A court of law in Ukraine’s capital Kiev has given the ‘green light’ to the arrest of the country’s former president Viktor Yanukovych for allegedly planning the use of weapons and military equipment by security authorities to disperse demonstrators at the social protests in late 2013, known as Euromaidan.
As detailed by the court, the decisions taken at the time by Yanukovych led to the creation of a criminal group engaged in unlawful obstruction of the conduct of assemblies and overstepped his constitutional powers, as it resulted in the deaths of civilian protesters.
The Ukrainian Prosecutor’s Office has determined that Yanukovych, together with high-ranking officials of his cabinet, «organized the use of special means, military equipment and firearms for the resistance and forceful dispersal of demonstrators,» causing «mass casualties» among the participants.
According to a statement released by the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office on its official Telegram channel, that decision by Yanukovych and part of his ministerial leadership claimed the lives of 67 civilians, while 887 others were injured.
In addition, 132 police officers were injured, and damage to public and private property amounted to more than 16 million grivnas – more than 402,000 euros.
The State Bureau of Investigation of Ukraine completed in November 2021 an investigation into Yanukovych and his closest staff in the case of protesters killed during the Euromaidan at the hands of security forces. That report confirms that the former president and some senior officials did indeed organize the violent suppression of demonstrations, UNIAN recalls.
The Euromaidan protests erupted when Yanukovych rejected an agreement with the European Union in November 2013 in favor of a pact with the Russian government in exchange for substantial economic aid. The demonstrations eventually resulted in Yanukovich’s flight.
Russia, for its part, took advantage of the convulsive atmosphere in Ukraine to annex the Crimean peninsula and openly support pro-Russian separatists in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions of the Ukrainian Donbas. This whole situation was a breeding ground for the subsequent Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
