MOSCOW, May 6 (RIA Novosti) – Odessa regional councilman Vadim Savenko has told RIA Novosti in an interview that last Friday’s massacre in Odessa bore the hallmarks of a Kiev-organized “clean-up” operation against anti-coup protesters.
“According to our data, these so-called ultras were in fact active servicemen of the Shtorm and Dnepr-1 battalions who were disguised as football fans. They are recruited from far-right nationalist organizations at the expense of [chief of the Dnipropetrovsk regional administration] Kolomiysky,” Savenko said.
The councilman said the attackers had been dressed as football fans and later put on defense equipment, bulletproof vests and took out firearms when they moved in on the camping protesters.
“Those were punitive units of sorts that operate across southeastern Ukraine, and they joined in the brawl,” Savenko explained.
He also said that crime rates in Ukraine had soared since the US-backed regime took control of Kiev and styled itself as the country’s new government.
“We don’t regard them as an authority. We regard them as a junta that seized power illegally. They pretend to be something else and are trying to convince Western Europe and America that they control the situation in the southeast,” Savenko said.
He added the regime had been striving to hush up the rampant crime rates in the country that are 3-4 times higher than official ones. “It’s 1919 we are living in now,” the Odessa official said, referring to the period after the Russian Revolution.
Last Friday, Ukraine saw the bloodiest violence since the February overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych, with dozens killed in clashes across the country. The highest casualty toll was seen in Odessa where officials say 46 people, including women and the elderly, were torched alive, suffocated or jumped to death after being blocked inside a blazing building where they tried to hide from a gang of Molotov-cocktail-carrying football fans and Right Sector radicals. Police did nothing to prevent the unrest and murder, according to eye witnesses.
