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A Ukrainian citizen, Evelina Nefertari, has spent the last year reconstructing the events of the Euromaidan revolution, combining all the various amateur and professional videos to show, in real time, the events in Maidan Square as they unfolded. Kyiv Post reports:
The resulting two-hour video documentary pieces together the events that took place on Feb. 20 when at least 49 activists were killed in Kyiv. The video material captured by nine cameras covers events in chronological order in all the hot spots of the protests – on Maidan Nezalezhnosti and Instytutska Street. It popped up on YouTube on the anniversary day and has collected close to 300,000 views to date.
“It was very difficult to do it – both morally and technically,” Nefertari explains, adding that she had not had any experience of video editing. She tried it for the first time when she attempted to reconstruct the last hours of Bohdan Solchanyk, also a Lviv native who died on that day. That’s how the project was born…
The videos show protesters being shot and killed on Instytutska Street by snipers behind police lines at 9:01 – 9:16 , and 9:20 – 10:38. The timeline also incorporates an [intercepted] radio communication between snipers of the Security Service of Ukraine’s Alfa special unit unit starting on the 11th minute. Some videos also show doctors trying to give first aid to the wounded and protesters behind the barricades ready for new clashes.
Kyiv Post’s entire interview with Nefertari can be read here, and the video is embedded below:
RFE/RL’s Crimean service reports that Tatyana Guchakova, a Crimean journalist who was arrested by Russia’s FSB yesterday, has now been released.
Andrei Klimenko, editor-in-chief of BlackSeaNews, the publication for which Guchkova used to write, told RFE/RL that she had been released late last night and allowed to return home. He had no other details to report.
At 6:37 GMT today, Guchkova posted an update on her Facebook page.
The Interpreter translates:
Friends, thank you for your support. I am fine. I returned home last night. How was it? The usual – enough people in Crimea have already had such an experience. Now I need to do a big clean up at home.
RFE/RL also reports that the occupying Russian authorities conducted a search last night at the home of Olga Ukolova, whose partner, Aleksandr Kostenko, is a Maidan activist currently being held in pre-trial detention, accused of causing bodily harm to Berkut riot police at a demonstration in February last year.
The Crimean Field Mission on Human Rights reported on its Facebook page that 12 men had arrived at Ukolova’s apartment, at which her seven-month-old son and mother also live, to conduct a search.
Kostenko was arrested on February 8. Halya Coynash of the Kharkiv Human Rights Group discussed his arrest here, noting that the Prosecutor’s office had misleading described the charges he is facing in their official statement, and that the evidence in the case derives entirely from statements made by Berkut officers themselves.
The Crimean Field Mission on Human Rights reported on March 4 that Kostenko’s lawyer, Dmitry Sotnikov, had claimed that his client had exhibited signs of torture while in detention.
Russia’s state-owned RIA Novosti news agency reports that Roman Khudyakov, an MP from the misleadingly named Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR), has proposed, at a plenary session of the State Duma, that the Russian Ministry of Defence send peacekeepers to south-eastern Ukraine.
The Interpreter translates:
“The DNR and LNR have already asked Russia for help. I propose that the State Duma appeals to the Ministry of Defence to review the possibility of sending Russian peacekeepers to the Donbass so as to monitor adherence to the ceasefire and to tame, of course, Kiev’s ardour. We must defend our brotherly people and, most importantly, our borders.”
RIA Novosti reports that Dmitry Peskov, President Putin’s press secretary, told reporters, when asked about Khudyakov’s appeal, that he had no knowledge of any plans to send Russian forces into Ukraine.
— Pierre Vaux
RFE/RL reports that the Ukrainian government says that it has arrested 40 suspects in the port city of Odessa who were planning a series of terrorist attacks:
A spokeswoman for the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), Olena Hitlyanska, wrote on Facebook on April 10 that the suspects had planned a series of terrorist acts in the city during celebrations marking Orthodox Easter on April 12.
“A large number of weapons and explosives” were confiscated from the suspects, Hitlyanska wrote.
She added that searches were continuing.
Last week, the SBU said it detained three people suspected of involvement in a series of bombings in Odesa, some of them targeting organizations with ties to soldiers fighting against Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine.
— James Miller
The Ukrainian military has announced that the situation in the south-east has deteriorated, claiming that there were 21 attacks on Ukrainian positions after 18:00 last night.
The ATO press centre said that the attacks were most concentrated to the north of Donetsk, near Peski, Avdeyevka and Opytnoye, and the east of Mariupol, near Shirokino, Gnutovo and Pavlopol.
The Interpreter translates:
“During the militants’ shelling, 120 mm mortars were used 12 times, which represents another gross violation of the Minsk agreements by the Russo-terrorist army,” note the ATO headquarters.
Furthermore, near Avdeyevka, the militants shelled Ukrainian army positions with 122 mm artillery.
The criminals also fired from tanks near Avdeyevka and Pavlopol during the evening.
Dmitry Gorbunov, press officer for the Mariupol military zone, told 0629.com.ua that Russian-backed fighters had brought tanks to the front line in that area after OSCE observers had left the area, and had significantly widened the geographic scope of their attacks.
He gave a detailed breakdown of last night’s attacks in the area:
At 21:00 ATO forces’ positions in Shirokino were subjected to shelling from 120 mm mortars.
At around 22:00, separatist fighters fired with tanks near the village of Pavlopol.
At 22:30 Gnutovo was fired on with heavy artillery.
At 23:30 mortar fire near Pavlopol.
Pavlopol was liberated by Ukrainian forces during an offensive on February 10, but by February 24, the village appeared to be back under the control of Russian-backed fighters.
The press office of the governor of the Lugansk region, Hennadiy Moskal, announced that the focus of attacks in the region remained the area around the village of Krymskoye, north of the Bakhmutka highway, on the southern banks of the Seversky Donets river.
According to Moskal’s office, throughout last night and into this morning there were repeated exchanges of fire between Ukrainian troops and Russian-backed fighters entrenched in Sokolniki, around 5 km east of Krymskoye.
The last skirmish ended today at 8:40. The press office said that assault rifles, heavy machine guns and grenade launchers had been used in the shoot-outs. The governor’s office had no information on military casualties but reported no civilian casualties.
Andriy Lysenko, spokesman for the Ukrainian National Security and Defence Council announced at a briefing today that two Ukrainian soldiers had been wounded by tripwire mines near Svetlodarsk.
However there had been no combat losses over the last 24 hours, he claimed.
Lysenko also reported that 14 Russian UAV flights had been recorded over that same time period, and that three electronic warfare stations had been detected operating near Dokuchaevsk, near the front line on the Donetsk-Mariupol highway.
— Pierre Vaux