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bne July 2018 Cover story I 29
tion: On the day before the police attack, reporters noted Yulia Lovochkina openly fraternising with the students on the Maidan. Lovochkin’s TV crews covered the 4am events closely, and Lovochkin immediately tendered his resignation in protest at the police violence.
Rumours that Lovochkin was behind the attack on the students started immediate- ly, according to authoritative chronicler of events on Maidan Sonya Koshkina.
The next day, Lovochkin’s TV channel played footage of the worst of the police violence on heavy rotation on prime time news. News anchors intoned that Yanu- kovych had “shed the blood of Ukrainian children.” Whereas the student protests had attracted hundreds, protests on Sun- day December 1 against the police vio- lence attracted hundreds of thousands. This was the start of Euromaidan.
Koshkina ultimately refutes that Lovoch-
kin played a role in the police violence, arguing it was anti-EU hardliners who were responsible.
Indisputably the Europe issue pushed Lovochkin into opposition to the Yanu- kovych regime he had helped create. “I submitted my resignation because of President Yanukovych’s decision to decline signing the Deep and Compre- hensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) [...] and the use of force against peaceful protesters in Kyiv following it,” he said. The regime fractured and soon fell.
What was Lovochkin’s motivation?
“A placeman of Firtash and one of the architects of the regime” according to Koshkina. To break with Yanukovych over Europe? In June 2013 the US had indicted Firtash for alleged bribery in India. On October 30 2013 – as Yanu- kovych was wavering over the Associa- tion Agreement with the EU – the US issued an arrest warrant for Firtash.
The US withdrew the arrest warrant four days later – after US deputy secretary of state Victoria Nuland met Yanukovych
in Kyiv, and received assurances that Yanukovych would sign the Association Agreement, Firtash said in extradition hearings in Vienna in 2015 that first revealed the details of the case. But come the Vilnius Summit, Yanukovych failed to sign. The arrest warrant was reissued in March 2014, and Firtash was arrested in Vienna on March 12, 2014.
Legal proceedings in Ukraine have yet to establish ultimate responsibility for the police attack on students on November 29 and indeed for much of the violence against protestors in the winter of 2013- 2014. On June 23, the prosecutor’s special office tasked with investigating crimes against demonstrators was abolished.
Thus Manafort’s trial, if it occurs, will be as eagerly awaited in Ukraine as in the US.
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