File:Who Killed the Kiev Protesters A 3-D Model Holds the Clues - The New York Times.pdf


 * Source
 * Who Killed the Kiev Protesters? A 3-D Model Holds the Clues - Mattathias Schwartz, The New York Times, May 30, 2018

The report

 * Euromaidan Event Reconstruction - SITU
 * ''The information shown here is based on data made available to SITU by the Ukrainian legal team.

Analysis
Ivan Katchanovski on Facebook, June 1, 2018

The NYT publishes openly fabricated 3-D analysis of the Maidan massacre by a US architecture company without any fact check. The NYT deliberately ignores my extensive academic studies of the Maidan massacre and studies by two other political scientists with similar findings and relies instead on a Ukrainian graduate student, Maidan lawyers, and easily verifiable fabrications by the architecture company. Since all information cited by the NYT is available on the architecture company website, anyone who is able and wants to see videos and graphics, read forensic medical examinations in English or Ukrainian from the official investigation, and has common knowledge of 3 dimensions can replicate this fabrication and similar fabrication by the official investigation and replicate my analysis showing that the protesters were killed not by the Berkut police but “snipers” from the Maidan-controlled buildings. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/magazine/ukraine-protest-video.html http://maidan.situplatform.com/report/3

The NYT falsely equates the Maidan massacre as a false flag finding with “pro-Russia sources” and de facto dismisses independent and not funded by external sources academic studies by Western scholars specializing in research of conflicts and political violence in post-Soviet states. Specifically, my content analysis presented in online video appendixes of my papers shows “snipers” or spotters on the roofs and top floors of various Maidan-controlled buildings. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9o-XTOVDgA The latent content analysis of well-known videos of the massacre in slow motion shows bullets flying into direction of the protesters from the back and side from top to bottom directions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uqopz1xKyFw

My video appendixes and papers contain or cite testimonies of more than 200 direct and indirect witnesses, primarily Maidan protesters, including some 40 wounded Maidan protesters about “snipers” in the Maidan-controlled buildings, in particular, massacring the Maidan protesters. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU0jxKJ4LaY They were accepted for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association and a joint conference by the Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Uppsala University and the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies.

The NYT did not report admissions by the Prosecutor General of Ukraine on his Facebook page that his GPU funded the “volunteer” work of this graduate student concerning the Maidan massacre and that this person collaborated with an outlet of the Peoples Front on this. My study found that its Fatherland predecessor party was involved in the Maidan massacre, and Peoples Front leaders were accused by various Ukrainian politicians, including Savchenko, and by five Georgians of organizing the massacre. The NYT accepts at face value analysis by a politically-motivated and GPU-funded Ukrainian graduate student in unknown field, and ballistic trajectory analysis, done by anonymous experts of the architectural firm on Maidan lawyers order and by Ukrainian government medical experts. It not only has no problem that such analysis by non-experts is used by the GPU investigation and Maidan lawyers as key evidence in the Maidan massacre trial but louds this fact.

The same concerns failure by the GPU investigation for more than four years to conduct such analysis by ballistic experts, specifically even after an explicit court order more than a year ago, and the failure of the architecture firm to use any forensic ballistic expert to determine the bullets trajectory. It is noteworthy that a US ballistic expert, used by the architecture firm, only conducted forensic audio analysis of bullet gunshots that killed three protesters from video fragments and he was not given locations and directions of bullet wounds in forensic medical examinations. The failure to do such simple ballistic analysis by ballistic experts is the dog that did not bark because ballistic experts would determine that the protesters could not have been physically shot by the police from the Berkut barricades but by “snipers” from Maidan-controlled buildings. One does not needs to be a ballistic expert to see that locations of wounds in the back and on the sides and top to bottom directions of wounds specified in forensic medical reports and positions of killed protesters facing Berkut in the videos cannot physically match with Berkut police positions located on similar horizontal level on the ground in front of them.

The wounds locations and directions of in all three cases of killed protesters included in the 3-D analysis by anonymous experts of this architecture company are changed significantly from the wound locations and directions in the official forensic medical examinations. Both NYT video and the architecture company video show that they moved torso wounds of Dmytriv from his right and left sides to front and back areas of the body and reduced a large vertical top to bottom angle of these wounds to a slight angle in 3d image of this protester body. They separately showed his straight sitting vertical position in BBC and Belgian VTM videos at the moment of his killing and separately showed practically horizontal ballistic trajectory pointing to a Berkut barricade on the same horizontal level without any calculation or measurement provided. They omitted this 3-d image of his body and even fabricated wounds locations from the ballistic trajectory graph, since these wounds locations and his position still would not fit a gunshot trajectory from Berkut barricade positions. This ballistic trajectory matches a sector of fire reported without any calculations or explanations by other medical experts for the official investigation. http://maidan.situplatform.com/report/23

The forensic medical examinations precisely specify that Dmytriv was shot between front and middle lines of the right side of his body with bullet exiting slightly to the back of the middle line in the left side 20.5cm lower from top to bottom direction and with 33 cm long straight wound channel. Elementary calculation, which can be done by entering this data in any online right angle triangle calculation tool, shows that this wound height difference corresponds to 38 vertical degrees angle. This angle in the same calculation using 75m approximate distance from the Dmytriv location to the Berkut barricade location in Google Earth Professional would correspond to an invisible shooter located in the air almost 60m over the Berkut barricade if he or she shot this protester. This is clearly and with 100% probability physically impossible unless one were to believe that there were invisible Berkut policemen shooting from from dozens meters in the air above their barricade or that bullets do not fly at such relatively short ranges at basically straight line but change their directions, like guided missiles.

The original forensic medical examination in Ukrainian described locations of entry and exit wounds of Dmytriv, respectively, on the right and left sides in the areas of middle axillary (underarm) lines with right to left, top to bottom, and somewhat front to back direction (p 15). But in its English translation, the entry wound location is changed to the right side at the front inguinal (groin) line (p. 3). In December 2015, a complex medical report, which did not examine the body but relied on the original forensic medical examination, gave basically the same Berkut barricade ballistic trajectory without any explanation and calculation, and also changed the wound locations to between inguinal (groin) lines (pp. 12, 24). The medical terms in Ukrainian are similar. But both examinations and both their Ukrainian language original and English translations explicitly stated that these wounds were on the right and left side surfaces of the body and not in front and in the back as the NYT video and the architecture firm 3-D model show. The text of these examinations and their English translations were published for the first time on the architecture company website.

A Maidan lawyer visually confirmed at the Maidan massacre trial that these wounds locations of Dmytriv were in the sides and not in front and the back, as in the NYT and architecture firm 3-D videos (2:59:33). Anyone can see that they are in significantly different locations. Photos of these wounds from the original forensic medical examination were showed during the trial. A Berkut lawyer also noted that the assumption that the shoulder and sides wounds were from the same bullet is contrary to the forensic medical examination which showed opposite directions of the entry and exit wounds in the right shoulder and in the right and left sides, i.e. front bottom to top and top to bottom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeuvRDSN__0?t=2h59m33s

The assumption in the 3-D model that Dmytriv was shot by the single bullet is also contradicted by testimony of Mykhailo Khomik that Dmytriv was shot by "a sniper" from the Hotel Ukraina. This protester is seen in a white helmet in the videos of the Dmytriv shooting at that time and place near this hotel and in this photo carrying Dyhdalovych. His testimony that I cited in my APSA paper was posted in a Facebook group concerning the Maidan massacre: “Майдан 18-20 февраля,” https://www.facebook.com/maydan18february/photos/a.609871522427014.1073741828.607486945998805/730305700383595

This BBC video at 0:56 shows the Dmytriv shooting and his position versus the Berkut barricade. It clearly shows that he and the Berkut barricade were nearly on the same horizontal levels. The Google Earth professional shows that the barricade was 1 or 2 meters higher than Dmytriv and Dyhdalovych with the distance between them 70-75 meters. This corresponds to just 2 degrees angle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz9FwtFI5Kw

The forensic medical reports also state that Dmytriv was wounded in his right shoulder from bottom to top direction with this entry wound is 5 cm lower than the entry wound, but the 3d animation also misrepresents this direction. It is also clear that architects cannot make such basic mistakes. http://maidan.situplatform.com/report/23

But matching the exact wound locations in the forensic medical reports and their directions with his location in this 3d analysis and his position in the videos corresponds both in horizontal and vertical directions to a bullet trajectory from a top of the Bank Arkada. These buildings were located to the right of the Berkut barricade and their roofs were identified by my analysis in the Maidan massacre APSA paper, in particular, by testimonies of both Maidan protesters and an SBU Alfa commanders and snipers, as locations of Maidan snipers.

Similar fabrications of wounds locations and directions and the ballistic trajectories concerned the 3-d analysis of killings of Dyhdalovych and Parashchuk. The 3-d architecture model moved the exit wound location from around the middle line of the back of Dyhdalovych body in forensic medical and clothing examinations significantly to the right and changed similar large vertical angle from a top and bottom direction and 17 cm difference in height of entry and exit wounds to a small angle and then to de facto horizontal level angle. In case of the Parashchuk killing, his entry and exit wounds were reported in forensic medical examinations in the back of his head on the left side with front to back direction and somewhat top to bottom direction, but the 3d analysis changed the direction to right to left and the vertical angle to practically horizontal. In these two cases, the 3-d models of their bodies and their positions were also omitted in the ballistic trajectory projection. http://maidan.situplatform.com/report/23

Dyhdalovych wife stated in her recent Ukrainian media interview that Ivan Kulish told her that he saw that Dyhdalovych was killed by a sniper on the roof of the Bank Arkada. https://censor.net.ua/r462080 Kulish is seen in the videos following Dyhdalovych when they both went to evacuate just shot Dmytriv. This video at 1:54 shows the Dyhdalovych shooting in the same spot when he and Kulish went to evacuate Dmytriv. Kulish, who testified that he saw that Dyhdalovych was killed by a sniper on the Bank Arkada roof, is in the video near him at that moment. He was killed during the war in Donbas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2zZiZhajzw

During the examination of the Parashchuk case at the Maidan massacre trial April 26, 2018, Berkut lawyers also stated that his position and wound location suggest that he was shot from the Bank Arkada. (3m) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbmr0WWBJDE

The 3-D analysis uses incorrect locations and timing of many videos because of clear difference between the Maidan square and Instututska street and timing of the Berkut police on the Maidan square after the police fled this square.

These Maidan-controlled buildings are within the range estimated by the US ballistic expert, based on audio analysis of gunshots in the videos, of the distance between the shooters and these three killed protesters provided that sound of other weapons, such SKS carbine as hunting versions of Kalashnikov, which were not examined by this expert would produce similar ranges. In another dog that did not bark, the GPU investigation failed to do similar forensic audio analysis of gunshots under the pretext of poor sound quality in videos of the massacre.

Like in the cases of the Maidan massacre and staged Bulatov kidnapping during the Maidan, the recent admission that the highly publicized killing of a Russian journalist in Ukraine was staged by top Ukraine leaders and law enforcement agencies and acceptance at the face value initial claims by Ukrainian officials concerning this killing show how easily the Western media and politicians can be fooled and propagate fake news, especially when it is politically convenient.