Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office says Russia was not behind Maidan shootings

Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office says it has no data or proofs of the Russian trace in killings of the protesters at Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) in Kiev in 2014, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin said in an interview with Fakty, a Ukrainian newspaper.

"If you remember, Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, former chief of Ukraine’s Security Service, said earlier that a Russian official arrived in Kyiv in winter 2014 and ordered the law enforcers to shoot at protesters. I asked Nalyvaichenko to provide at least some documents proving it. We don't have them until now. That is why I have no proof that there is a Russian trace in the shooting of the Heavenly Hundred Heroes. It is impossible to make such a conclusion on the basis of the materials which we have now. It is not because we cannot or do not want to prove it, we just have no grounds to talk about it now," Shokin said.

To recall, a year after the Maidan shootings, President Petro Poroshenko said he had data that Russian president’s aide Vladislav Surkov was behind the Maidan sniper groups comprising foreigners. Later, in April, then chief of Ukraine’s Security Service Nalyvaichenko said they had data that Surkov had arrived in Ukraine in the course of the operation against Euromaidan activists, lived at one of the Security Service’s facilities together with Aleksandr Yakimenko, former head of the Security Service of Ukraine, and even visited the President’s Administration.

EADaily reported earlier that after search at the apartments of the Svoboda (Freedom) Nationalist Party leaders, they were summoned to the Prosecutor General’s Office today for questioning over Maidan shootings. Earlier Serhiy Leshchenko, the people’s deputy from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, posted on Facebook he has a video footage of a BBC correspondent showing a man firing from the Hotel Ukraine. Svoboda Party Deputy Igor Yankiv was staying in that  hotel at that time.  His neighbors at the hotel were Alexander Sych, former deputy prime minister, and Oleg Pankevich, deputy head of Svoboda Party.