Former State Security Head of Ukraine Oleksandr Yakimenko blames Ukraine's current government for hiring snipers on Feb. 20, when dozens of people were killed and hundreds more wounded. The victims were mainly EuroMaidan Revolution demonstrations, but some police officers were also killed. This was the deadliest day during the EuroMaidan Revolution, a three-month uprising that claimed 100 lives.
Yakimenko also blamed the United States for organizing and financing the revolution by bringing illegal cash in using diplomatic mail.
The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine dismissed the charges as ludicrous, while another official with the current government called the accusations “cynical” propaganda with no factual basis.
The former SBU chief is now wanted in Ukraine for his alleged role in organizing mass murders in Ukraine, along with numerous other former top officials of deposed President Viktor Yanukovych’s administration, including the ex-president himself, former Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka, former Interior Minister Vitaliy Zahkharchenko and former presidential chief of staff Andriy Klyuyev.
Yakimenko made these and other accusations in a 10-minute exclusive interview to Russia’s Vesti channel in an undisclosed location.
“The shots sounded from the building of Philharmonics,” Yakimenko told Vesti. “This was the building supervised by (now National Security Council Chief Andriy) Parubiy.”
He said the snipers were shooting in the back of the running police, as well as at protesters. He said there were two groups of “well-dressed” snipers, each composed of 10 people, operating in the building. Yakimenko said their exit was witnessed by both SBU operatives and protesters themselves.
He said one of the groups of snipers disappeared, but the other one relocated to Hotel Ukraina and continued to kill the protesters at a slower pace. Yakimenko said at that point representatives of Svoboda and Right Sector appealed to him to deploy SBU’s special unit Alfa to destroy the snipers.
Yakimenko claims that he was ready to do it, but did not get the permission of Parubiy, who supervised the self-defense forces.
“To get inside EuroMaidan I needed Parubiy’s permission because the forces of self-defense would hit me in the back,” Yakimenko said. “But Parubiy did not give me such a permission.”
“Not a single weapon could get onto Maidan without Parubiy’s permission,” he said, adding that EuroMaidan protesters used mercenaries from former defense ministry’s special units, as well as foreign mercenaries, including those from former Yugoslavia.
“This is typical Russian-style propaganda,” says Viktoria Siumar, deputy head of the National Security and Defense Council and Parubiy’s deputy. She said these “cynical” lies that are circulating in the Russian media, have not and cannot be backed by a single fact.
Yankimenko says that Parubiy, as well as a number of other organizers of EuroMaidan, received direct orders from the U.S. government. Among those people he named former and current intelligence chiefs Mykola Malomuzh and Viktor Gvozd, former Defense Minister Anatoliy Hrytsenko and leader of the opposition Petro Poroshenko.
“These are the forces that were doing everything they were told by the leaders and representatives of the United States,” he says. “They, in essence lived in the U.S. embassy. There wasn’t a day when they did not visit the embassy.”
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SBU chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko is also accused of playing to the tune of the Americans. The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine commented on these accusations in just one word: “ludicrous.”
All orders were given either by the U.S. or EU ambassador Jan Tombinski, “who in essence is a Polish citizen.”
“The role of Poland cannot be evaluated,” Yakimenko said. “It dreams about restoring its old wish, Rzeczpospolita.”
The EU Delegation had no comment about the accusations.
The former SBU chief also talked at length about the financing of EuroMaidan protests, saying much of it came directly from the U.S., and that some Ukrainian oligarchs, including Poroshenko, Dmytro Firtash and Viktor Pinchuk.
“From the beginning of Maidan we as a special service noticed a significant increase of diplomatic cargo to various embassies, western embassies located in Ukraine,” says Yakimenko. “It was tens of times greater than usual diplomatic cargo supplies.” He says that right after such shipments crisp, new U.S. dollar bills were spotted on Maidan.
He said Ukraine’s oligarchs were also financing Maidan because they were “hostages of the situation and had no choice” because most of their assets are located in the west.
Kyiv Post deputy chief editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be reached at [email protected].
