as a definite proof that there were no Maidan snipers
and did not report testimonies by the absolute majority of wounded
Maidan protesters, videos, and forensic ballistic examinations at the
Maidan massacre trial in Ukraine concerning the snipers in the Maidan-
controlled buildings. Similarly, they did not report parts of this trial
verdict concerning the shooting of many protesters and Western jour-
nalists by snipers in the Maidan-controlled buildings and areas and the
lack of evidence of the massacre order by the Yanukovych government
and Russian involvement.
There has been a virtual blackout of the Maidan massacre trial verdict’s
parts concerning snipers in the Maidan activists-controlled Hotel Ukraina
in the Ukrainian media and, with a few notable exceptions, the Western
mainstream media. All Ukrainian media reports omitted the verdict’s parts
concerning such snipers and many media outlets even claimed that the
verdict disproved existence of such snipers in Hotel Ukraina and other
Maidan-controlled locations.
The Western media, with a few notable exceptions, also omitted
this crucial information. Moreover, Cathy Young in her opinion piece
in a partisan neoconservative site Bulwark misrepresented the Maidan
massacre trial verdict, branding the revelations about Maidan snipers
operating in Hotel Ukraina a “conspiracy theory” and claiming, falsely,
that the verdict did not indicate that Maidan protesters were shot
from the hotel or other Maidan-controlled locations, and that it did
not disprove involvement by Russian snipers. Young has further falsely
claimed, contrary to the verdict, that Hotel Ukraina was not controlled
2 CONFLICTING NARRATIVES OF THE MAIDAN MASSACRE 31
by the Maidan activists and has propagated instead an actual conspiracy
theory that police in the hotel could have shot the protesters. Her claims
in these regards are contrary not only to the verdict but also to a state-
ment from the far-right Svoboda Party about taking control of the hotel
prior to the massacre, to videos of Maidan snipers shooting at protesters
and a BBC crew from the hotel, to testimonies both by hotel staff
and by the Maidan unit commander in charge of guarding the hotel,
and to other evidence presented in scholarly publications. Young even
denied that verdict references to shooting from Hotel Ukraina direction
meant shooting from this hotel. She also falsely claimed that the Berkut
policemen were convicted for the murder of 40 out of 48 Maidan activists.
There were a few major exceptions in the Western media reporting
of the Maidan massacre. In contrast to the dominant narrative, Monitor,
a German TV program, presented evidence of its investigation, showing
that snipers were based in Hotel Ukraina and that the Ukrainian govern-
ment investigation was manipulated (Monitor, 2014). The BBC inves-
tigation produced similar findings. Investigative reports by the BBC
and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung almost a year after the massacre
confirmed the presence of armed protesters at the Music Conservatory
and their shooting of the police at Maidan (Gatehouse, 2015; Schuller,
2015). The BBC report also reported a statement of a unidentified
GPU prosecutor that he examined a version that both police and the
protesters were killed by the same shooters. A Reuters investigation in
2014 reported that the prosecution case against Berkut members was
problematic because it relied primarily on videos and photos and misrep-
resented or ignored some key pieces of such evidence (Stecklow &
Akymenko, 2014).
Italian, Israeli, and US TV documentaries and Macedonian TV showed
in 2018–2020 testimonies of seven for mer members of the Georgian mili-
tary. They stated that they were members of the Maidan snipers groups,
which included snipers from Georgia, the Baltic States, and Parasiuk-led
group in Hotel Ukraina and the Music Conservatory, and that they were
ordered by Maidan leaders and ex-Georgian leaders to massacre both the
police and the protesters and assassinate then President Yanukovych and
that they witnessed such massacre by the Maidan snipers or were involved
themselves (InsideOver, 2017a, 2017b; MichaelRCaputo, 2022; Stephan,
2018).
32 I. KATCHANOVSKI
In contrast, the Russian media coverage was dominated by the false-
flag theory of the massacre. But the media in Russia, with some excep-
tions, also did not report the revelations from the Maidan massacre trial
and investigations. The Russian media often relayed statements about
this massacre by Yanukovych and his former government members, who
found refuge in Russia, and by self-reported Georgian snipers. However,
the Russian media with some exceptions followed the government narra-
tives and was under various forms of direct or indirect government
control.
The Western and Ukrainian media with some exceptions also reported
at face value claims by the Maidan activists and Maidan opposition leaders
that a female Maidan medic was wounded during the massacre, that
Tetaiana Chornovol was beaten in retaliation for her participation in
Euromaidan protests, that Dmytro Bulatov was kidnapped and crucified,
that Yanukovych ordered the violent dispersal of Maidan protesters on
November 30, 2013, and that the first three Maidan activists were killed
by the government forces in January 2014. The media attributed these
cases of political violence to the Yanukovych government, his forces, or
pro-Yanukovych “titushki” and omitted evidence that they were staged.
2.3 Misrepresentation
of the Maidan Massacre by Wikipedia
The dominant representation of the Maidan massacre in English-
language, Russian-language, and Ukrainian-language Wikipedia is gener-
ally based on the dominant narrative by the Western and Ukrainian media
and the Ukrainian government investigation that the Berkut police and
government snipers massacred the Maidan protesters on the Yanukovych
government orders. They generally excluded academic studies of the
Maidan massacre and labeled them “conspiracy theories” (Euromaidan,
2024; Maidan, 2024). It is revealing that there are no specific articles
concerning the Maidan massacre in English-language, Russian-language,
and Ukrainian-language Wikipedia. It is noteworthy that Wikipedia
omitted findings of academic studies and the Maidan massacre trial verdict
that Ihor Kostenko, a Maidan activist and a Wikipedia editor, was killed
by sniper fire from the Maidan-controlled area (Katchanovski, 2024).
The same Wikipedia editors, who misrepresented the Maidan massacre
and whitewashed the evidence of involvement of the far-right in this
2 CONFLICTING NARRATIVES OF THE MAIDAN MASSACRE 33
massacre, also smeared scholars who researched this massacre and white-
washed in various Wikipedia articles the contemporary and historical
far-right in Ukraine, including the Organization of Ukrainian Nation-
alists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, their collaboration with Nazi
Germany, their ideology and leaders, their “Glory to Ukraine. Glory
to the Heroes” greeting, and their involvement in the mass murder of
Jews, Poles, and Ukrainians. The same concerns the ideology, symbols,
and involvement in violence by such neo-Nazi organizations, as Azov
movement and the far-right Right Sector (Katchanovski, Forthcoming).
Such Wikipedia editors, who misrepresented the Maidan massacre
and whitewashed the contemporary and historical far-right in Ukraine,
in particular, Nazi collaborators, included Nangaf, Wise2 (Prohoshka,
Slav70), Bobfrombrockley, Lute88, My Very Best Wishes, and Volunteer
Marek. The last five were identified in various publications and online
sources, respectively, as far-right Svoboda-linked activist Svyatoslav Gut,
Ben Gidley, Tsetsilia Cecilia Tsypina, Andrei Lomize, and Radek Szulga.
The last two were also identified as involved in the Wikipedia’s intentional
distortion of the Holocaust in Poland (see Grabowski & Klein, 2023).
The Wikipedia editor Wise2, who also edited under names of Prohoshka
and Slav70, propagated “scientific anti-Semitism” and whitewashed the
involvement of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in the
1941 Lviv pogroms during the Nazi occupation of Ukraine, ju