End of Maidan case. Justice has not been achieved
On 24 May, the Shevchenkivskyi Court of Kyiv closed the case of the dispersal of peaceful protesters on 30 November and 1 December 2013 due to the expiry of the statute of limitations.
All charges were dropped against the suspects and the seizure of their property was cancelled. The victims objected, but the meaning of the law was on the side of the accused.
The Maidan case was supposed to start at 9am on Friday morning. However, due to the air raid alert, the hearing started at almost 10. There were only prosecutors, four defendants, one lawyer and only two victims in the room.
The hearing itself lasted less than an hour. The judge read out the motion, the victims spoke against the closure, and the prosecution spoke in favour.
The judge asked if anything had changed in the personal data of the defendants. It turned out that only one of them was mobilised. Judging by the conversations of the defendants while waiting for the decision, he is serving somewhere in Sumy region, 60 km from Okhtyrka. And he can hear "booing".
The victims and the defendants are sitting across the aisle, but between them is the same coldness and hatred that stood on 30 November and 1 December 2013.
On the night of 30 November, there were about 400 protesters on Maidan. For a week, they had been protesting against the government's abandonment of the course towards the European Union. At 4am, the construction elements were brought in to assemble the Christmas tree.
At the same time, police units, the number of which was later estimated at 2,000, surrounded the protesters and began to disperse them in the direction of Bessarabka, the Ukrainian House and the "Kozatskyi" Hotel. People were beaten with truncheons.
That night, at least 79 people were injured as a result of "Berkut's" actions. 36 of them were detained. In the morning, opposition MPs went to release them from the police stations.
Some of the protesters then took refuge in St Michael's Cathedral. Others hid at night in the apartments of their friends.
On 30 December, hundreds of thousands of Kyiv residents rallied on St Sophia Square. And on 1 December, some of them came to rally on Bankova Street, where they were again brutally dispersed by "Berkut".
"People were afraid to even go to Kyiv doctors. They showed their wounds only when Lviv doctors arrived. Then an illegal hospital was set up in Podil, where they were treated," one of the victims, Liubomyra Kepler, recalled in court.
At the time of the Maidan, she was living in Germany, but on 27 November she packed her suitcase and travelled to Kyiv, telling her husband:"Look how many good people have gathered." Kepler had been working in disaster medicine for quite some time, including in Moscow, so she was involved in medical aid on the Maidan. But on the night of the dispersal, she came out of her tent to sing the national anthem and saw a "Berkut" approaching. That night, her arm was broken. She had to hide in St Michael's Cathedral until the morning.
On Friday in court, Kepler asked the judge to consider the memory of those who participated in the Maidan, were victims in the case, and then died for Ukraine at the front, like Roman Ratushnyi.
In addition to Kepler, there was another victim in the hall - Serhiy Kolosha. Berkut officers smashed his head, and he had numerous bruises on his body. "To give you an idea of how they beat me, I had a folder in my bag and it broke in half," the man recalls.
In his speech, Kolosha said that closing the case today would lead to public disbelief in justice and that next time people would seek justice through the Lynch court.
When asked why there are only two victims in the room, Serhiy admits that many people have long since lost faith that they will get justice in court. Someone is at the front. And in general, almost 10 years of going to court has consumed a lot of time and energy.
"In previous years, there have been many disruptions - someone fell ill, someone was away on a business trip, someone was without a lawyer. There were a lot of hearings, on 30 November alone, almost 80 victims, and a lot of materials had to be examined. Courts were not often scheduled. Plus these disruptions," says the victim.
According to him, at the best of times, court hearings were scheduled every two weeks. "And in fact, these Berkut officers starved us out. And it turned out that the one who is not caught is not a thief," Kolosha is indignant.
According to lawyer Viktoria Deineko, the court managed to consider all the evidence and interrogate 20 victims out of 140.
"But the truth is still on the side of the Euromaidan protesters, those who came out to support the European vector of development. And no matter what version is considered - even the most absurd "Batya was framed" - this does not relieve the responsibility of those who did it, who are sitting in the dock, and it is not all of them," Kolosha told reporters while awaiting the court's decision.
He reminded that about 250 Berkut officers on the night of the dispersal were subordinates of the defendants Dydiuk and Tiahnyriadno, who are in the dock today.
"And all this mass that was chasing people could not help but be guided by one of the chiefs, and he was Oleh Marynenko," the victim added.
However, according to the decision of Judge Vitaliy Tsiptyk, one of the "Berkut" commanders, Marynenko, his deputies - Kyiv "Berkut" commanders Andriy Dydiuk and Mykola Tiahnyriadno, and the commanders of the 3rd and 4th companies, Yevhen Antonov and Yuriy Shevchenko, will no longer be sentenced. After the decision was announced, none of them even bothered to comment to the media. And Marynenko even began to threaten a journalist from Suspilne.
The victims' lawyers will try to appeal the decision, but they do not hide the fact that even an attempt to seek justice through the European Court of Human Rights will take them years.
Although there is already one ECHR judgment in the Maidan cases, on 21 January 2021, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that on 1 December 2013, Ukraine violated the rights of the applicants Gennadiy Cherevko and Vladyslav Zahorovka guaranteed by Article 3 ("Prohibition of Torture") and Article 5 (1) ("Right to Liberty and Security of Person") of the Convention.
Unfortunately, the case of the Maidan dispersal that was closed today is only one of the lost cases.
On 28 December 2023, the Dniprovskyi Court of Kyiv closed the case of ex-Berkut members Vadym Betliy and Oleh Kozachyshyn, who took part in the Maidan dispersal.
On 21 March 2024, the Shevchenkivskyi Court closed a similar case against the former head of the Kyiv City State Administration, Oleksandr Popov.
On 8 April 2024, the Office of the Prosecutor General, at the request of "Ukrayinska Pravda", reported that, as of early April 2024, the courts had closed 50 different "Maidan cases" due to the expiry of the statute of limitations, and that up to a hundred more were at risk. In total, about 100 cases are under investigation.
Several years ago, realising that the statute of limitations was running out, activists tried to get the Verkhovna Rada to amend the law to oblige courts to consider such cases on a weekly basis. But in vain.
"As a result, in one case against "Berkut" officers, the first instance decision was handed down on 29 November, a day before the statute of limitations expired. But it is unlikely that the verdict will come into force, as there is still an appeal pending," says journalist Stas Kozliuk, who has been covering Maidan cases for the past 10 years.
According to him, Ukrainian society managed to achieve justice in a very small number of cases. Among them, there are 2 sentences and imprisonment of Yuriy Krysin, a defendant in the case of the murder of journalist Viacheslav Veremiy. The second sentence was handed down to the "titushka" for the abduction and torture of activists during the Revolution of Dignity.
A verdict has been passed in the first instance against the kidnappers of Igor Lutsenko and Yuriy Verbytskyi. But in some places, you can read the blood from his eyes.
"There was no direct causal link between the existing injuries and the onset of death. The bodily injuries caused to PERSON_4 (Yuriy Verbytskyi - ed.) are not the direct cause of his death, and under favourable climatic conditions, such an injury could not have led to the victim's death," the verdict reads, as quoted by Watchers.
According to Kozliuk, only a few "Berkut" officers or titushky were convicted. The reason for the failure of the other cases is the same as in the Maidan dispersal. Rare hearings of judges, illnesses and business trips of the accused or their lawyers.
One of the rare positive developments is that the "5 Berkut officers" accused of the Maidan shootings have received their sentences. Despite being exchanged in 2019, two of them returned to Ukraine. In 2022, one of them was acquitted. The other received a 5-year sentence, but was immediately released under Savchenko's law. The commander received a life sentence in absentia. The other two, who remained in Russia, were sentenced to 15 years.
A huge number of cases against Yanukovych are still pending in the courts, and they will last until his death, even though Putin and Lukashenko were hailing him as "legitimate" on Friday.
Tetiana Nikolaienko, Censor. NET
