Two Odessa fire survivors, both in the anti-government camp, tell their stories

 Two women told the Kyiv Post their stories of what happened. Neither
woman would give their surname becaue they said it was too dangerous to be identified as
anti-government witnesses to events.

Many of the funerals of those who died on May 2
have not been publicized for fear of attracting more violence. Pro-government
activists have faced threats and intimidation since May 2, as many names and addresses
have been published online.

Tetiana

Tetiana, a
57-year-old retired teacher from Odessa, had been a frequent visitor to the
tent protest camp on Kulykove Pole Square in central Odessa. A very vocal
opponent of the new Ukrainian government which she believes to be run by
fascists, she said a core group of about 40 unarmed demonstrators were living
in the camp, while others came daily.

According
to Tetiana, there had been rumors going around for several days of an attack
on the camp on May 2 by pro-government forces. The young men there said they
would stay and defend it to the last.

“The young
ones said ‘We’re not leaving, we’ll be a memorial to the fact that Odessa will
never be a fascist city,’” Tetiana said. “We wanted to help them; we thought if
adults were there too it would be safer. It never occurred to us that they
would kill us.” 

Tetiana had
been in the city with a friend and when she arrived at Kulykovo Pole Square, at
much the same time as the main pro-Ukrainian crowd arrived from the direction
of Pushkin Street, she saw protesters from the camp building a barricade on the
steps to the Trade Unions House, using boards and poles from the camp. The
building door was open; Tetiana guesses the protesters had broken the glass to
get in. 

“Before
that, our Markin [Odessa city
council member Vyacheslav Markin] shouted that all women and older people should
run from the square because they might get killed,” Tetiana said. “But people
didn’t believe it. They wanted to shut themselves into the building and not let
anyone in.”

After that
everything happened very quickly; Tatiana heard shouts and shouts from Pushkin Street
and saw people running towards Kulykovo Pole Square. The camp protesters were
still shouting at the women to leave, but Tetiana could not see where to go and
ran inside the building.

The young
men told the women to go to the upper floors, leaving them to defend the first floor.
When Molotov cocktails began to fly from outside and there was firing through
the main door, Tetiana ran upstairs to the second floor and down the corridor.
Molotov cocktails were being thrown in through windows. The window frames and
curtains began to burn. Tetiana and several others tried to put the fires out,
covering their faces with the blue surgical masks which many protesters wear
for anonymity.

Choked by
smoke, they hid in an office which soon filled with smoke too. Tetiana and four
young men tried to break the windows for more air but the glass was too thick.

“There was
such an awful stink and I decided to go back to the first floor – let them
shoot me but I’m suffocating here,” Tetiana said. “But outside in the corridor
there was black, black smoke coming from the stairwell and I understood I
couldn’t get out that way. So I went back into the room. We stood there and
waited, I was calling the police and the fire brigade and the ambulance but no
one answered. I understood that no one was planning to rescue us.”

Whenever
any of them went near the window, she said, Molotov cocktails came flying and
people shouted and shot at the window.

“They were
burning us inside on purpose and no one would let us leave,” the woman said.

Molotov
cocktails broke the window. At last Tetiana went to the window and started
waving for help before she climbed out onto the broad cornice outside and held
on to the AC unit. After a while, one of the young men, who was wearing a
balaclava and helmet, climbed out beside her.

“He was
standing on the right of me. I could hear shouting: ‘We’ll kill you’. My face was
to the wall and I couldn’t see, but something hit me on the head, I don’t know
what it was,” said Tetiana.

Her hair
caught on fire but the man next to her put it out, saving her life, she says.

Below, two
men from the crowd outside brought pallets from the destroyed tent camp and
tried to persuade Tetiana to jump to safety, but she was too afraid. She
doesn’t know how long she stood on the cornice – maybe thirty minutes, maybe an
hour, she says.

Finally, at
about 8 p.m., the police arrived and at the same time someone –she’s not
sure who – pushed a scaffolding tower to the building. The photos from the
scene show it was the pro-Ukrainian activists who brought the scaffolding to
the building. Tetiana was the first person to climb down on it.

Tetiana
says she doesn’t know what happened to the men in the room with her, or the one
beside her on the cornice.

“It was
obvious [the crowd] were really trying to get him, they really wanted him,” she
said, because he was wearing a mask and helmet and was therefore clearly an
activist.

Tetiana was
led away to an ambulance by Odessans in the crowd. But she said she saw other
people in the crowd beating and kicking protesters who had escaped from the
building.

Two days
later, Tetiana was one of the anti-government crowd who demonstrated outside
the Odessa city police station, breaking windows and storming the gate to
demand the release of people detained by police on May 2. She says one of those
detained was her friend who came with her to Kulykovo Pole Square on May 2, a
young woman who also got trapped in the building and who had no hand in
instigating the violence. 

Alyona 

Alyona, a
35-year-old native Odessan, was one of the protest camp’s volunteer medics. She
and her colleagues had planned May 2 as a “training day.” She arrived to Kulykove
Pole Square at much the same time as Tetiana, and also fled inside the building.
There she set up a first-aid station on the second floor, expecting to treat
minor injuries until the police arrived. When the stairwell filled very
suddenly with choking black smoke and the lights went out, she ran and hid in a
fourth floor office.

Both Alyona
and Tetiana say attackers ran inside the building in pursuit when the
protesters took refuge on upper floors. They think there may even have been
people who were not from their group inside beforehand. They both think those
on the building roof throwing Molotov cocktails, clearly seen in video footage,
were not from their group.

However,
Alyona says protesters inside may have been making Molotov cocktails, in panic,
but were not very competent and failed to throw them outside.

But she thinks
it impossible that the building was set on fire from the inside.

“It
happened immediately, there was terrible black smoke everywhere, on all the
floors at once,” she said.

She did not
see any flames. At the same time as the smoke appeared, all the lights went
out. Later, the water was turned off.   

Alyona
describes how she and four women and eight men barricaded themselves inside the
fourth floor office because they could hear people coming to attack them from
the corridor. She and the others shouted out of the window for help, but then
the people in the corridor broke down the door. They were in camouflage and
mostly wearing masks, and Alyona believes from the way they spoke that they
were not from Odessa.

She says
they threw gas canisters, broken glass and possibly sound-light grenades over
the cupboard those inside had pushed over the entrance.

“We said ‘We
give up,’ and they came in and made everyone lie on the floor,” Alyona recalls.

Then,
Alyona says, others came who told the first attackers to leave the women alone.
There was an argument, she says, then the second group protected her and her
fellow protesters with shields and took them out by the back door. Alyona
believes this second group, who were dressed in ordinary clothes and were not
aggressive, were local pro-Ukrainians.

Meanwhile the Ukrainian State Security Service says
toxic chemicals were used in the Trade Unions House fire, and the violence was
orchestrated and financed from outside with the connivance of local police who,
along with emergency services, did not arrive at Kulykove Pole Square until
hours after the clashes began.

Freelance journalist and writer Lily Hyde can be reached at [email protected].

Editor’s Note: This article has been produced with support from the project www.mymedia.org.ua, financially supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, and implemented by a joint venture between NIRAS and BBC Media Action.The content in this article may not necessarily reflect the views of the Danish government, NIRAS and BBC Action Media.