Pro-Russian Figures Assassinated in Ukraine

President Vladimir Putin, during his four-hour call-in session Thursday on the Russian program, Direct Line, referred to the shooting death of anti-fascist Ukrainian journalist Oles Buzyna’s on April 16 as a political assassination, stating that it was not the first and noting that “Ukraine is dealing with a whole string of such murders.”

Putin added: “In Ukraine, which has pretensions of being a democratic state and has aspirations to join democratic Europe, nothing of the sort is going on. Where are the killers of these people? They simply don’t exist. There is nobody who carried out the crimes and nobody who ordered them. And in Europe and North America, people prefer not to notice.”

Buzyna was assassinated Thursday morning as he was leaving his home. On Wednesday, Member of Parliament Oleg Kalashnikov was shot and killed; he was a former close associate of President Viktor Yanukovych before he was overthrown in the nazi-led Maidan coup.

The deaths underscore the warning by Lyndon LaRouche that Dr. Natalia Vitrenko, former Member of Parliament, faces the risk of assassination for her vocal opposition to the Nazi coup.

Both assassination victims were involved in the anti-Maidan movement which opposed the coup against Yanukovych in February last year. According to Ukraine media, three days ago another noted anti-fascist Ukraine journalist, Serhiy Sukhobok, was shot. In addition, a number of Yanukovych allies have died in suspicious circumstances in the last three months, according to news reports.