All news

President, police labeled as guilty of Maidan deaths without proof, says Yanukovich

He said that when he was still in power, law enforcement agencies "practically had all evidence that these murders had not taken place at the locations where dead bodies were placed"

PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKY, February 21. /TASS/. Ukrainian authorities’ pronouncing law enforcement agencies and the then president guilty of Maidan deaths was extrajudicial, Ukraine’s former President Viktor Yanukovich said on Saturday.

"It is already a year since the present government came to power, they must find the guilty persons, but they pronounced them at the very start without legitimate criminal investigations and court decisions," he told Rossiya-1 television on Saturday.

"In my opinion, this is a classical scenario of a color revolution," he continued.

Yanukovich said that when he was still in power, law enforcement agencies "practically had all evidence that these murders had not taken place at the locations where dead bodies were placed".

He said provocations and biased media reports contributed to bloodshed that spiraled into a war.

The former leader said he believed the ensuing activity of the new government was aimed seeing "the triumph of Maidan".

He said attempts to impose a certain way of life on Ukraine’s southeast which had not recognized Maidan, abolishment of the law on the status of the Russian language "triggered a defense reaction and people started demanding a reform, self-rule".

"They were immediately labeled as separatists," he said. When people resisted the sending of radical nationalists to their regions, crowds of armed people, the co-called battalions, headed there, Yanukovich said.