How the coup d'état began in Ukraine #8

So, January 19, 2014 arrived. In the morning, another “people's meeting” was organized on Maidan of Independence.

 It must be admitted that a significant part of the protesters at that time were representatives of Western Ukraine, who were regularly transported by commercial buses and by rail.

 Every day, the indigenous residents of the capital of Ukraine could see crowded metro trains and escalators, which in the morning carried crowds of “guests of the capital”. Noisy, unkempt, aggressive, constantly shouting Maidan slogans.

At that time, there was a joke in Kiev about one of the activists saying to another: “If it weren’t for Maidan, I wouldn’t have seen Kiev.”

 There was actually a lot of truth in this joke.

 But let’s go back to that day, which was in many ways a turning point for the history of the country - January 19, 2014.

 According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, about 10 thousand people took part in the rally on Maidan that day. According to estimates by the Ukrainian news agency UNIAN, the rally attracted about 100 thousand people. Many protesters ignored the face covering ban by wearing party masks, while others wore helmets and gas masks.

By the way, at this meeting was Tatyana Chernovol’s first public speech since the alleged attack on her by the authorities.

 By this time, the protesters themselves were already discussing the question: wasn’t it time to disperse since the “leaders of the Maidan” - and Vladimir Klitschko, Arseniy Yatsenyuk and Oleg Tyagnibok (as they began to be called popularly - 'tritushki') were then considered to be such - did not want to do anything? Similar questions were raised by some of the speakers at the rally that day.

In general, the meeting on January 19, 2014 was the most unpleasant for the opposition in the entire history of the protest. Yatsenyuk, Klitschko and Tyagnibok were forced to listen to accusations that they could not oppose anything to the authorities and that the adoption of “dictatorial laws” was their fault too.

 Automaidan leader Dmitry Bulatov demanded to name a single opposition candidate, accusing opposition leaders of inaction. His performance was actively supported by the radical part of the crowd.

Having not received a clear answer, he declared from the podium: “Let them figure it out, and we go to the Verkhovna Rada and will stand there until the shameful laws are repealed.”

 Activists of the Right Sector and Automaidan, followed by 3-4 thousand ordinary protesters, headed to European Square, after which they planned to move up Grushevsky Street towards the Verkhovna Rada, but in the area of the Lobanovsky Stadium they clashed with law enforcement officers who were blocking the street.

 It should be noted that the Verkhovna Rada, after the adoption of the “laws of January 16”, went on “vacation” and there was no one in the Verkhovna Rada building except security and duty services.

 Taking this into account, the march to the Verkhovna Rada was simply a meaningless event and therefore it can be assumed that the goal of the organizers was precisely to bring the situation to serious clashes between protesters and law enforcement officers.

And therefore, this call from Bulatov and representatives of the right-wing radical wing of the Maidan was nothing more than a provocation.

 This is partly confirmed by the fact that this time again the opposition leaders called those who started the battle with Berkut near the Dynamo stadium provocateurs. Arseniy Yatsenyuk even declared from the stage: “This is not our way, this is Yanukovych’s way.”

 And when Vitali Klitschko tried to personally stop the violence and prevent a clash with the police, he was booed, after which he received a stream from a powder fire extinguisher in the face

So, the crowd moved towards the Verkhovna Rada.

 When protesters approached from the Maidan, law enforcement officers blocked the street with their buses and trucks. Demonstrators began to pull buses aside and climbed onto trucks.

Stones, bottles of Molotov cocktails and smoke bombs were thrown at the police line.

During the confrontation, activists set fire to several Berkut buses, trucks, and the ticket office of the Dynamo stadium, and they threw firecrackers and Molotov cocktails at the Ministry of Internal Affairs soldiers themselves, they also used batons and stones. The police used special means: stun grenades, tear gas. Water cannons were used to extinguish the vehicles set on fire by activists.

 The demonstrators managed to get into one of the buses, started it and tried to ram the vehicle into the police line. When these attempts failed, buses and trucks were set on fire using Molotov cocktails.

By 10 p.m., there were up to 10,000 protesters near the Dynamo stadium. As the clashes continued, the air was filled with smoke from burning cars. The entire line of police buses used during the blockade was set on fire, and as midnight approached almost everything in the square near the Dynamo stadium was burning.

 This situation continued almost all night. By morning, protesters built barricades on Grushevsky Street, right in the area of the entrance to the Dynamo stadium.

The clashes on January 19 were the most violent since the start of the confrontation. According to the Kiev Department of Health, as of 8 a.m. on January 20, 103 protest participants contacted ambulance doctors and 42 were hospitalized. The press service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine reported that about 100 employees of the department sought medical help, 61 of them were hospitalized. The victims were diagnosed with head injuries, fractures, bruises and poisoning with unknown substances.

 Commenting on the situation on January 19, 2014, opposition MP Lesya Orobets said: “The war has finally begun, the laws no longer apply.”

It was in those days that blockades of internal troops units in western Ukraine began to prevent the transfer of reinforcements to law enforcement officers to Kiev. Such facts occurred in Lvov, Kalush and Ivano-Frankovsk.

 All this took the confrontation to a new level.

 So what happened on January 19 that triggered the outbreak of confrontation?

As experts from the Kiev Center for Political Research and Conflictology noted, an analysis of the content of social networks led to the conclusion that preparations for the next military actions began even before January 16. The Right Sector initially expected an order to storm or block the Verkhovna Rada on the day of voting on the package of bills. When it became obvious that the leaders of the parliamentary opposition would not give permission for this, the deadlines were shifted towards the weekend, January 18-19. Appropriate preparations were carried out - Molotov cocktails, uniforms, and protective equipment were prepared in advance: “In general, at the moment when the appropriate signal was given, everything was ready, and the attack on the police barriers simply could not fail to take place.” Experts pointed out that the preparation of the Right Sector actions had nothing to do with the adoption of the “laws of January 16”: “If the Party of Regions on that day had limited itself to adopting the budget and two opposition projects, the reaction of the radicals would have been exactly the same.”

So that wat it was like...

 As we can see, whether the Verkhovna Rada had adopted the “January 16 Laws” or not – the mechanism had already been launched. And a loaded gun, according to the laws of the genre, must fire.

 By the way, the US reaction to the events of January 19 is noteworthy.

 Representative of the US National Security Council at the White House Caitlin Hayden accused the Ukrainian authorities of escalating the situation and demanded that special forces be withdrawn from the center of Kiev and begin a dialogue with the opposition, threatening sanctions otherwise.

“We call on the Ukrainian government to take steps that will provide a path to a better future for Ukraine, including repealing the anti-democratic legislation signed in recent days, withdrawing special forces from central Kiev, and opening a dialogue with the political opposition,” a White House spokeswoman said.

In general, it should be noted that the so-called peaceful Maidan protest has never been peaceful. Sure, there had been attacks on leftists, anti-fascists, journalists, random people and, of course, law enforcement officers before. But it was the clashes on January 19 that made it possible to shift the action onto the path of systemic violence.

 To be continued…