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On the basis of a leaked conversation between the EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton and Estonia’s Foreign Minister Urmas Paet, state-funded Russia Today is reporting that: “The snipers who shot at protesters and police in Kiev were allegedly hired by Maidan leaders.”
In, the leaked call, Paet repeats some allegations made to him by a woman called Olga and bemoans the fact that they are not being investigated. The Estonian foreign ministry says he was not making any allegations himself about who was responsible for the shots that were fired during the protests against Viktor Yanukovych.In the conversation, the authenticity of which has been confirmed by the foreign ministry, and which took place on 26 February after Paet had returned from a visit to Ukraine, he says:What was quite disturbing, the same Olga told [me] as well, all the evidence shows that people who were killed by snipers from both sides, among policeman and people from the streets [is] they were the same snipers killing people from both sides …she also showed me some photos, she said as medical doctor she can say it’s the same handwriting, they’re the same type of bullets and it’s really disturbing that now, the new coalition, they don’t want to investigate exactly what happened so that there is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind snipers it was not Yanukovych but it was somebody from the new coalition.
Ashton replies:I think they do want to investigate. I mean I didn’t pick that up, that’s interesting. Gosh.
The Estonian foreign ministry said in a statement:Foreign minister Paet was giving an overview of what he had heard the previous day in Kiev and expressed concern over the situation on the ground. We reject the claim that Paet was giving an assessment of the opposition’s involvement in the violence.
A spokeswoman for Ashton’s office said:We can’t comment on leaks but our position on violence is very clear - that it should be investigated.
Here is the recording of the phone call. The discussion re the snipers starts 8mins 20 seconds in.
