ECHR rules Ukraine in 2014 could not prevent violence in Odesa

The European judicial court (ECHR) decided on March 13 that the Ukrainian government was unable to prevent and adequately examined fatal clashes between the supporters Euromaidan and the opponents in Odesa.

The decision affects seven applications between 2016 and 2018 by 28 people – 25 relatives of the victims and three survivors.

Forty -eight people died in the violence that broke out between the two camps on May 2, 2014. A group of pro-Russian activists attacked a Pro-Euromaidan rally, but withdrawn to the House of Unions after the subsequent violence.

42 The Euromaidan opponents died after the building caught fire when the two groups started throwing petrol bombs. Two Pro-Ukrainian activists were also killed after firing wounds had suffered.

In the decision it was found that “authorities do the failure to do everything that can reasonably be expected to prevent violence in Odesa on May 2, 2014, to stop this violence after their outbreak in order to ensure timely rescue measures for people who are caught in fire, and to carry out an effective examination of events.”

The ECHR found that the Russian propaganda contributed to increasing the clashes, the complaints of the applicants that Ukraine did not prevent violence and did not adequately examine it. The Ukrainian state was instructed to pay compensation.

The plaintiffs included relatives of victims from both camps, all of which accused the Ukrainian state of inactivity.

The Russian propaganda has strongly used the violent episode in Odesa in order to disparage the Euromaidan revolution and incorrectly painted the movement as a pro-Nazi and extremists.

The Euromaidan revolution began in November 2013, when people at Maidan Nezalezhnosti, the central square of Kyiv, gathered to protest Pro-Kremlin President Viktor Yanukovich, to sign the long-awaited association agreement with the European Union.

Criminal prosecution officers, namely the police of Berkut Riot, used violence to suppress protests, including fatal violence. During the revolution, more than 100 people who culminated to Russia in Yanukovych were killed.

“The court found that the distortion of events in Odesa finally became an instrument of Russian propaganda in relation to the War of the Russian Federation against Ukraine since February 2022,” says the decision of the ECHR.

“Improved transparency in the associated investigation work of the Ukrainian authorities may have contributed to effectively preventing or counteracting this propaganda.”

The court found that the investigation should “be carried out independently by the police independently by the police”. At the same time, the ECHR dismissed the allegations that the authorities were not impartial when examining the death of Euromaidan.