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Group of MEPs to demand pressure on Kiev in order to investigate Odessa massacre

A rally to demand recognition of elections in eastern Ukraine and remember the victims of Odessa May 2 tragedy was also held outside the European Parliament building on Luxembourg Square in Brussels

BRUSSELS, November 5. /TASS/. A group of members of European Parliament is drafting a letter to the parliament’s President, Martin Schultz, where they will ask him to exert pressure on the government in Kiev for doing a diligent investigation of the May 2, 2014, massacre in Odessa that took away 48 human lives and left more than 200 people wounded.

The news was revealed to TASS by Tatjana Zdanoka, a MEP from Latvia.

“More than six months have passed since the tragic event in Odessa and the culprits haven’t been brought to accountability to date,” she said. “On the contrary, we’re witnessing Kiev’s reluctance to do this.”

“That’s why a group of MEPs has drafted a letter to Martin Schultz at the initiative of Italy’s Northern League party,” Zdanoka said. “They demand that he put pressure on Kiev so that the Ukrainian government should hold an investigation.”

The letter is to be sent to Schultz shortly.

Rally in Brussels to demand recognition of elections in eastern Ukraine

Earlier on Wednesday dozens of protesters rallied outside the European Parliament building on Luxembourg Square in Brussels to demand the recognition of elections in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics held on November 2 and remember the victims of May 2 tragedy in Odessa.

“We want the European Union to recognize the elections in the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics and hear the will expressed by the population in Eastern Ukraine,” activist Elena Politov, the administrator of an anti-war group in Facebook, said.

The rally had been organized by the office of Tatyana Zhdanok (Tatjana Zdanoka), a European Parliament deputy from Latvia.

The demonstrators who included not only people from Ukraine and Russia but also the French and the Belgians held posters saying “We Remember Odessa” and “Stop Fascism” written in English and French. They spread a huge canvas with photos imprinting the criminals and the victims of the May 2 tragedy in Odessa right on the square.

Six months ago, the Right Sector militants and fighters of the Maidan self-defense force who arrived in Odessa from Kiev burnt down a protesters’ tent camp set up on Kulikovo Polje (the Kulikovo field) to collect signatures in support of a referendum on Ukraine’s federalization. The protesters later sheltered in the House of Trade Unions which the Right Sector radicals and the Maidan self-defense fighters also set of fire. As a result, 48 people died and more than 200 were injured.