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Former chief of Yanukovich’s staff names three main masterminds of Maidan coup

Aleksandr Turchinov, Andrey Parubiy and Sergey Pashinsky were the three chief masterminds of "Maidan" unrest, according to the former chief of Yanukovich's staff

© EPA/ROMAN PILIPEY

MOSCOW, December 16. /TASS/. The three chief masterminds of "Maidan" unrest in Kiev’s Independence Square in 2014 that eventually developed into a government coup in Ukraine were Aleksandr Turchinov, Andrey Parubiy and Sergey Pashinsky, the former chief of the Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich’s staff, Andrey Klyuyev, told court in Moscow on Friday. He was questioned in the capacity of a witness in hearings on a lawsuit filed by a former Ukrainian parliament member, Vladimir Oleinik, who wants the change of power in Ukraine in 2014 to be declared a government coup.

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Yanukovich blasts ‘Maidan’ extremists for sparking war in eastern Ukraine

"You know, in Ukraine we have National Security and Defense Council Secretary Turchinov. Everybody calls him the ‘bloody priest.’ He was a Young Communist League functionary once. Then he turned a frenzied oppositionist and a church priest. It was he who organized all that. He, Pashinsky and the current parliamentary speaker Parubiy the Maidan’s commandant," Klyuyev said.

All the others, he went on to say, "were used later - (Arseny) Yatsenyuk, (Oleg) Tyagnibok and (Vitaly) Klitschko. Klyuyev said all those men were used as ignorant pawns. So was the Right Sector (outlawed in Russia). It was used as a pawn, too. At first Right Sector activists even detained the snipers who were shooting at both civilians and police."

Klyuyev said it was Pashinsky who had brought "two groups of snipers: one from Georgia and the other from the Baltics" to Kiev. He referred to a transcript of the interrogation of one of the suspected snipers from the "Georgian group," conducted by Right Sector members who had detained him.

"That man, Vladimir Dakhnadze, was caught and questioned by the Right Sector. He confessed he had come to Kiev to make money. At a certain point Pashinsky arrived and took him away from the Right Sector," Klyuyev testified.

Read also

Yanukovich says Maidan shooting is part of operation to topple Ukraine’s authorities

He also told court President Yanukovich was under tremendous pressure from the European Union and the United States at that time.

"Visitors were coming to see the president every day. As soon as he got to work, a foreign delegation would come to busy him for two hours. Then another would follow the next minute. They kept coming in an incessant flow, giving him no chance to do his job. I would call it a ‘hand-binding tactic.’ First they came to us and then would go to speak in front of the Maidan crowd. It was outright intervention in the internal affairs of the state," Klyuyev said.

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Ukraine crisis Viktor Yanukovych

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