One year after Euromaidan: 13 people dying every day

BRUSSELS - One year after the start of Ukraine’s pro-Western revolution - the Euromaidan - people are dying everyday in east Ukraine despite the “ceasefire”, a UN report says.

The survey, by the UN’s human rights body, the Geneva-based OHCHR, out on Thursday (20 November), estimates that “on average 13 people were killed every day between 6 September and 31 October”.

The death toll since the ceasefire includes more than 80 women and 36 children.

It says “at least” 4,042 people have died since the fighting began in April, with 9,350 wounded.

But with Ukraine authorities currently handling some 2,600 requests for information on missing people, the real figure is likely to be higher.

The UN survey adds that the number of internally displaced people in Ukraine also jumped from 275,489 in mid-September to 436,444 by the end of October.

It cites abuses - such as irregular detentions, beatings and cases of disappeared persons - by Ukrainian forces and volunteer battalions.

But looking at the situation in rebel-held parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, it says: “a total breakdown in law and order … including torture, arbitrary and incommunicado detention, summary executions, forced labour, sexual violence, as well as the destruction and illegal seizure of property”.

“These violations are of a systematic nature and may amount to crimes against humanity”.

It says that in Russia-annexed Crimea, there are “reports of increasing human rights violations” especially against the Crimean Tatar minority.

It adds that the Ukrainian economy - with GDP plunging by 4.6 percent in the first three quarters and with inflation at 103 percent - is suffering due to the war.

It also notes that “there has been no significant progress in the investigations of crimes committed during the Maidan protests”, which saw Ukrainian riot police and unidentified snipers kill over 100 protestors last February.

The report came out on the eve of the first anniversary of the Euromaidan demonstrations on Friday.

The events began after Mustafa Nayim, a journalist at the Kiev-based online news agency Ukrainska Pravda, posted a Facebook message criticising the government’s decision, earlier the same day, not to sign an EU free trade pact.

He wrote at 8pm local time on the day: “Come on guys, let’s be serious. If you really want to do something, don’t just ‘like’ this post. Write that you are ready, and we can try to start something”.

One hour and 600-or-so comments later, he added: “Let’s meet at 10:30 p.m. near the monument to independence in the middle of the Maidan”.

The initial protest gathered around 1,000 people.

Many of them stayed there, despite the biting cold, until Friday 29 November, when the then president Viktor Yanukovych i, at an EU summit in Vilnius, officially said No to the EU pact.

On his way home, he ordered his riot police, the Berkut, to use violence to scatter the crowd in the small hours of Saturday morning.

Later on Saturday some 10,000 people came back to the scene, while another 10,000 showed up at a rally in Lviv, Western Ukraine.

But on Sunday, more than 1 million people took to the streets of Kiev in a show of mass frustration with the Yanukovych regime’s corruption and pro-Russia politics, setting off the chain of events leading to Yanukovych’s downfall on 23 February.

With Yanukovych and many of his cronies now living in luxury mansions in Russia, Nayim, the Ukrainska Pravda journalist has become an MP in the post-revolutionary parliament, while thousands of other Maidan veterans are fighting as volunteers in the east.

Meanwhile, Kiev is to mark the anniversary by lighting thousands of candles on the Maidan cobblestones and with a wreath-laying ceremony attended by Ukrainian presdent Petro Poroshenk io and US vice-president Joe Biden on Friday evening.

Large crowds are also expectd to come to the square on what Poroshenko has ordained as Ukraine’s “Dignity and Freedom Day”.

But fear of provocations or bomb attacks will see the events accompanied by a huge security operation in the capital, local media report.

For their part, European VIPs will be largely absent at Friday’s solemnities.

But with Russian propaganda contintuing to describe the events as a Western-orchestrated coup d’etat, Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaite i tweeted on Friday morning: “One year ago people of Ukraine made a democratic choice that cannot be changed by force & lies”.

With Russia, according to Nato reports, continuing to pour troops and armoir into east and south Ukraine in what looks like preparations for a fresh offensive before winter sets in, EU chancelleries are also debating prospects of extra Russia sanctions.

For his part, Poroshenko, on a visit to Moldova on Thursday, noted that he is keen to resume peace talks with Moscow.

He voiced “gratitude to the world and especially to the countries of G7 and the European partners for the support of Ukraine”.

Referring to the ceasefire pact in Minsk on 5 September, he noted that “the main thing is to fulfill Minsk agreements not in word but in deed".

"Unless there is a positive change, the [EU and US] sanctions should be continued”, he said.