MOSCOW, March 08, /ITAR-TASS/. Russia will push for investigation of the “snipers’ case” in Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Saturday.
“The snipers’ case cannot be shelved, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe should address it,” Lavrov said after talks with his Tajik counterpart Sirodzhiddin Aslov.
A recent intercepted phone conversation between Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton gave grounds to assume snipers who had shot at protesters and police in Kiev during riots could have been hired by radical Ukrainian protest leaders.
On March 5, a telephone talk between Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and the EU’s Ashton was made public in the Internet. In the leaked audio, the Estonian minister tells her that people on both sides, policemen and demonstrators, were killed by the same snipers. Paet says a doctor identified only as Olga had told him on a visit to Kiev that snipers may have come from the opposition.
"So that there is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers it was not Yanukovich, but it was somebody from the new coalition," he said, referring to the former opposition to deposed President Viktor Yanukovich.