• Login
  • Register
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Premium
  • Donate
  • Log In
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result

Verdict Reached in Maidan Massacre Trial

by Noah Carl
4 November 2023 5:00 PM

The Ukraine war has its roots in the events of February 2014 when the country’s pro-Russian government was overthrown and replaced by a pro-Western government. One of the key events in the ‘Revolution of Dignity’, as it became known, was the massacre of police and protestors on the Maidan.

The official narrative is that the protestors were killed by snipers from the Berkut (a special police unit loyal to then-President Viktor Yanukovych) and/or by unidentified Russian snipers. Yet Ivan Katchanovski, a Ukrainian-Canadian academic, maintains that they were killed by snipers from the Ukrainian far-right – as part of a false flag operation to bring down Yanukovych’s government.

Some of the evidence Katchanovski cites in support of his argument comes from the trial of five Berkut officers who were charged with the murder of protestors. For example, 51 out of 72 wounded protestors who testified at the trial stated that they were shot from buildings that were under the control of Maidan forces or that they witnessed snipers in such buildings. Most said they were shot from the Hotel Ukraina, and as Katchanovski notes:

Videos show that the Maidan forces not only controlled the entrances and exits to Hotel Ukraina before, during, and after the massacre of the protesters, but also that armed Maidan groups were on the same floors that protesters and journalists identified as locations of snipers around the same time … The far right Svoboda party, a Maidan Self-Defense commander in the hotel, and the hotel staff stated that the Hotel Ukraina was seized and guarded by the Maidan forces since the end of January 2014 … In its official statement, Svoboda stated that its activists took Hotel Ukraina under their control and guard on 25 January 2014.

On 18 October, almost nine years after it began, the trial finally reached a verdict: three of the Berkut officers were found guilty of murder, a fourth was found guilty of abusing his office, and the fifth was acquitted.

Interestingly, though, none of them will serve any prison time. The officer found guilty of abuse-of-office has already served his full five-year sentence while in custody during the trial. And the three found guilty of murder were released from custody in 2019 as part of a prisoner exchange with Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas.

For his part, Katchanovski attributes the conviction of the three Berkut officers to “fabricated forensic ballistic examination”, noting that “the specific time and direction of shooting by Berkut policemen did not coincide with the killing of specific protesters”. In fact, even before the verdict was reached, he had written that the trial would be unlikely to weigh the evidence impartially due to “political pressure and far-right attacks”.

It’s interesting, then, that the verdict states as a “categorical conclusion” that “persons with weapons, from which the shots were fired, were in the premises of the “Ukraine” hotel”. In other words, it acknowledges the presence of snipers in the Hotel Ukraina – something that had previously been dismissed by proponents of the official narrative as a “conspiracy theory”.

(As an aside, the court document is around 1,700 pages and 1 million words in length. It’s also written in Ukrainian. Katchanovski was kind enough to direct me to the relevant parts, and I translated them using Google.)

In addition, the verdict states that for eight killed and twenty wounded protestors, “the involvement of law enforcement officers has not been proven, and other unknown persons cannot be ruled out”. In several of these cases, it even states that the individual was shot from the Hotel Ukraina or other territory that was “not controlled by law enforcement agencies at that time”.

The “unknown persons” could, in principle, be Russian snipers. Yet according to the verdict, any “Russian trace” was “not confirmed”. In particular, “all cases of crossing the border zone by FSB officers into Ukraine, their movement around Kyiv and the region, the time and place of their stay, as well as the dates and ways they left the territory of Ukraine were investigated”. And there was “no participation in the events on the street”.

It’s worth noting that the trial itself only dealt with the shootings of around half the protestors who were shot in the massacre. The other half were determined before the trial even began to have been shot from areas where no Berkut officers were present – and the five defendants were not charged with their shooting. So even if some protestors were shot by Berkut officers (something Katchanovski admits as a possibility) there are still dozens of unexplained shootings.

The trial verdict will not be the final word on the Maidan massacre. But it does lend support to several of Katchanovski’s claims: there were snipers in the Hotel Ukraina and other Maidan-controlled buildings; many of the protestors could not have been shot by the Berkut officers; and there is no evidence that Russian snipers were involved.

Tags: Ivan KatchanovskiMaidan massacreUkraine

Donate

We depend on your donations to keep this site going. Please give what you can.

Donate Today

Comment on this Article

You’ll need to set up an account to comment if you don’t already have one. We ask for a minimum donation of £5 if you'd like to make a comment or post in our Forums.

Sign Up
Previous Post

It’s No Good the Tories Raging Against the HR ‘Diversity’ Bureaucracy – They Created It

Next Post

News Round-Up

Subscribe
Login
Notify of
Please log in to comment

To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.

Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.

11 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
FerdIII
FerdIII
1 year ago

2004 and 2014 US led coups. The Maiden massacre by Ukes and the CIA. 15000 Russians slaughtered in Donbas post Maiden. Bio labs, money laundering. NATO, EU takeover of a former Russian state oblast which was never a country. And yet Russia is the bad actor. The US empire as evinced by Rona, fake science and endless wars is the locus of evil.

151
-81
sskinner
sskinner
1 year ago
Reply to  FerdIII

You sound a bit like a Marxist Revolutionary.

78
-47
Freddy Boy
Freddy Boy
1 year ago
Reply to  FerdIII

74 down ticks even with the last sentence being true 😵‍💫

34
-19
For a fist full of roubles
For a fist full of roubles
1 year ago
Reply to  Freddy Boy

The quantity of down tickers only means that a group of people don’t like Ferd’s conclusions, not that they are wrong.

31
-1
Kornea112
Kornea112
1 year ago
Reply to  FerdIII

Assuming the US and it’s allies, which includes the UK, are the only bad actors in the world is naive. What can be done in the name of national security is just about anything. These clandestine agencies operate above any laws or morality.

7
-1
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago

https://off-guardian.org/2023/11/04/the-great-reset-part-2-a-camp-with-no-outside/

The second part of Simon Elmer’s look at their Great Reset and this looks at Digital Identity and the horrors this entails.

“At present, the UK Government is promoting Digital Identity in terms of ease of access, greater convenience and increased safety. So, under the Online Safety Act 2023, Digital Identity will be a requirement of access to the internet, not in order to censor what we can see, read and write but to protect children from pornography and grooming gangs.
Under the Elections Act 2022, it will be a requirement of voting, not in order to further discourage public participation in the electoral process but to stop illegal voting. It will be a requirement of receiving Universal Credit or, in the future, Universal Basic Income, not in order to force the immiserated and unemployed into obligatory retraining and work but to stop fraudulent benefit claims. It will be a requirement of gaining access to public transport, medical care, education and employment, not in order to control us whenever the World Health Organization declares a new pandemic but to protect the population from future health crises. It will be a requirement of travel and movement between nation states and within the UK, not in order to enforce the restrictions on our freedoms imposed by Agenda 2030 but to stop illegal immigration into the UK and save the planet from ‘global boiling’. It will be a requirement of opening a bank account, not to force us into opening a Digital Pound account but to stop financial crime.”

Last edited 1 year ago by huxleypiggles
42
-4
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

This is actually a first rate article and more like the Simon Elmer I have learnt to appreciate.

13
-1
mandtmarsh
mandtmarsh
1 year ago

Toby, you’ve really got to keep Noah away from Ukraine issues.

DS credibility is at stake.

It’s like being back in London Calling, but with only James’s rantings presented.

Last edited 1 year ago by mandtmarsh
6
-43
For a fist full of roubles
For a fist full of roubles
1 year ago
Reply to  mandtmarsh

Has it really taken you nearly 2 years to make that comment?
It wasn’t worth the wait.

19
0
Ian Rons
Ian Rons
1 year ago
Reply to  mandtmarsh

Noah is making a rod for his own back here, because he hasn’t examined Katchanovski’s claims objectively (by having translations of videos, etc. done, as I have). Here’s a brief excerpt from an article I’ve been working on, which shows Katchanovski’s contempt for the facts. However, we know there was one gunman in the Hotel Ukraine on the February 20th 2014, he was seen shooting probably towards government units on rooftops towards the presidential buildings to the north west. It’s almost like Noah is being a cipher for Katchanovski by saying the idea of anyone with a gun in the Hotel Ukraine is a “conspiracy theory”.

—————————————————–

[His] next supposed witness is in the clip beginning at 2m49s. Katchanovski’s caption reads as follows:

A Hotel Ukraina staff member states that he witnessed three “snipers” with music intruments [sic] type weapon cases entering the hotel late on February 17 or early on February 18 [2014] when this hotel was in the area controlled by the Maidan Self-Defence.

To be clear, the Hotel Ukraine was never controlled by the Maidan protesters, as far as I have been able to establish from contemporaneous accounts and videos. It was used as a hotel, occupied by foreign journalists (BBC, RT, etc.) and others during this time. First aid was given to protesters in the lobby on February 20th, but Katchanovski has never established anything more. However, what Katchanovski fails to mention about this witness is that he states that he saw three individuals in uniform run into the hotel on February 17–18th and then down the stairs with cases resembling weapons cases. This is from a show broadcast by the popular Ukrainian channel TSN which, from what I can tell, presents the mainstream view that it was only government forces who were sniping protesters, and it’s clear from the video that these “snipers” were police or other government officers.

Last edited 1 year ago by Ian Rons
0
-22
For a fist full of roubles
For a fist full of roubles
1 year ago

It is probably a waste of time dissecting those events yet again.
Ukraine is doomed and it is only a matter of time before the West formally casts them adrift.
America is already building a blame narrative that absolves Biden from any culpability and fingers Zelensky, Zelensky is already blaming his generals for the failures and Aristovich is positioning himself to replace Zelensky.
I think a stock of popcorn is in order.

Last edited 1 year ago by For a fist full of roubles
16
0

NEWSLETTER

View today’s newsletter

To receive our latest news in the form of a daily email, enter your details here:

DONATE

PODCAST

The Sceptic EP.37: David Frost on Starmer’s EU Surrender, James Price on Broken Britain and David Shipley on Lucy Connolly’s Failed Appeal

by Richard Eldred
23 May 2025
6

LISTED ARTICLES

  • Most Read
  • Most Commented
  • Editor’s Picks

News Round-Up

24 May 2025
by Toby Young

Doctor Who Star Ncuti Gatwa “Axed” and BBC Show to be “Put on Pause” Amid Falling Ratings and Woke Storylines

23 May 2025
by Will Jones

We Were Too Polite to Stop the Woke Takeover

23 May 2025
by Mary Gilleece

Follow the Silenced is the Untold Story of the Covid Vaccine Trial Victims

24 May 2025
by Antony Brush

Maternity Hospital Evacuated After Solar Panel Fire

24 May 2025
by Will Jones

News Round-Up

27

Trump in Nuclear Power Push Dubbed “Manhattan Project 2”

27

Trump Slaps 50% Tariffs on EU – as He Tells Starmer to Get Drilling for Oil

46

Starmer’s EU Reset Tethers the UK to the EU’s Green Dystopia

18

Maternity Hospital Evacuated After Solar Panel Fire

15

Follow the Silenced is the Untold Story of the Covid Vaccine Trial Victims

24 May 2025
by Antony Brush

Do Researchers’ Views on Immigration Affect the Results of Their Studies?

24 May 2025
by Noah Carl

Starmer’s EU Reset Tethers the UK to the EU’s Green Dystopia

24 May 2025
by Tilak Doshi

We Were Too Polite to Stop the Woke Takeover

23 May 2025
by Mary Gilleece

The Tweets Cited by the Judge to ‘Prove’ Lucy Connolly is “Racist” Do Nothing of the Sort

23 May 2025
by Laurie Wastell

POSTS BY DATE

November 2023
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
27282930  
« Oct   Dec »

SOCIAL LINKS

Free Speech Union

NEWSLETTER

View today’s newsletter

To receive our latest news in the form of a daily email, enter your details here:

POSTS BY DATE

November 2023
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
27282930  
« Oct   Dec »

DONATE

LISTED ARTICLES

  • Most Read
  • Most Commented
  • Editor’s Picks

News Round-Up

24 May 2025
by Toby Young

Doctor Who Star Ncuti Gatwa “Axed” and BBC Show to be “Put on Pause” Amid Falling Ratings and Woke Storylines

23 May 2025
by Will Jones

We Were Too Polite to Stop the Woke Takeover

23 May 2025
by Mary Gilleece

Follow the Silenced is the Untold Story of the Covid Vaccine Trial Victims

24 May 2025
by Antony Brush

Maternity Hospital Evacuated After Solar Panel Fire

24 May 2025
by Will Jones

News Round-Up

27

Trump in Nuclear Power Push Dubbed “Manhattan Project 2”

27

Trump Slaps 50% Tariffs on EU – as He Tells Starmer to Get Drilling for Oil

46

Starmer’s EU Reset Tethers the UK to the EU’s Green Dystopia

18

Maternity Hospital Evacuated After Solar Panel Fire

15

Follow the Silenced is the Untold Story of the Covid Vaccine Trial Victims

24 May 2025
by Antony Brush

Do Researchers’ Views on Immigration Affect the Results of Their Studies?

24 May 2025
by Noah Carl

Starmer’s EU Reset Tethers the UK to the EU’s Green Dystopia

24 May 2025
by Tilak Doshi

We Were Too Polite to Stop the Woke Takeover

23 May 2025
by Mary Gilleece

The Tweets Cited by the Judge to ‘Prove’ Lucy Connolly is “Racist” Do Nothing of the Sort

23 May 2025
by Laurie Wastell

SOCIAL LINKS

Free Speech Union
  • Home
  • About us
  • Donate
  • Privacy Policy

Facebook

  • X

Instagram

RSS

Subscribe to our newsletter

© Skeptics Ltd.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password? Sign Up

Create New Account!

Fill the forms below to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Premium
  • Donate
  • Log In

© Skeptics Ltd.

wpDiscuz
You are going to send email to

Move Comment
Perfecty
Do you wish to receive notifications of new articles?
Notifications preferences