Gordon M. HAHN
Although the Maidan regime in Ukraine continues to deny, mostly ignore, its leading members’ role in organizing and executing the 20 February 2014 snipers massacre that targeted both police and demonstrators in order to escalate the demonstrations and that indeed led to the overthrown of President Viktor Yanukovych, some of the regime’s members and supporters are beginning to speak out against the oligarchic-ultranationalist hybrid regime’s original sin. Earlier, beginning almost immediately after the coup, numerous participating snipers from the Maidan’s ultra-nationalist and neofascist wing began acknowledging their role in the massacre. Many have named present Rada Chairman Andrey Parubii as its organizer and much evidence points to him as at least one if not the lead mastermind of the slaughter (on these admissions, see: Ivan Katchanovski, “The Snipers Massacre on the Maidan in Ukraine,” Academia.edu, Paper presented at the Chair of Ukrainian Studies Seminar at the University of Ottawa, Ottawa, October 1, 2014, p. 55; Ivan Katchanovski, “The ‘Snipers’ Massacre’ on the Maidan in Ukraine (Revised and Updated Version),” Academia.edu, 20 February 2015, p. 55 or Johnson’s Russia List, #33, 21 February 2015, Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. Most recently, Georgian snipers revealed their involvement in the massacre on order from their then-employer, former Georgian President and Odessa Governor Mikheil Saakashvili.
However, with Ukraine’s presidential campaign in high gear, with the voting to take place on March 31st, higher-level politicians who led or supported Maidan are now letting the truth slip out. On 1 February, presidential candidate Anatoliy Hrytsenko, currently in fourth place in most polls with 5-7 percent of the vote, noted: “I propose that one of the reasons that (the snipers massacre) has not been investigated to the end is that someone has feathers on their snout among those who are now in power”. Hrytsenko is a professor at the Kyiv Myhola Academy, was a pro-Maidan politician, and Ukraine’s Defense Minister after the 2004 ‘Orange revolution’ under pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko. The expression ‘feathers on their snout’ refers is similar to the expression ‘blood on one’s hands’, implying that someone is guilty of something and those around know it but everyone pretends that it is not so. It is rooted in the idea of a dog or fox who has raided a chicken pen and has feathers on his snout after consuming one of its residents. Upon their master’s entry into the yard, all the the dogs, including the perpetrator, lower their ears assuming an appearance of innocence, bu the perpetrator has ‘blood on his hands’ or ‘feathers on his snout.’
Weeks later, reacting to a major corruption scandal rocking President Petro Poroshenko’s administration involving the embezzlement of funds and the purchase of weapons from Russia, Presidential race frontrunner and Maidan supporter Vladimir Zelenskii commented: “People whom came to power on blood are profiting on blood”.
Time is eroding the Maidan myth. Nevertheless, the Maidan regime, Western governments, all Western media, most Ukrainian media, and Russian liberal media continue to ignore the real source of the new cold war – the Ukrainian neofascist-perpetrated terrorist attack on the Maidan on 20 February 2014 carried out by the radical wing of the late Maidan movement that overthrew a legally elected if corrupt Ukrainian president. That radical ultra-nationalist and neofascist wing of the Maidan revolt, which hijacked the early pro-democracy early movement of late 2013, now threatens Europe and Eurasia with a profascist takeover over the currently more moderate, if no less corrupt hybrid oligarchic-ultranationalist regime. The pivotal role of the terrorist massacre and the coup it wrought played in the making of the ‘new cold war’ is at present lost to history. It will be returned to history with time, and those with ‘feathers on their snout’ and blood on their hands as well as those who covered for them by their lies or silence will be known.
