RT Watch

By Casey Michel

Protesters, not police, likely began the bloodshed during the Ukrainian revolution’s Maidan Massacre last February, according to RT. Fudging the details of a recent BBC investigation, RT claimed that the February 20 killings may have begun when a protester identified by BBC only as “Sergei” opened fire on police.

In the BBC report, Sergei, seen only in shadow, says that when shooting began that morning, he “spent some 20 minutes before 07:00 firing on police.” Sergei does not say that he fired shots before the police did, but RT says his statement “bring[s] into question the popular narrative that riot police fired first.”

The BBC report also says that Sergei’s account could only be “partially corroborated” by other witnesses, and that no individuals interviewed could fully validate Sergei’s story. RT, however, stated that “[o]ther witness testimony has corroborated [Sergei’s] account.”

While RT’s story repeats much of what’s found in the BBC report, the outlet added further questions about culpability for the deaths on Kyiv’s Maidan Square – as well as who was behind the snipers shooting on the crowd. According to RT, “Witnesses at the time said they saw snipers shooting at both protesters and security forces.”

The one witness RT cited, shown in an attached video, was RT reporter Alexey Yaroshevsky. After reporting that he had been targeted by snipers, Yaroshevksy added that “the side of the hotel where we stayed was facing the part of Maidan, the independence square, that was occupied by the protesters.”

RT further cited a leaked phone call between EU Foreign Affairs Chief Catherine Ashton and Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet, which “appeared to confirm the possibly [sic] that it had been members of the opposition” firing first in Maidan that morning.

Paet, however, has long pushed back against such analysis of the phone call, noting that it was not meant to “give any evaluation.”