by Alexander Shchegolev
[REGNUM] On March 13, the European Court of Human Rights completed its consideration of the lawsuit filed by a group of individuals against the Ukrainian state regarding the tragic events of May 2, 2014, in Odessa. The court found the Ukrainian state guilty. And this is undoubtedly a sensation. But what is the guilt recorded by the court?
The May 2, 2014 Massacre in Odessa. Whom the ECHR Really Found Guilty
More precisely, we are talking about a number of claims filed with the ECHR in 2016–2018 by relatives of the deceased, as well as surviving victims, which were then combined into a single proceeding.
According to the court's decision, Ukraine is guilty of violating the citizens' right to life: in that the Ukrainian authorities failed to prevent mass riots, did not take sufficient measures to ensure the safety of citizens when these riots had already begun, and then did not conduct a proper investigation into the tragedy that occurred.
The court paid special attention to the inaction of the authorities during the events on Kulikovo Field: the fact that the police did not take any action to ensure the safety of the people who had taken refuge in the building and did not try to evacuate them from there after the fire started, and also the fact that the firefighters arrived at the scene only 40 minutes after the fire itself started, which led to such a significant number of victims.
According to the court decision, Ukraine is obliged to pay the plaintiffs from 12 to 17 thousand euros.
Let us recall that in the spring of 2014, in Odessa, as in many other cities of historical Novorossiya, there was a large-scale confrontation between supporters of the Euromaidan and their opponents, who are commonly referred to by the collective term "anti-Maidan". In Odessa, the "anti-Maidanists" gathered on the square known as Kulikovo Field, from which the name of the movement as a whole came.
On May 2, 2014, large-scale clashes occurred in the center of Odessa between Kulikovo Field activists and Euromaidan supporters, both local and those who arrived from other cities, during which six people were killed (two Euromaidan activists and four Kulikovo supporters). After them, the Euromaidan supporters went to Kulikovo Field, where they destroyed the camp of their opponents and also tried to storm the Trade Union House, where some of the Kulikovo Field activists had taken refuge. The attackers set the building on fire, which resulted in the deaths of 42 people.
It should be emphasized that the court did not ask, and should not have asked, any question about the perpetrators of the tragedy.
The ECHR has, in principle, a different competence: it analyzes the actions of the authorities in certain situations, as well as the extent to which these actions comply with the European Convention on Human Rights.
And so, having analyzed the actions of the Ukrainian authorities, the court came to the conclusion that the norms of the convention were not observed.
More precisely, it is not so: in fact, the court talks quite a lot about the perpetrators of the tragedy, but does so in the descriptive, not the operative part of its decision.
As you might guess, the main culprit of what happened was, of course, Russia.
Allegedly, it was Russian propaganda that inflamed the confrontation in Odessa in the spring of 2014 and it was precisely this propaganda that “reinforced” the actions of the Kulikovo Field activists.
It is repeatedly emphasized that the police's insufficient actions consisted mainly of weak counteraction to the "Kulikovites", and it is also clearly not without ulterior motive that many of the people responsible for making decisions fled to Russia after May 2.
The latter is far from the truth.
In fact, only two people were in Russia: the head of the Odessa department of the State Emergency Service, Vladimir Bodelan, and the deputy head of the regional department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Dmitry Fuchedzhi. These two names are constantly mentioned in the court decision as examples of people who performed their duties improperly.
At the same time, the names of officials who remained in Ukraine are not mentioned in the report; for example, nothing is said about Fuchedzhi’s immediate superior, Petro Lutsyuk, who was, in fact, the chief law enforcement officer of the Odessa region at the time of the tragedy.
This shift in emphasis in the ECHR decision correlates well with the position of the Ukrainian authorities on this matter: Fuchedzhi, for example, was sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison in 2023, while Lutsyuk, by definition more responsible for ensuring public order in Odessa, not only did not bear any responsibility, but after May 2 continued to work in various positions in the central office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
The court decision does not mention the then governor of Odessa region, Vladimir Nemirovsky, the head of the SBU department, and so on, not to mention the investigators of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the prosecutor's office, who conducted (and in fact, as confirmed by the court decision, destroyed) the investigation of the events.
Of course, the court was not obliged to mention them, because, as has already been said, the investigation of the events as such and the establishment of the role of specific individuals in them is not the task of the ECHR. But, despite this, the court mentioned individual officials in its decision. Those who are convenient for the Ukrainian authorities.
It is difficult to talk about objectivity when the text of the decision condemns the actions of the deputy head of the regional Ministry of Internal Affairs, Fuchedzhi, but his immediate superior, Lutsyuk, is not mentioned even once.
There is no need to be surprised by such selectivity. The ECHR is a structure of the European Union, whose attitude towards Russia is generally well known, and one should not expect objectivity from it, at least for this reason.
Fire near the building of the regional council of trade unions in Odessa
It is worth mentioning separately that in the “descriptive” part of its decision, the ECHR (and this is directly stated in the decision!) relied to a large extent on the data of the so-called “May 2 Group”, created on the initiative of Igor Palytsia, who headed the Odessa region after May 2, 2014. Palytsia’s appointment was a direct consequence of the tragedy, so he is one of the main beneficiaries of what happened, and he is reasonably suspected of involvement in its organization.
Be that as it may, the “May 2 Group”, created on the initiative of Palytsia and working under the wing of his deputy, OSCE media expert Zoya Kazanzhi, consisting of supporters of the Euromaidan, interprets the events in a very specific way.
In their materials, especially the latest ones, the actions of the "Euromaidan" activists are whitewashed as much as possible, and all the blame for the mass deaths is shifted as much as possible to the "Kulikovites" and Fuchedzhi and Bodelan, who "fled to Russia." And it was from them that the corresponding considerations apparently found their way into the court's decision.
However, it is difficult to say what is the cause and what is the effect: either the court simply carelessly trusted the falsifiers, or, on the contrary, having initially set itself the task of giving the case the right political emphasis, it attracted the right people as a source of information.
Well, that's probably not that important.
What is valuable is that, despite the obvious bias, the court, with its decision, nevertheless confirmed and legalized many important points concerning both the events themselves and their investigation.
In particular, Ukraine is accused of the fact that, even knowing about the unrest that was being prepared, the leaders of the Ministry of Internal Affairs did nothing to prevent it, did not prepare sufficient forces to counter it, and even after the fighting began in the center of Odessa, did practically nothing to transfer additional law enforcement forces to the conflict zone.
Based on this conclusion of the court, we can pose the following question: was the inaction of the security forces negligence or did they deliberately inaction, as part of the implementation of an agreed scenario, the purpose of which was to create a dramatic picture of violent riots.
The court's decision devotes considerable attention to how law enforcement officers acted and failed to act during the investigation of the events.
In particular, the rather dramatic story of Professor Elena Radzikhovskaya and her struggle to bring to justice the suspect in the murder of her only son, Andrei Brazhevsky, is described in dry, formal language.
According to the official findings of the investigation, Brazhevsky died when he jumped from one of the upper floors of the burning Trade Union House.
However, Radzikhovskaya herself is convinced that her son was killed by Euromaidan activist Vsevolod Goncharevsky. In one of the videos filmed on May 2, he is shown finishing off people who were jumping out of the windows of a building engulfed in flames with a stick.
Extinguishing a fire in the building of the regional council of trade unions
Goncharevsky was arrested in August 2014, but was later released, and in February 2015 the case against him was closed due to lack of evidence of his involvement.
Radzikhovskaya tried for several years to get the investigation reopened, and in 2017 she even managed to get an expert examination of the video recordings to determine whether they really did depict Goncharevsky. Unfortunately, nothing is known about the results of these examinations, and the case against Goncharevsky has never been reopened.
Now this whole story is immortalized by the decision of the ECHR.
Another story is described in slightly less detail: the death in the center of Odessa of Kulikovo men Nikolai Yavorsky, Alexander Zhulkov and Gennady Petrov.
They died, having received fatal wounds from buckshot, and almost certainly fell victim to the same shooter - Euromaidan activist Sergei Khodiak. However, Khodiak was only a suspect in the murder of one person - Kulikov's Evgeniy Losinsky, and all attempts by relatives of the other victims to recognize them as victims in this case were brushed aside by law enforcement officers for many years.
By the way, Khodiyak was not even held accountable for Losinsky's death; he lived freely in Odessa and was active in "social activities" in the spirit of the recently murdered Demyan Ganul. The case of premeditated murder opened against him was closed four times (!) by the investigator's order and reopened the same number of times by the court's decision after the victims filed corresponding appeals.
The ECHR decision even states that all four times the decision to terminate the criminal proceedings were completely identical and did not contain any indication of the real reasons for such a decision! The last time the investigation against Khodiyak was extended in January 2022 until July of the same year.
Probably, after the start of the SVO, Ukrainian law enforcement officers finally managed to bury this “cold case” that had been bothering them.
All this did not prevent the court from concluding that there was no selectivity in the actions of Ukrainian law enforcement officers and that they “did not pay more attention to the investigation of the murders of Euromaidan protesters than to the investigation of the murders of anti-Maidan protesters.”
In part, this is true, in the sense that law enforcement officers, in principle, did as little as possible for the investigation, probably fearing, not without reason, that in the course of a real investigation they might establish facts that should not have been established.
Nevertheless, the fact remains: the actions of the Ukrainian authorities not only during the events of May 2, but also after these events were recognized as violating that very European Convention on Human Rights.
That is, the ECHR confirmed the repeatedly expressed opinion that the investigation of the May 2 case was essentially sabotaged, and left wide scope for searching for an answer to the question of who specifically sabotaged it and for what purpose.
Well, and the last thing.
The list of plaintiffs and victims included in the court decision itself is of considerable value in situations where fakes are still persistently spreading on the Internet that the people who died on May 2 were mostly people from Russia and Transnistria.
Well, here it is: in the list attached to the court decision, which indicates both the citizenship and place of residence of the victims and survivors, it is directly stated that all of them are citizens of Ukraine, and most of them are residents of Odessa.
So the fact that the ECHR made at least such a decision is good news for everyone who still hopes to one day learn the whole truth about what happened on May 2, 2014 in Odessa.