A year on from rioting and a fire in Odessa that left 48 pro-Russia activists dead, there are claims of complicity between police and activists across the divide

The emergency calls became increasingly desperate. “When are you coming? It’s already burning and there are people inside,” a woman told the fire brigade dispatcher. Minutes later, callers started describing how people were jumping from the upper floors.

“Have you lost your minds?” one man asked, his voice breaking. “There are women and children in the building!” another man yelled.

In one of the most deadly episodes in Ukraine’s turbulent 2014 power transition, 48 people were killed and hundreds injured on 2 May last year in the Black Sea port of Odessa. Street battles culminated in a fatal fire at Soviet-era building where hundreds of pro-Russia activists were barricaded in.



As the one-year anniversary approaches, multiple investigations have shed little light on events. There is not even an official list of the dead, and none of the pro-Ukraine activists involved have been put on trial. Many allege that investigators are dragging their feet for political reasons, possibly to cover up high-level complicity. At least one participant formally accused of murder and attempted murder remains free while awaiting trial.

The events in Odessa last year played a key role in the unfolding violence further east, where Russia-backed separatists rose up against Ukrainian authorities. Russian state-owned media characterised the day’s events as a “massacre” planned by “fascists” in Kiev, a narrative that has gained widespread traction.

Rumours swirl of a higher death toll, the use of poisonous gas and the body of a pregnant woman garrotted by pro-Ukraine fanatics. Russian officials have compared the events to Nazi war crimes, and many Russian fighters battling Kiev in eastern Ukraine cite what happened in Odessa as their motivation for joining the separatist cause.

On the other side, some in Kiev see a pro-Ukraine “victory” on 2 May that prevented a local attempt to form a Russian-backed separatist state, and hail those who threw cobble stones, or even fired guns, as heroes.

Interviews with witnesses and amateur footage from the day present a very different version of events. While questions remain over decisions made by top officials, a narrative can be pieced together. Most of what is known is thanks to work done by the 2 May Group, an organisation of 13 local experts investigating the tragedy on a volunteer basis.



“There was a lot of heroism and cruelty on both sides,” said Tatyana Gerasimova, the head of the group.

Most of the deaths occurred in Odessa’s Trade Union building, a large five-floor structure on the edge of the city centre, which was defended by outnumbered pro-Russia activists and attacked by hundreds of pro-Ukraine protesters.

But street battles first broke out several hours before the Trade Union building fire. They were sparked when a group of masked pro-Russia activists allegedly led by Sergei Dolzhenkov, a former police officer known as “Captain Kakao”, attacked a pro-Ukraine march mostly made up of football fans. The pro-Russia men were armed with clubs, fireworks, homemade grenades and guns.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A pro-Russia activist aims a pistol at supporters of the Kiev government during clashes in the streets of Odessa, 2 May 2014. Photograph: Reuters

The first person to die was 27-year-old Igor Ivanov, a pro-Ukraine member of the extreme nationalist organisation Right Sector. He was gunned down on Odessa’s main street, Deribasovskaya, lined with cafes, bars and restaurants and usually thronged with tourists.

The head of the local pro-Ukraine Maidan self-defence group, Dmitry Gumenyuk, recalled the effect of the homemade grenades, fashioned by taping bolts and nails to firecrackers. “One of ours was very badly injured. They threw a smoke flare and he started to gasp for breath and broke ranks. When he let down his shield they threw a grenade and it exploded under his bullet-proof vest and four nails entered his lungs,” he said.

In clear evidence of police complicity, video footage from these clashes shows a pro-Russia activist, shielded by police, shooting with a modified AK-47. Dmitry Fuchedzhi, a deputy police chief in Odessa reportedly known as ”Uncle Dima” to pro-Russia activists, was said to have been seen mingling with shooters.

In a visit to Odessa this month, the Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, accused Fuchedzhi of distributing arms to both sides. Fuchedzhi, believed to be hiding in the pro-Russia Moldovan breakaway region of Transdnistria, claims he has been scapegoated by Kiev.

Odessa’s police have a long history of cooperation with pro-Russian activists, according to local journalist Oleg Konstantinov, who was injured while covering events on 2 May. He estimated up to 80% of the police force had Russian sympathies. “They understand very well that Russia is a police state,” he said.

I saw a lot of people who were shooting. Half the town had a weapon that day Sergei Khodiak, pro-Ukraine activist

Spurred on by the cooperation of police and pro-Russia activists, the pro-Ukraine side quickly gathered its supporters and the fighting escalated. Four pro-Russia activists were killed by gunfire from the Ukrainian side.

Pro-Ukraine activist Sergei Khodiak, who has brown hair and was said to be wearing a blue jumper that day, is officially accused of murder, although he is not under arrest. Footage shows a man wearing the same jumper as Khodiak firing a hunting rifle into the pro-Russian crowd. Khodiak, who denied the charges in an interview, said he had at least five acquaintances with the same jumper.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest People wait to be rescued from the upper storeys of the Trade Union building in Odessa. Photograph: Reuters

“I saw a lot of people who were shooting, and shooting from real weapons … half the town had a weapon that day,” he said.

Fighting in the city centre continued for several hours, with activists playing a vicious cat-and-mouse game, trying to outflank each other in Odessa’s grid-like streets. Eventually pro-Russians were pushed back, and they fled the city centre, many streaming towards the Kulikovo Pole square outside the Trade Union building where a pro-Russia tent camp had been in place for several months.

Central Odessa where street fighting broke out in May 2014.

In a running confrontation, both sides threw molotov cocktails, one of which set alight a makeshift barricade in the foyer. Piles of wooden pallets, a generator and other equipment from a dismantled pro-Russia tent camp quickly began to burn. Smoke and flames sped up the main stairwell, drawn by smashed windows on higher floors.

“The smoke was so strong that I couldn’t see,” recalled Nina Kochanovskaya, 60, a pro-Russia activist trapped on the second floor. “I was between smoke and fire … I stood on the windowsill and realised I had no choice but to jump.” At the last moment, a man outside gestured her to move to another room where there was less smoke. “That corridor was hell, it was pitch black … if someone hadn’t opened the door I would never have found it,” she said.

Initially, people huddled on the landings between floors, where a light breeze had created small pockets of fresh air by open windows. But shortly before 8pm, the fire suddenly intensified, creating a pillar of flames in the main stairwell as high as the fourth floor, causing a sharp rise in temperature and throwing out dense clouds of black smoke and toxic fumes.

The air pockets disappeared, and many died trapped next to the now ineffective windows. At least eight people, including one 17-year-old, jumped to their deaths to avoid suffocation. Amateur video shot from the outside shows bodies falling, one after the other, from the upper floors. Fifteen people were overcome on the fifth floor by carbon monoxide fumes generated by the blaze.

In a matter of seconds the corridor was completely filled with black smoke ... there was nothing to breathe Elena, Trade Union building occupier

Witnesses recalled the rapidity with which the relatively small fire became an inferno. “In a matter of seconds the corridor was completely filled with black smoke … there was nothing to breathe and I couldn’t see anything,” said Elena, a doctor who manned a makeshift first-aid point on the second floor.

The chaos was intensified by groups of armed pro-Ukraine activists who attempted to storm the building through side doors. There were pitched battles in the building’s corridors and stairways.

Of several hundred people who took refuge inside the Trade Union building, 42 died. The rest were evacuated. Dozens survived in rooms untouched by fire or smoke, while one group sheltered on the roof.

While many pro-Ukraine activists helped the rescue effort, others punched, kicked and beat those who fled the burning building. “There was blood and water all over the courtyard,” said Elena, who escaped via a fireman’s ladder. “They were shouting ‘on your knees, on your knees’.”

Throughout the fire, hundreds of local riot police were drawn up outside the building, but they mostly did not intervene.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest In the days following the fire, hundreds went to view the damage inside the Trade Union building and leave memorials. Photograph: Gail Orenstein/Corbis

The 2 May Group has proposed one theory for the development of events. Citing multiple sources, they argue there was an unofficial deal between the police and activists on both sides. As part of the deal, football fans were to be allowed to burn tents erected by pro-Russia activists near the Trade Union building.

Police, local officials and pro-Ukraine activists thought the destruction of the encampment would improve the security situation in Odessa, while pro-Russia activists, increasingly marginalised, counted on it raising their profile.



Such a deal would be in keeping with the Black Sea city’s history of trade and colourful local mafia structures, said Gerasimova of the 2 May Group. “There was an attempt to resolve the confrontation through the famous Odessa bargain,” she said.

Pro-Russia activists point out that one obvious outcome of events has been the complete dismemberment of Odessa’s pro-Russia political movement.

Dolzhenkov, who is alleged to have led the attack in the city centre, is on trial with 19 associates on a charge of causing mass unrest. Other leaders have fled to Transdnistria or Russia. Several are living in Crimea, seized by Russia last year and just 300 miles from Odessa. An estimated 1,000 people from Odessa have joined separatist fighters in eastern Ukraine.



Odessa, on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast, is close to pro-Russian enclaves in Moldova and Crimea.

With the 2 May anniversary just days away, 12 people linked to pro-Russia groups were arrested in an anti-terrorist operation on Wednesday, according to security services. Those detained reportedly included the mother of pro-Russia leaders Artyom and Anton Davidchenko, who fled Ukraine last year, as well as a local pro-Russia journalist.



None of the pro-Ukraine activists have been put on trial for the events that led to the deaths in the Trade Unions building. The slow progress and incompetence of the official investigation was probably attributable to a general feeling of guilt as well as a desire to shield influential figures in Kiev, according to journalist Konstantinov.

He said witnesses have been questioned using standardised forms and that he had to press investigators to accept unique photo and video material collected by the news website where he works. “The courts are under colossal pressure from both sides,” he said.

All the 48 dead were from Odessa or the surrounding region, and it is an unavoidable fact that the violence on 2 May was perpetrated by Odessans against Odessans. Activists from both sides admit that the port city remains divided into two approximately matched camps – those who favour closer ties with Russia, and those loyal to the government in Kiev.

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The threat of a pro-Russia coup in Odessa has receded since summer 2014, but tensions in the city remain high with a series of bomb blasts in the city centre targeting pro-Ukrainian organisations, and waves of arrests by the security services of radicals allegedly seeking closer ties with Moscow.



“The bestiality accumulated over years,” said journalist Konstantinov. “Most participants were Odessans who just hated each other.”