GENICHESK, May 2. /TASS/. Any chance of an independent Ukraine ended after its government allowed the 2014 tragedy in an Odessa union center to happen, Kherson Region Interim Governor Vladimir Saldo said on Tuesday.

"The barbaric burning of people by Ukrainian Nazis in the House of Trade Unions in Odessa on May 2, 2014 was a watershed moment after which the so-called independent Ukraine in its current form doomed itself to extinction," he said on Telegram.

According to the official, it was after the fire in the House of Trade Unions that dozens of Kherson activists left their homes to take part in the Donbass hostilities. Every year on May 2, Kherson residents bring flowers to the Potemkin monument in the capital of the Kherson Region in memory of the victims of those events.

Saldo said the current Ukrainian state "will either radically change or sink into oblivion as a mistake of history."

Odessa tragedy

Radicals from the Right Sector (banned in Russia) attacked a tent camp on the Kulikovo Field in Odessa on May 2, 2014, where activists opposing the Maidan uprising were collecting signatures for a referendum on the federalization of Ukraine and giving the Russian language status as a state language. Supporters of federalization took refuge in the House of Trade Unions, but the radicals surrounded the building and set it on fire. According to official data from the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, 48 people were killed, and more than 240 were injured in those events.

The government pinned the blame for the riots solely on the opponents of the uprising. However, the investigation, which lasted several years, could not prove their guilt in court. As a result, all those who were initially detained in the case were later acquitted.