Snipers blamed on Yanukovych
Investigation also claims Russian agents involved
KYIV — Ukraine’s interim authorities accused the country’s ousted president of ordering snipers to open fire on protesters and getting help from Russian security agents to battle his own people — but their report Thursday provided no evidence directly linking him to the bloodbath in Kyiv.
And acting Interior Minister Arsen Avakov charged that his predecessor employed gangs of killers, kidnappers and thugs to terrorize and undermine the opposition.
The preliminary findings revealed by Kyiv’s new leadership examined the months of antigovernment protests that culminated in February in more than 100 deaths in Kyiv. Most of the dead were protesters.
That violence forced a truce be- tween the opposition and the government, but the arrangement quickly collapsed and president Viktor Yanukovych fled to Russia. Also Thursday:
Ukraine sent 16 senior officers to Bulgaria to join a NATO military exercise. The computer-simulation drills, just a few hundred kilometres from Crimea, involved more than 700 troops from 13 NATO members and partner nations.
U.S. President Barack Obama signed into law a bill providing $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees to Ukraine. The legislation also punishes Russia for its bold annexation of Crimea.
The crisis now gripping Ukraine has its roots in three days of bloodshed that peaked on Feb. 20.
Avakov told a Kyiv news conference that police snipers shot at demonstrators near the city’s central square, known as the Maidan, as they walked toward the government district. He said 17 people were killed by government snipers positioned at the October Palace cultural centre.
“The previous leadership of the Interior Ministry and the Berkut (riot police) did everything possible to ensure that any investigations would be impossible,” Avakov said. “Clothes were burned, weapons discarded and documents destroyed.”
A dozen members of an elite riot police unit named “Black Squadron” have been detained on suspicion of shooting protesters, prosecutor general Oleh Makhnitsky said.
Ukrainian Security Service chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko charged that Yanukovych had ordered the killings.
“What was planned under the guise of an anti-terrorist operation, and which was in fact an operation of mass killing of people, took place under the immediate and direct leadership of former president Yanukovych,” Nalyvaichenko said.
He did not say where he got his information.
Nalyvaichenko also said there was evidence that Russia’s FSB security service — the successor to the KGB — assisted its Ukrainian counterparts in efforts to suppress the antigovernment protests.