Andriy Parubiy, incumbent secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, may be involved the sniper attacks on Maidan protesters and the special task force Berkut, Oleksandr Yakymenko, former head of Ukrainian Security Service, said.
“The shots were fired from the building of the philharmonic. Maidan
commandant Parubiy was in charge of that building. Snipers and people
with guns worked from that building on [Feb.] 20. They supported the
attack on the interior troops, who were demoralized and essentially
fled because they were being shot, they were running in panic. They were
followed by armed people who carried different weapons. At that point,
fire was opened on the people who had attacked the interior troops and
they were killed. All those things happened from the philharmonic
building,” Yakymenko said in an interview aired on Rossiya 24 television
on Wednesday.
“When the first waves of shooting ended, many people saw twenty
people leave the building. They were well-dressed and carried suitcases
for sniper rifles and AKM rifles with optical scopes, he said. Yakymenko
said the snipers had split into two groups, ten people in each group.
The Ukrainian Security Service lost track of one of those groups and the
other one settled in Hotel Ukraina.
“When the shooting was slower, Right Sector and Freedom asked me to
use the Alfa group to cleanse the buildings of the snipers,” Yakymenko
said.
“I was ready to do that, but in order to enter the Maidan I had to
have Parubiy’s approval, or the self-defense units would hit me in the
back. Parubiy did not give his approval. No element of weapons could be
brought to the Maidan without Parubiy’s permission. No pistol, no rifle,
including rifles with optical scopes,” Yakymenko said.
Yakymenko also said that camps for training Ukrainian militants”
existed under Viktor Yuschenko, who was president of Ukraine in
2005-2010.
“Essentially, we didn’t manage to conquer them. When they started
pressuring them, the trainings began to be conducted in Poland, Latvia,
and Lithuania. The most interesting thing is that many regional
organizations in Ukraine paid for the so-called ‘trainings’ from the
state budget,” Yakymenko said.
Yakymenko said he has information that the Maidan was financed by
Ukrainian oligarchs Petro Poroshenko, Dmytro Firtash, and Viktor
Pinchuk, who keep many of their assets abroad.
