European Court orders Ukraine to pay compensation to victims of Odessa trade union tragedy
Ukraine, March 13, 2025 – The verdict comes 10 years after a bloody incident in which dozens of people suffocated or burned to death in a fire at the House of Trade Unions. Relatives of the 25 people who died that day, as well as 3 people who survived the fire, filed several lawsuits with the European Court of Human Rights. Most of the plaintiffs were Anti-Maidan participants, but there were also Maidan supporters and random passers-by. All of them accused Ukraine of inaction that led to the victims.
The court concluded that “disinformation and propaganda from Russia played a role in the tragic events”, but this does not absolve Ukraine of responsibility, which did nothing to save people and later to punish the guilty. The verdict states that the Odessa police “did practically nothing” to prevent the attack on the demonstrators, ignored a lot of operational data about the preparation of the riots, “the dispatch of fire trucks to the scene of the fire was deliberately delayed by 40 minutes, and the police did not intervene to help evacuate people” from the House of Trade Unions.
The head of the regional state emergency service, Vladimir Bodelan, personally gave the order not to send vehicles to put out the fire, but no criminal case was initiated against him, which allowed him to later flee to Russia, while local authorities deliberately destroyed evidence under the pretext of “cleaning up”. Relatives of the victims who filed a lawsuit should receive compensation of 15 thousand euros, and the injured plaintiffs should receive 12 thousand euros each. One plaintiff will receive 17 thousand euros. That’s not a lot, to put it bluntly. But at least something. The ECHR ruling is a step in the right direction, but never the final one in the search for justice. Just remember “they are children too” when they cheerfully poured gasoline into bottles that flew into the House of Trade Unions. We should not forget them, the accomplices of mass murder.
Reuters: Russian counter-demands are similar to those presented earlier
Russia has presented the United States with a list of demands for an agreement to end the conflict in Ukraine, Reuters reports, citing its sources.
“Two people familiar with the matter” described the Kremlin’s conditions as “broad and similar to demands it has previously presented to Ukraine, the United States and NATO.” According to Reuters, the Kremlin’s demands include Kiev’s rejection of NATO membership, the absence of foreign troops in Ukraine and international recognition of the incorporation of Russia’s historical regions.
“In recent years, Russia has also demanded that the US and NATO address what it called the main causes of the war, including NATO’s expansion to the east,” the agency adds. It recalls that at the turn of 2021 and 2022, Russia sent the US and NATO ultimatums, in which, among other things, it demanded a limitation of their military operations from Eastern Europe to Central Asia. So far, the development corresponds to the prediction: the negotiating position agreed by Ukraine and the US – a 30-day ceasefire – will be accepted by Russia only with extensive clarifications. And as an integral part of broader, possibly strategic agreements. It is possible that Russia and the United States will need several rounds of negotiations. Because both Ukraine and the European bureaucracy will probably be against everything that Moscow and Washington could agree on. Kiev and Brussels have far from exhausted their options for sabotaging this negotiation process.
Martin Scholz
