Kiev
April 30, 2019
Joe Lombardo
I am in Kiev, Ukraine with Pippa Bartolotti
on our way to Odessa where there will be a mobilization to remember the
massacre of more than 48 people who were at the Odessa House of Trade Unions on
May 2, 2014. The people at the House of Trade Unions were holding a vigil to
protest the US supported coup that took place in Maidan Square starting in late
2013. The massacre was carried out by right-wing, pro-fascist forces many
associated with the Right Sector, a coalition of pro-fascist organizations who
had come to Odessa from throughout the country for a soccer match and used the
opportunity to attack the protesters. The official figure is 48 were killed and
around 100 injured and although there are many cell phone videos showing people
shooting the protesters and Molotov cocktails being made and thrown, no one has
been prosecuted for the murders.
We are going to Odessa to express our solidarity with the Mothers
Committee and to be international observers of the protest. The Mothers
Committee is a committee of relatives of the victims that is organizing the
protest. Each year on the anniversary of the massacre, the Mother’s Committee
has organized a large mobilization to remember the victims and each year the
extreme right-wing has threatened to attack it. However, the mobilizations have
been large, and the right-wing group has been small, so the Mothers Committee
has been able to hold the mobilizations each year.
In Kiev, we stayed at the hotel Dnipro. This hotel is right on Maidan
Square where the anti-government mobilizations took place in 2013 and 2014. The
hotel is one of the places around the square where snipers took up positions
and fired on the Maidan protesters. The protest leaders, many from the Right
Sector, and the international media blamed the shootings on the police. This
helped turn the tide and led to the overthrow of the elected government of
Viktor Yanukovych. Today there has been a lot of evidence that it was not the
police who shot the protesters but anti-government forces, supported by the US
that did it to try and brand the government as violent and lead to another US
regime change of a government it did not like.
The video below exposes some of the evidence of who did the shootings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV5LiSEDZCk
Here is another video that explains the shootings at Maidan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch…
When we toured Maidan, we saw none of the trees that you can see in the
second video, instead there are small newly planted trees. Our hosts explained
that the trees were all taken down and new ones planted because the trees
contained bullets, which were evidence of where they were fired from and the
type of bullets used, and this countered the official story of what took place.
Our hosts also explained that dozens of police were also killed by the snipers.
We should also remember Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland and
John McCain coming to Maidan to encourage the protesters. Nuland’s phone
conversation was hacked, and we heard her talking about who the US wanted as a
replacement for the then leader of the Ukraine. Of course, that person, Arseniy
Yatsenyuk was installed as the new Prime Minister after Maidan.
Our hosts also explained that there is a major street in Kiev that was
named after a famous person who was a communist and a leader of the resistance against
the Nazis during World War II, that street has now been renamed after John
McCain.
What happened in Maidan is not unlike what happened in Syria and other
countries where a peaceful protest, often against real grievances, is taken
over by the US and its allies and turning into a violent confrontation to
attempt regime change. The same playbook is being used in Venezuela today
accept in Venezuela there is a popular government that is truly working for the
betterment of the people, especially the poor and working people. So, the
Venezuelans are preparing for attacks by the US, whether they be in the form of
sanctions, sabotage of the electrical system, freezing of their accounts in
foreign banks or military intervention.
The persistence of the Odessa Mothers Committee, the continuing resistance
in Donbass and the vote of the people of Crimea to leave Ukraine are all
indications of the continuing struggle in Ukraine which we can be confident
will eventually lead to victory for the people and a defeat of US imperialism.