The spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, warned today of the growing tension in the Ukrainian city of Odessa, two years after the tragedy in the House of Unions, without the authorities having carried out a thorough investigation in this regard.
The news of “volunteers” of the radical battalions of Aidar, Azov, and the nationalist political organization “Right Sector” being moved to the heroic city of Odessa (for the defense during the 1941-45 Great Patriotic War) are “worrying”, said Zakharova during the traditional weekly press conference.
She deplored that two years after the tragedy in Odessa, in which hundreds of activists and civilians were killed, the Ukrainian authorities have not wanted to carry out an objective investigation of the events and punish those responsible.
Zakharova estimated that Kiev should avoid a further escalation of clashes between domestic sectors, and not hide the truth of what happened on May 2nd, 2014 in the Kulikovoye Polie square, and the arson in the House of Unions, where activists fled the persecution of armed radical elements.
Kiev officially estimated that nearly fifty people were killed, but non-governmental organizations and human rights defenders denounced more than 500 dead and missing.
The spokeswoman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs criticized, on the other hand, recent pronouncements by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, about the relevance of deploying an international police mission armed ‘to the teeth’ with heavy weapons, including in the conflict zone in Donbass.
She cataloged the idea as detached from reality, because there is no history of any UN peacekeeping missions. It is an initiative that contradicts the civil mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), whose members control the regime of ceasefire in the area, and this is a responsibility and work that the Ukrainian authorities should respect, said the spokeswoman of the Foreign Ministry.