The European Court of Human Rights has found the Ukrainian government guilty of committing human rights violations during the May 2, 2014 Odessa massacre, in which dozens of Russian-speaking demonstrators were forced into the city’s Trade Unions House and burned alive by ultranationalist thugs.
Citing the “relevant authorities’ failure to do everything that could reasonably be expected of them to prevent the violence in Odessa,” the court ruled unanimously that Ukraine violated Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to life. The judges also condemned the Ukrainian government’s failure “to stop that violence after its outbreak, to ensure timely rescue measures for people trapped in the fire, and to institute and conduct an effective investigation into the events.”
42 people were killed as a result of the fire, a bloody bookend to the so-called “Maidan revolution” that saw Ukraine’s democratically-elected president deposed in a Western-backed coup in 2014. Ukrainian officials and legacy media outlets have consistently framed the deaths as a tragic accident, with some figures even blaming anti-Maidan protesters themselves for starting the blaze. That notion is thoroughly discredited by the verdict, which was delivered by a team of seven judges including a Ukrainian justice.
As dozens of anti-Maidan activists burned to death, the ECHR found deployment of fire engines to the site was “deliberately delayed for 40 minutes,” even though the local fire station was just one kilometer away.
In the end, the judicial body determined there was nothing which indicated Ukrainian authorities “had done everything that could reasonably be expected of them to avert” the violence. Officials in Kiev, they said, made “no efforts whatsoever” to prevent skirmishes between pro- and anti-Maidan activists that led to the deadly inferno, despite knowing in advance such clashes were likely to break out. Their “negligence… went beyond an error of judgment or carelessness.”
The case was brought by 25 people who lost family members in the Neo-Nazi arson attack and clashes that preceded it, and three who survived the fire with various injuries. Though the ECHR found Ukraine violated their human rights, the court demanded Ukraine pay them just 15,000 euros each in damages.
The ruling also stopped short of acknowledging the full reality of the Odessa slaughter, as it largely overlooked the role played by Western-supported neo-Nazi elements and their intimate ties to the sniper massacre in February 2014 in Maidan Square which has been conclusively determined to have been a false flag. In the judges’ decision, they downplayed or justified violence by the violent Ukrainian football fans and skinheads, charitably describing them as “pro-unity activists.”
Hellbound and Down 
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