Kiev’s failure to prosecute those responsible for the mass killing of anti-coup activists in Odessa ten years ago is a “shameful page” in Ukrainian history, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.
Scores of protesters were killed in the heart of the port city on May 2, 2014, after they were chased by a mob into a governmental building, the local House of Trade Unions, which was then set on fire and barricaded. At least 40 people died in the blaze.
The aggressors had supported the armed coup in Kiev weeks earlier and backed the new authorities that had seized power in Ukraine. The victims were staging daily demonstrations against the changes.
“We remember everyone who tragically died then. We are convinced that people behind this crime must be punished,” Peskov told journalists. “The statute of limitations does not apply to such crimes.”
Ukrainian officials have claimed that the deaths in Odessa were the result of a provocation by would-be separatists. They allege that a small group attacked a much larger rally of football fans and led them to a nearby protest encampment of anti-coup activists, resulting in a clash.
Officials in Kiev blame the failure of firefighters to swiftly respond to the fire in the House of the Trade Unions on the general chaos of the situation. The official death count arising from the incident was 48, including six people who died in street clashes.
Moscow considers the outburst of violence to have been a deliberate attempt to terrorize people in the Russian-speaking city into submitting to the post-coup government and its anti-Russian policies.
”Odessa was a bone in the throat of the regime, which wanted to put on their knees the residents of the city who it hated, and to drown any resistance in blood,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement marking the tenth anniversary of the tragedy.
”The radicals set the building on fire. They finished off those who jumped out trying to escape the fire,” the ministry claimed.
The statement specifically condemned President Vladimir Zelensky’s inaction after he vowed during his election campaign in 2019 that “under his governance, Ukrainian laws and the principle of the inevitability of punishment would be strictly upheld.”
Peskov’s comments on Thursday came in response to remarks made by Viktor Medvedchuk, the former Ukrainian opposition leader who was forced into exile under Zelensky’s presidency. The politician claimed that the senior post-coup leadership, including acting president Aleksandr Turchinov and cabinet-level officials, had orchestrated the mass killings.
In an interview with TASS, Medvedchuk branded the alleged plotters as “feral fascists” and condemned “the fact that Western ‘democracies’ have not taken issue with this terrible, cruel crime in ten years since.”