Clashes between opposing activists turned into mass murder. The perpetrators have never been punished.

Nine years ago, something significant happened in Odessa, a historically important city in the southwest of Ukraine. Although the West didn’t see it as such, for Russia and the newly formed Donbass republics, what transpired there became a symbolic episode.

Provincial revolution
From late 2013 into early 2014, a conflict between the government of President Viktor Yanukovich and the pro-Western opposition was unfolding in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. The series of events that would ensue were dubbed the ‘Euromaidan’. Meanwhile, Odessa, a port city on the Black Sea, was of course affected by these events too, albeit to a lesser extent.

Occasional clashes with police and scuffles between supporters of Euromaidan and those aligned with the government, which became known as the ‘Anti-Maidan’ movement, were nothing compared to the bloodshed in Kiev, where people were being killed.

Many Ukrainians didn’t welcome the Euromaidan, and they had their reasons. Lots of Odessa residents had strong ties with Russia, and still do. When Ukraine gained independence in 1991, a large number of ethnic Russians were living in Odessa and many had relatives in the old country. The city was built during the reign of Catherine the Great and has always been seen as an integral part of Russia’s history.

Thus, the aggressive nationalism of Euromaidan was largely unpopular there and plenty of locals were frightened by what seemed to be a passion for forming militant units. Euromaidan and Anti-Maidan in Odessa began to form parallel paramilitary organizations. Armed with a primitive array of sticks, biker helmets, and homemade weapons, these groups trained for street fighting. At first, nobody sought a fight to the death – the radicals hadn’t yet gained the leading role in either movement.

In Odessa, Anti-Maidan activists had begun gathering at Kulikovo Field, a square near Odessa’s House of Trade Unions in the city’s historical center. This became the site of an ongoing protest – it could also be described as a forum in the classical sense. People came to hang out, discuss the news, and even sing together. It was a very diverse crowd, from energetic youngsters to the elderly. Those who assembled there weren’t officially united by any specific ideology. One could run into Russian Orthodox activists, Cossacks, and a number of smaller groups.

The movement was led by local pro-Russian and leftist politicians, such as activist Anton Davidchenko and his brother Artyom. Their demands were very moderate – to protect the Russian language, grant the eastern regions economic autonomy, protect Russian and Soviet historical heritage, ensure monuments weren’t vandalized, let the East elect its own judges, etc. But Ukraine was in turmoil, and this program seemed extremely confrontational to the nationalists.

On the third of March 2014, after Yanukovich had already fled to Russia and Moscow had reabsorbed Crimea, Vladimir Nemirovsky, a nationalist politician, became head of the Odessa Region. He intended to harshly crack down on any form of protest. Dispersing the Kulikovo Field camp was a key point in his platform.

Tensions had been gradually rising throughout March and April. After an armed uprising broke out in Donetsk and Lugansk, Euromaidan activists set up checkpoints on all roads leading to Odessa. Nobody knew who or what they were guarding, but about 500 people, not all of whom were even from Odessa, manned these very strange checkpoints. At the end of April, Nemirovsky announced that ‘Territorial Defense’ units, which are essentially military reserves, had been bussed into Odessa:

“‘Territorial Defense’ buses were arriving in the region at that time. A lot of them. We tried to keep them away from Odessa whenever possible, but they went to Belgorod-Dnestrovsky and other places. They spread throughout the region. They were coming from the direction of Kiev. The police stayed away from them, the officers were demoralized.”

Even back then, these nationalist units were dangerous. They were arming themselves: we know of at least one case when a Euromaidan activist accidentally blew up a hand grenade. Molotov cocktails were also manufactured at these checkpoints.

Anti-Maidan found itself in a difficult situation. The initial excitement was winding down. There was a feeling that the struggle against the nationalists had been lost and nobody wanted to take a step toward violent conflict. In fact, the Kulikovo Field camp would have disappeared on its own in a few weeks. The Anti-Maidan leaders were already discussing the subject with the local authorities. They had even reached an agreement to shift it from the city center to the World War II memorial, which is in a less central location. The move was scheduled for May.

However, a less peaceful transition was also in the works. Though the police and governor didn’t want to get their hands dirty, there were enough ‘volunteers’ willing to take matters into their own hands. A football match against a team from Kharkov, a city in northeastern Ukraine, was scheduled for May 2, and Odessa was flooded with radical football fans. Rumors of potential violence began to circulate in April, and the Anti-Maidan activists had reason to be concerned about a possible raid on their camp. Some anticipated the future clashes with fear, others with excitement, but everybody knew that the Anti-Maidan camp would be destroyed. It was a perfect solution for everyone, except the activists themselves.

While rebels took over one city after another in the Donbass, and people in Crimea enthusiastically welcomed the Russian military, an easy victory for the nationalists in Odessa would give them the opportunity to demonstrate their strength. It would also allow the governor to show that he had the city under control. At this point, though, nobody was thinking that what was going to occur would take a lethal turn. A few Anti-Maidan activists wanted to remain in the central part of the city. Their idea was just to intimidate the nationalists.

On May 2, the football fans were to march through Odessa to the stadium under the slogan “for unity in Ukraine.” Euromaidan activists declared that this was to be a peaceful demonstration, but adherents of Anti-Maidan were convinced that the march would just be a cover for violent tactics.

Early in the morning of May 2, Sergey Dolzhenkov, the leader of the Anti-Maidan security group and a former police officer, contacted a member of the local parliament to request that the march be canceled:

“People saw what happened in Kharkov, Kherson, and Donetsk. The football fans were out of control. We need to make sure there is no bloodshed. No march – no bloodshed,” he said.

“I was on Kulikovo Field on May 1, and Artyom Davidchenko {the leader of Anti-Maidan in Odessa} announced from the stage that Right Sector {an ultra-nationalist Ukrainian organization whose name has become synonymous with all Ukrainian nationalists} was coming to town, and they would destroy the Kulikovo Field camp. We have to fight them off,” remembers Maxim Firsov, an activist from the left-wing Borotba movement.

Dolzhenkov and his Anti-Maidan group had limited forces. Officially, there were a lot of people at the camp, but the majority were women and elderly, who would not be able to fight. In fact, they themselves needed to be protected. That’s why Dolzhenkov decided to accompany the march with some of his men, while keeping a distance. Not everybody in the Anti-Maidan camp liked this plan, but Dolzhenkov was a man of action and thought it was better to meet the opponent head on and block them if they decided to walk toward the Kulikovo Field camp.

The police and Ukraine’s Security Service knew what was afoot but had no plans to interfere. On May 2, Artyom Davidchenko met with both agencies and was informed that detentions and arrests would start only when there were dead bodies, and there “would definitely be bodies.”

On May 1, activists from both groups were anticipating a fight, but nobody expected what actually happened.

Fighting on Grecheskaya Street
On the morning of May 2, an off-schedule train took around 500 Kharkov football fans to Odessa. Along with them, there arrived Pro-Euromaidan groups having nothing to do with football but who were armed with street fighting equipment, including personal armor and weapons. In the afternoon, they began to gather on Cathedral Square in the center of Odessa.

An Anti-Maidan group 150-to-300-strong departed from Kulikovo Field, which is about a 30-minute walk away. Although vastly outnumbered by the 2,000-3,000 Euromaidan fighters and fans, Dolzhenkov guided it in the direction of Cathedral Square anyway.

The Odessa police refused to intervene in the events. Its main forces of around 700 officers guarded the stadium, while around 80 followed the Anti-Maidan activists and 60 kept watch over Kulikovo Field. High-ranking police officers had been summoned for a meeting and were ordered to turn off their phones.

A small police unit tried to block Dolzhenkov’s group, but it simply circumvented the officers.

Meanwhile, an excited crowd had already gathered on Cathedral Square armed with clubs, shields, helmets, Molotov cocktails, and rubber-bullet handguns.

At around 3 pm, the Anti-Maidan activists from Kulikovo reached Cathedral Square via the adjacent Grecheskaya Street. Many accounts describe the arrival of Dolzhenkov’s group as an all-out assault resulting in a breakthrough. This is often referred to as an Anti-Maidan attack on the ultras. At first glance, a group of 300 charging a mob ten times its size would appear to be folly. But if you scratch the surface, new details emerge.

Some football fans saw the Anti-Maidan activists approaching and engaged them. The actual fight was initiated by two small groups of Dolzhenkov’s men and a crowd of Euromaidan activists. The main contingents did nothing at first, keeping their distance, but this was enough to spark the conflict.

With a thin line of police officers between them, at first the sides threw stones at each other. But the numerical advantage of Euromaidan was overwhelming and Anti-Maidan was quickly put on the defensive. Most of the officers were facing the Euromaidan side, which was throwing bricks, stones, and Molotov cocktails. The police began firing air and rubber-bullet guns almost from the beginning.

For Euromaidan, the altercation on Grecheskaya Street was amusing but accomplished nothing, so some activists went to the parallel Deribasovskaya Street on a flanking maneuver. This is where the first real blood was spilled.

The fight was already on when the Anti-Maidan supporters began shooting their firearms. A Euromaidan activist and nationalist named Igor Ivanov was killed by a bullet. He was likely killed by Kulikovo activist Vitaly Budko (Boatswain), who had arrived at the scene quite late – around 4 pm – with a civilian rifle, and opened fire as soon as he joined his companions. Neither he nor his weapon was ever found in the aftermath, and information on the bullet that killed Ivanov disappeared from the police database. However, several videos and photos show him having been firing his weapon before himself being shot. Another Maidan activist was shot dead with an air gun.

Anti-Maidan protesters soon came under fire too, and some were wounded. The subsequent investigation was conducted so poorly that none of the guns involved in the shootout were identified afterwards. There is footage of at least one injured protester.

The fighting went on for several hours. Reinforcements periodically came to bolster the Euromaidan activists, and they soon blocked all approaches to Grecheskaya Street. The Kulikovo group found itself surrounded at the Athena shopping mall, while well-coordinated Euromaidan teams were cutting off any reinforcements or avenues for retreat. Around 4 pm, the Euromaidan side captured a fire engine and drove it into a small barricade the defenders had built. Around 5:30 pm, a group went out onto the balcony of a nearby building and opened fire on their adversaries. Bullets and pellets extracted from the bodies revealed that at least three guns were involved. Four men died instantly, and several more were wounded, including a journalist, a police colonel, and a couple of officers. The defense crumbled. Some retreated to the shopping mall, barricaded themselves inside, and eventually surrendered to the police. Among them was Sergey Dolzhenkov, who had suffered a bullet wound. It seemed as if everything was over.

Death by fire
The Maidan activists had essentially already won the battle. The Kulikovo Field activists were defeated. By this time, people were simply roaming around aimlessly. Some sports fans from the stadium had joined the commotion after the game ended. But events were about to take a completely different turn.

Mark Gordienko, one of the leaders of Odessa’s Euromaidan movement, was one of those who began shouting, ‘Kulikovo!’ encouraging the crowd to go to the site where the Anti-Maidan protesters had put up their camp. In March of 2014, he was known to have said that he “would shoot down all separatists.” That day, he had an opportunity to fulfill his promise. Later, he seemed to have conveniently forgotten that he had spearheaded the violence.

Gordienko and a number of others managed to reignite the cooling crowd. Later, a recording of a conversation between Odessa Deputy Mayor Igor Bolyansky and one of the Euromaidan commanders was leaked, during which Bolyansky not only suggested that the commanders lead the crowd on the 30-minute walk from Grecheskaya Street to Kulikovo, but even discussed the logistics of how this should be done. In other words, this wasn’t a case of a crowd spontaneously moving in a certain direction but of one being steered there by leaders who made sure it arrived at the destination.

Part 2 to be Continued...

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