Ivan Bubenchyk, a Maidan protester from Lviv in western Ukraine, says he shot dead two Berkut special riot police commanders on Feb. 20, 2014. Bubenchyk makes the claim in a documentary film called “Brantsi” (Captives) from director Volodymyr Tyhyi, which is to be screened in cinemas around Ukraine from Feb. 25.
The film reconstructs the events before the mass shootings in Kyiv on Feb. 20, 2014, when 53 people were killed – including four police officers.
But a state official, Artem Bidenko, who heads a state agency that is part of the Information Ministry, said Bubenchyk is not telling the truth.
Bidenko says Bubenchyk couldn’t kill two Berkut officers on. Feb 20 from the vantage point that he claims. “Bubenchyk decided to play a hero. He didn’t even think of consequences of his words,” Bidenko said.
The Maidan protests were on the brink of being crushed by the security forces on the night of Feb. 19, 2014. The Trade Union House, which had served as a base for the protesters, had been set ablaze by police the previous night. Protesters broke into the Kyiv Conservatory on the edge of Independence Square, called Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Ukrainian, and took refuge there.
It was from there that Bubenchyk says he shot two riot police commanders. He said that on the morning of Feb. 20, 2014, with the security forces massing for a final assault on the Maidan protest camp, a young man appeared with a Kalashnikov assault rifle and 75 bullets hidden in a tennis bag.
Bubenchyk said it was then that he decided to act. He said Berkut officers had already been shooting at activists behind the barricades on the Maidan.
He took the weapon, and went to a firing position at a third floor window in the Conservatory, at the end of the colonnade in front of the third and fourth floors of the building furthest from the Maidan. From there, he had a clear shot at police officers hiding behind sandbags at the foot of Independence Monument on Maidan Nezalezhnosti.
Bubenchyk said he shot two Berkut commanders killing them. He then opened fire on the legs of other Berkut officers, wounding several and causing them to flee from their positions. As the police withdrew, Maidan protesters surged forward, and then came under fire from police snipers on Instytutska Street.
Bubenchyk said he used to serve in the Soviet Armed Forces, and that he also completed training in a military intelligence school. After the war erupted in eastern Ukraine, he served in the volunteer Dnipro 1 Battalion.
He said he regretted that he didn’t have enough bullets to fire at police snipers when the shootings on Instytutska Street started. He said that if he had, he could have saved the lives of many of the protesters shot by police snipers there.
Some of Bubenchyk’s story may be have been told on BBC investigation by journalist Gabriel Gatehouse carried out in February 2015. In his investigation, Gatehouse interviewed a man, whose face is obscured on film and who uses the pseudonym “Serhiy,” who said that he and another man were shooting at police from the place Bubenchyk describes.
As to why he decided to make his public “confession,” Bubenchyk answers only that “the truth must live.”
He said many people have heard his story before, but prefer to ignore it.
In fact, Bubenchyk in November 2014 gave an interview to Ukrainian television channel TRK Lviv in which he confessed to shooting at Berkut officer. However, in the interview he says only that he wounded the officers.
Serhiy Horbatyuk, the head of Special Investigations Department of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine, told the Kyiv Post that Bubenchyk had been summoned for questioning after the interview was aired, but didn’t show up.
Last year, General Prosecutor Viktor Shokin said that fugitive ex-President Viktor Yanukovych was the one who ordered Berkut to use the weapons against EuroMaidan activists. So far only five people have been sentenced to prison terms on the charges of crimes against EuroMaidan protesters.
However, most suspects in the EuroMaidan cases, including the suspected organizers, remain unpunished.
The Prosecutor General’s Office is still investigating the deaths of four Berkut officers, according to Liga.net website, but no results were presented to the public.
In the movie “Brantsi,” Bubenchyk tells his story to 21-year-old Oleksandr Kolochko, an activist who was also at the Maidan on the day of the massacre.
Kolochko was one of the people who on the morning of Feb. 20, 2014 retook control of the October Palace overlooking Maidan Nezalezhnosti – the building had been seized by the police on Feb. 18. As the activists regained control of the building, Kolochko had a short conversation with one of the riot police, a man of the same age. After former Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych fled from Kyiv, Kolochko decided to find the young police officer he met that day to hear his side of the story of the EuroMaidan protests.
The release of “Brantsi” comes as another film about the EuroMaidan protests, “Winter On Fire,” vies for an Oscar at the upcoming Academy Awards. In contrast with “Winter On Fire,” which tells the story of the Maidan solely from the protesters’ perspective, Tykhyi’s film has interviews with people from both sides of the barricades.
“My sole goal for this movie was to find the truth about what happened on Feb. 20,” Tykhyi said at a news conference on Feb. 18, during which the documentary was screened for journalists.
Kyiv Post staff writer Anna Yakutenko can be reached at [email protected].
