How the coup d'état began in Ukraine #11
In the previous part, I wrote how Yanukovych in the twenties of January, after the violent clashes of January 19-23 and the first deaths on the Maidan, as they say, “pulled back.” He entered into negotiations with the opposition, even offering high positions to A. Yatsenyuk - prime minister, and V. Klitschko - deputy prime minister for humanitarian issues.
Well, on January 28, he made a number of decisions, after which it became completely clear that the government is giving in and bending over. Excuse me for such words, but I cannot convey my impressions in any other way.
So, on January 28, Prime Minister of Ukraine Nikolai Azarov submitted his resignation, which President Viktor Yanukovych immediately accepted. The duties of the head of the government of Ukraine began to be performed by First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Arbuzov.
On the same day, at a meeting of the Verkhovna Rada, nine of the eleven “laws of January 16” were repealed. They only retained laws establishing criminal liability for denying or justifying the crimes of fascism and for the desecration or destruction of monuments built in memory of fighters against Nazism.
All “dictatorial laws” tightening the activities of “foreign agents”, control over the media and suppression of riots were abolished.
And as I wrote in the previous reply, this became possible after the strongest pressure on the authorities and personally on Yanukovych from the West.
Remember the call from Biden to Yanukovych on January 26? Biden was supposed to “inspire Yanukovych to do what he should.”
Well, he did.
The opposition and supporters of Euromaidan, as expected, accepted such decisions by the authorities as another victory. Supporters of the authorities, especially the security forces, plunged into even more painful expectations, remaining in bewilderment.
Although it must be admitted that the repeal of the laws on January 16 seriously cooled the intensity of the confrontation and for several days there were practically no clashes between Protestants and security forces. This can be judged, among other things, by the statistics of wounded security forces admitted to medical institutions.
If during the period January 19-22 the number of victims was in the hundreds, then during the period from January 23 to January 31, 8 soldiers of the Internal Troops and the police turned to hospitals for help, three of them with frostbite. Although servicemen continued to arrive with burns and injuries.
These days another sacred victim was shot.
Back on January 22, one of the leaders of Automaidan, Dmitry Bulatov, disappeared from the sight of everyone who followed the events.
On January 30, he appeared, with traces of beatings, in the village of Vyshenki, Boryspol district, near Kiev. As Bulatov himself said, unknown people beat him, tortured him, cut his ear and even crucified him, and then they took him out and threw him out of the car.
Of course, this event immediately caused a serious resonance.
“What they did to Dmitry is an act of intimidation of all active citizens. After all, Automaidan is an effective movement that fights against the authorities, and many of its activists have already suffered - some were beaten, some had their cars smashed, some were convicted. Dmitry, one of the leaders of Automaidan , and a person who is not afraid to express his civic position was kidnapped and tortured for a week" - statement by Vitali Klitschko.
Bulatov himself told terrible stories about how he was kidnapped in the center of Kiev, a bag was put over his head and he was taken somewhere. He was tortured for 8 days in an unspecified place. Unknown executioners “forced me to say on camera that I am a spy for America, the CIA, that the Americans give me money, that the Automaidan is paid for by the Americans and that they hired me to create Automaidan and riots against the current government.”
Bulatov also stated that he was beaten on the head with sticks, his cheek was cut, and his ear was even cut off. To intimidate.
Well, to top it off, he was crucified - “I was on my knees with my hands nailed to the doors,” he recalled, adding that all this was accompanied by beatings with sticks. “I asked them to kill me, because I could no longer tolerate this.”
Yes, there was also a wonderful phrase - “The leader of Automaidan does not know who kidnapped him, but noted that the men spoke with a Russian accent.”
It is important to note that, despite his statements about “hands nailed to the door,” this fact did not actually take place. Numerous photographs show that no injuries of this kind were recorded. And Bulatov’s ears were in place.
It’s also interesting that on January 24, when he was allegedly kidnapped, he used his bank credit card to pay for downloading music from the popular Internet service iTunes. Moreover, the IP address of the device from which payment for downloading music was made on January 24 coincides with the IP address from which Dmitry Bulatov usually visited his page on the Vkontakte social network.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine immediately put forward several versions, including one about a staging in order to cause a public outcry.
But if you don’t want to listen to the words of the authorities, then let me quote the opinion of Sergei Pashinsky, who at that time was one of the leaders of the Maidan. By the way, after the victory of the coup, he was appointed acting Head of the Administration of the President of Ukraine.
“People’s deputy, deputy head of Batkivshchyna Sergei Pashinsky is sure that the story of the disappearance and sudden appearance of Automaidan leader Dmitry Bulatov was staged by politicians Anatoly Gritsenko and Vitaliy Klitschko. Pashinsky stated this in an exclusive comment to a correspondent of the Region Kiev Media news agency.
The deputy drew attention to the fact that the entire chain of events with the disappearance and return of Bulatov contains many inconsistencies and looks like a well-thought-out staging.
“After terrible photographs of Dmitry’s bloody face spread around the world, we saw in the video that in fact he only had one scratch on his cheek. When Bulatov says that he was crucified, that is, his hands were nailed to a wooden surface, he hides his hands, on which no evidence is visible,” said Sergei Pashinsky.
“For some reason, the opposition deputies were the first to discover the prisoner. Every thinking person understands that the probability of such a combination of circumstances in real life tends to be zero. Next, the victim of many days of torture appears at the Boris clinic in clean shoes and with a clean-shaven but bloody face. Then Bulatov states that his ear was cut off, but it is still there. In addition, it prohibits the publication of doctors' diagnoses. This may mean that he actually has no damage at all. And a concussion is easy to fake. All of the above signs indicate that, in fact, the kidnapping of Dmitry Bulatov was staged from the very beginning,” the deputy noted.
The role of Petr Poroshenko in this kidnapping also raises questions. It was he who, on January 30 at 11:30 p.m., contacted the police at 102 and reported that Automaidan activist Dmitry Bulatov had been taken to one of the private medical clinics.
I would like to add to this the very serious activity of Western diplomats in the Bulatov case.
From the documents of the Counterintelligence Department of the SBU, it becomes clear that Representatives of the US and the EU immediately began to resolve the issue of providing assistance to D. Bulatov:
- Tombinski (Head of the EU Delegation to Ukraine), Weil (German Ambassador to Ukraine) and Poroshenko began to organize the transporting of Bulatov to Germany (including the urgent production of a foreign passport and obtaining a visa);
- Stephen Page (2nd Secretary of the Political Department of the US Embassy in Ukraine, by the way - a career CIA employee) discussed with Tilizhenko (one of the leaders of Automaidan) the issue of providing legal and medical assistance to Bulatov, as well as organizing a visit to him by representatives of the foreign diplomatic corps.
As a result, on February 2, Dmitry Bulatov went to Lithuania, where he gave a large press conference. Naturally, blaming the Yanukovych government and “Russian special forces” for his kidnapping.
From Lithuania, Bulatov left for Germany. He returned to Ukraine after the coup.
What can I say?
From my point of view, it was another provocation on the part of the West and the opposition. By the way, the leading actor received his reward: from February 27 to December 2, 2014, Dmitry Bulatov was the Minister of Youth and Sports of Ukraine.
But let me return to the days of late January 2014.
Again, I cannot help but draw attention to the very serious activity of Western diplomats and representatives of interstate structures in Ukraine.
On January 28, Catherine Ashton, the European Union's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, arrived in Kiev. On January 29, she held a meeting with Ukrainian President Yanukovych, after which she held meetings with opposition representatives Ruslana Lyzhychko and Mustafa Naem. And after them - with Petr Poroshenko.
On January 28, Jan Tombinski (Head of the EU Delegation to Ukraine) arrived in Kiev again. This representative held a number of meetings with representatives of the Ukrainian authorities, and then with the opposition.
On January 28, a delegation of members of the European Parliament (11 people) arrived in Ukraine, which also included Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, known for his Russophobic views.
On January 28, a delegation of the Estonian Parliament began its work in Kiev under the leadership of the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Commission, Marko Mihkelson.
On January 29, European Commissioner Štefan Füle met with Yanukovych, after which he stated that he was satisfied with the results of the meeting and promised the opposition “not only moral” support from Ashton
On January 30, US Secretary of State Kerry held a series of telephone conversations with opposition leaders.
In addition, foreign states were actively collecting information, using not only the diplomatic corps, but also journalists.
Thus, at the direction of the Ambassador of Poland to Ukraine Lytvyn, the Consuls General of the Republic of Poland in the cities of Lutsk, Lvov, Vinnitsa, Odessa, Kharkov, Donetsk and Sevastopol intensified the collection of information on the expansion of the scale of protests and the possibilities of the opposition to influence the situation in the regions.
On January 29, a correspondent of the Moscow representative office of the German news agency “Dough Press Agentur” Twittel (a citizen of the Federal Republic of Germany, a former military intelligence officer) arrived in Donetsk, planning to hold meetings with local politicians and collect information regarding the Euromaidan actions.
Military attaches also noted:
- Gresh (assistant military attaché of the Ground Forces of the US Embassy) tried to obtain data about the results of the discussion of the “Appeal of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to the President of Ukraine” at officer training in the units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
And Lis (attaché on defense issues at the Embassy of the Republic of Poland), on instructions from the Crisis Center of the Polish Ministry of Defense, took measures to collect information regarding the legal basis for the possible introduction of martial law in the country.
These are the conditions in which January ended and February 2014 began. The month that changed everything...