MOSCOW, March 5. /ITAR-TASS/. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs draw attention to the audio recording of a conversation between EU High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy Catherine Ashton and Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet about the situation in Ukraine, which surfaced on the internet. A source in the diplomatic service said this on Wednesday.
“We drew attention to the recordings that emerged on the internet,” the source told Itar-Tass. “EU’s refusal to comment them cause surprise since recently high-ranking officials of EU countries actively commented on Victoria Nuland’s wiretapping.”
Earlier, on Russian Foreign Ministry’s Facebook page was published a remark on media reports: “It turns out the European Union knows that the opposition stood behind the snipers on Maidan!”
What Catherine Ashton and Urmas Paet are talking about
A recording of a conversation between the EU High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton, and Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet that surfaced on the internet Wednesday shows in unambiguous terms that the snipers, who are supposed to have killed a big number of people in Kiev during the peak of oppositionist rampages in the second half of October, were brought in by someone from the opposition.
The recording can be found in YouTube.
Closer to the end of the conversation, in the course of which Paet described his impressions from a trip to Kiev as ‘sad’ ones, he referred a certain ‘Olga’, a civic society activist who appeared have a ramified network of contacts and to control a big enough number of levers of influence.
He quoted her as saying “evidence shows that people […] on both sides - the policemen and people from the streets — were killed by the same snipers.”
“She showed me some photos and she said she had spoken to a doctor, who said there was the same handwriting and the same type of bullets,” Paet said. “It’s really disturbing that now there is a new coalition and they don’t want to investigate what exactly happened.”
“There’s a stronger and stronger understanding that it was not (President Viktor) Yanukovych who stood behind the snipers — it was somebody from the new coalition,” Paet said.
Baroness Ashton said to this she thought the EU would do the investigation.
Paet answered that the reluctance to investigate the situation around the snipers “was already discrediting the new coalition”.
They stated the absence of any considerable trust in the coalition members among the people on the Maidan — Kiev’s notorious Independence Square, with Paet adding that the speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, Acting Interim President Petro Poroshenko seemed be the only person in the new government who did enjoy a fair enough degree of trust.
Baroness Ashton recalled, among other things, she had hinted to the people on the Maidan that they had to let the Verkhovna Rada, the national parliament, and governmental institutions function properly.
“I said to people in the Maidan, yes want real reforms but you need to go through the short term first,” she indicated recalling her address to the crowds of ‘peaceful protesters’. “I also told them, if you simply barricade the buildings now and the government doesn’t function we can’t get money in because we need a parliament to be a partner with.”