In releasing five suspected Maidan killers in the December 29, 2019, prisoner swap, Ukraine’s leaders also gave Russia potent ammunition for its propaganda war against Ukraine. The clear efforts to totally rewrite the facts about the Euro-Maidan make it all the more imperative that the men’s trial is properly concluded, even if this is now in absentia.
Although Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has sworn that this will happen, the replacement of the prosecutors running the case from the outside by puppet prosecutors on December 27, 2019, give very real grounds for doubting the sincerity of such assurances. The families of the activists gunned down in February 2014 and their lawyers have issued an urgent appeal, stressing the danger to Ukraine’s most important trial if this is allowed to happen.