Ukraine's interim authorities accused the country's ousted president of ordering snipers to open fire on protesters and getting help from Russian security agents to battle his own people but their report today provided no evidence directly linking him to the bloodbath in Kiev.
Acting Interior Minister Arsen Avakov also accused his predecessor of employing gangs of killers, kidnappers and thugs to terrorize and undermine the opposition during Ukraine's tumultuous winter of discontent.
The preliminary findings revealed by Kiev's new leadership examined the months of anti-government protests that culminated in the deaths in February over 100 people in Kiev, mostly protesters.
That violence forced a truce between the opposition and the government, but that arrangement quickly collapsed, and President Viktor Yanukovych fled to Russia.
In the weeks since the bloodshed, Russia seized and then formally annexed Crimea, Ukraine's strategic Black Sea peninsula, and the US and the European Union slapped sanctions on those responsible, mainly Russian President Vladimir Putin's inner circle.
Also today, Ukraine sent 16 senior officers to Bulgaria to join a NATO military exercise in a very public demonstration of cooperation between the alliance and the crisis-torn former Soviet republic.
The drills involved over 700 troops from 13 NATO member and partner nations and were being held just a few hundred miles away from Crimea.
Speaking at a televised press conference in Kiev, Avakov accused Yanukovych's government of ordering snipers to shoot at protesters from rooftops near the city's central square, known as the Maidan. He said 17 people were killed from one location and one government sniper alone killed as many as eight people.
Ukrainian Security Service chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko charged that Yanukovych himself had ordered the killings.
"What was planned under the guise of an anti-terrorist operation, and which was in fact an operation of mass killing of people, took place under the immediate and direct leadership of former president Yanukovych," Nalyvaichenko said.
He did not elaborate on how he knew this information, whether it was from witnesses, government documents, airline records or other sources.
