TALLINN, March 5 (RIA Novosti) – Snipers who shot at protesters and police in Kiev were allegedly linked to “somebody from the new coalition,” Estonia’s foreign minister said in a leaked phone call.
His conversation with Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, has been confirmed as authentic by the Estonian Foreign Ministry. It took place after Paet visited Kiev on February 25, after intense street battles between police and protesters that killed dozens of people and injured hundreds.
He informed Ashton of his conversation with Olga Bogomolets, the chief coordinator of medical aid at the main protest camp in Kiev’s Independence Square.
“Olga told as well that all the evidence shows that the people who were killed by snipers from both sides, among policemen and then people from the streets, that they were the same snipers killing people from both sides,” Paet said.
Ashton replied: “Well, yeah… That’s, that’s terrible.”
Paet continued: “So that she then also showed me some photos she said that as a medical doctor she can say that it is the same handwriting, the same type of bullets, and it’s really disturbing that now the new coalition, that they don’t want to investigate what exactly happened.
“There is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers, it was not Yanukovich, but it was somebody from the new coalition.”
Ashton, apparently surprised by the disclosure, said: “I think they do want to investigate. I mean…I didn’t pick that up…that’s interesting. Gosh.”
There has been no indication of who leaked the recording of the conversation between the two politicians.
At a news conference in Estonia, Paet said he “was not making any judgments” and expressed his disappointment at the fact that “conversations like this become available to those for whom they are not intended.”
The minister added: “Distorted versions of the record, which are intended to discredit the Ukrainian government, have also emerged. I was only speaking about versions of what was going on in Ukraine.
“One can only make suggestions why this record was posted online a week after the new government started its duties.”
