Around 100 people lost their lives in the three months of protests at Independence Square in Kyiv ten years ago today. Most of the dead were protesters, though a handful of police officers also died. What unfolded in those days, as Maidan Nezalezhnosti burned, left an imprint on a whole generation and became the spark that led to the current war. Thousands of lives were altered forever, with some broken beyond repair. One figure stands out: Yurii Aksenyn, an orphan whose father died in the uprising that not only toppled the president Viktor Yanukovych and triggered the Russia-Ukraine conflict, but also opened hundreds of court cases aimed at shedding light on those days. It remains the largest judicial effort in three decades of Ukraine’s independence, though results have been modest to date.
Thus, since 2014, as the head of the relatives association for Maidán victims, Yurii has kept a steady pressure on every government that followed to ensure those responsible face justice and are imprisoned. “Our president and the Government must understand that justice is needed, and we will not stop,” he warns, noting that no one convicted is currently behind bars. “My father knew he would die in Maidán in Kyiv. He told me not to go, and now I feel responsible,” explains this 33-year-old, whose father, Vasyl, died on February 20, 2014, one of the bloodiest days of that month.
Igor Burdyga is among the reporters who have spent years following the judicial arc of the案件 opened after Maidán. One of the latest trials he covered closed in October after starting eight years earlier. In that proceeding, as a victim, he was also connected to Yurii’s father. It ended with prison sentences for mass murder against three Berkut officers, members of a rapid-reaction unit formed in 1992 and disbanded after Maidán. These troops were widely identified in Ukraine as the principal culprits behind the killings.
Nevertheless, none of the three is currently in prison because they are not in Ukraine. The same goes for the other two defendants, who were shooters and appeared in court, but one was acquitted and the other was convicted only for abuse of authority and had already served time during pretrial detention. This has been a recurring theme: the difficulty of translating accountability into confinement.
Another major hurdle has been the fact that only a small number of lower-ranking officers were actually imprisoned, and those who did end up locked away were exchanged in prisoner swap talks with Russia, notes Vitaliy Tytych, a military lawyer representing the families. “In addition, the case closed in the first instance in October did not establish a link to the entire chain of command,” he continues, criticizing a judicial system that, in his view, still requires deep reforms.
The flight of numerous Berkut suspects to Russia, along with delays and negligence in the investigations during the early years after Maidán, have been cited by both as crucial factors behind the current situation. A 2020 report by the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine highlighted further causes: underfunded and understaffed courts, the not-immediate suspension of all implicated police officers, and a so-called Immunity Law enacted after Maidán that hampered investigations into the deaths of the officers. That law produced troubling episodes, such as the case of Ivan Bubenchik, who confessed on a documentary to killing two police officers but was not imprisoned.
For many, the prospect of justice and redress materializing in the future remains a mirage. Denys Ivanov, deputy head of the Maidán Affairs Department at the General Prosecutor’s Office, sees it differently but warns that the 2014 cases pose “the biggest challenge the Ukrainian judicial system has faced in three decades of independence.”
“In total, 4,700 cases were registered, with 2,500 of those tied to Maidán in Kyiv, and the others across the country. That means hundreds of witnesses,” Ivanov explains. Yet the outcomes have been modest. Thus far, only about 60 people have been found guilty in the first instance (four for murder), while two other homicide suspects remain imprisoned but awaited trial or resolution.