Aletho News

European Court of Human Rights finds Ukraine guilty of the Odessa massacre

By Uriel Araujo | March 18, 2025

On March 13, 2025, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) delivered a landmark ruling, finding Ukraine guilty of violating the right to life in the May 2, 2014, Odessa massacre. The court determined that Ukrainian authorities failed to prevent the violence that killed 48 people—mostly anti-Maidan activists trapped in the Trade Unions House fire—and neglected to conduct a proper investigation. The decision awarded €114,700 in compensation to victims’ families and survivors, spotlighting a decade of impunity.

One will have a hard time finding anything about the ECHR ruling if one looks at Western media right now; and this in itself speaks volumes about the nature of Western propaganda (yes, such is a thing).

Let us imagine for the sake of comparison, the following scenario: after a coup followed by an ultra-nationalist revolution, Russia starts rewriting History, and enforcing Russian chauvinism through a number of policies pertaining to minority ethnic groups. Russian far-right paramilitary groups grow increasingly violent while Moscow turns a blind eye to them, as reported by the Freedom House.

Then, one day, a group of far-right hooligans and activists clashed with protesters and things turned ugly, with fighting ensuing. Around 400 such activists retreated and barricaded themselves inside the nearby Trade Unions House, only to find themselves surrounded by the ultra-nationalists, who threw Molotov cocktails. The building then caught fire, flames spread rapidly, trapping those inside. Some desperately jumped from upper floors to escape, only to be beaten by the nationalist crowd below; others suffocated or burned.

Emergency response was slow—firefighters, albeit stationed just 400 meters away, took around 30 minutes to arrive despite frantic calls. By nightfall, 42 people inside the building were dead, bringing the day’s total to 48. The Russian government failed to properly investigate, as denounced by European councils and human rights groups, and, 10 years later, there was still no justice for the victims of nationalist brutality.

Can you imagine the international outrage if such scenario I just imagined were real? Well, this is pretty much what happened in Odessa—just replace “Russian nationalists” with “Ukrainian nationalists”, “Moscow” with “Kyiv”, “Russian government” with “Ukrainian government”, and there you have it.

During my PhD, when I was conducting fieldwork and research in the Rostov-on-Don area in southern Russia, I also visited Luhansk (Donbas) at a time when the Donbas war (which started in 2014 and has not ended) was being described as yet another “frozen conflict”. One of the events I attended, on May 2, was a tribute in memory of the victims of Odessa Massacre, which was also attended by MP Oleg Akimov (with the local “rebel” government) and Anna Soroka, who led an initiative to report Ukrainian state terrorism crimes to international courts.

That day, in 2019, marked the fifth anniversary of the Odessa tragedy, and the location chosen, in Luhansk, to hold the event in honor of the victims was in front of the place, on a road, where Donbas residents, mostly civilians, who perished during a Ukrainian offensive in 2015, are buried.

At that time in 2015, the city was without electricity for several days, so that keeping the bodies in the morgue was impossible (and access to other places was blocked by Kyiv’s attacks), so many of the decomposing bodies, already unrecognizable, were, in that chaotic scenario, buried in a kind of mass grave. Next to it, a chapel was later built in memory of the tragedy. By honoring the dead of Odessa in that particular place, they linked both tragedies, symbolically uniting the relatives of the victims. Some residents held portraits of their deceased relatives, possibly buried there without identification, and, somewhat confusingly, one of the residents who was in Odessa on the day of the massacre gave his emotional account. For them, in a way, Luhansk was Odessa—and Donetsk was Odessa.

One should thus never underestimate the tremendous symbolic and emotional importance that the events in Odessa hold for many in Eastern Ukraine, including the disputed region of Donbas. The Odessa massacre unfolded amid post-Maidan chaos, as pro-Ukrainian nationalists (including football ultras and Right Sector members) clashed with anti-Maidan demonstrators. The former besieged the Trade Unions House, and burned it with Molotov cocktails thereby killing dozens, as mentioned. Police stood by, with evidence of complicity, and subsequent investigations stalled.

Since 2014, Ukraine’s nationalist surge has repeatedly marginalized Russian and pro-Russian communities. The Maidan uprising, while often described as a broad-based revolt against corruption (which it also was), in fact empowered far-right groups like Right Sector and Svoboda, whose fascistic anti-Russian rhetoric and actions gained tacit state tolerance—not to mention the Azov Regiment.

Language laws, such as the 2019 bill mandating Ukrainian in public life, sidelined Russian speakers (about a third of the population), thereby fueling further alienation. It is no wonder the massacre quickly became a grim symbol. Pro-Russian victims were vilified as separatists by post-Maidan Ukrainian media and government, their deaths downplayed, and perpetrators shielded.

This pattern, once again, extends beyond Odessa. Far-right militias like the Azov Battalion, once fringe vigilantes, were folded into the National Guard, their neo-Nazi roots overlooked as they fought “pro-Russia rebels” in Donbas. Public glorification of WWII-era nationalist Stepan Bandera, whose forces collaborated with Nazis and massacred minorities, has surged, with statues and street names proliferating, despite protests from Jewish, Greek, Hungarian, Romanian, and Polish groups, and from Warsaw.

Attacks on Russian cultural sites, harassment of Orthodox Church parishes tied to the Moscow Patriarchate (founded over a thousand years ago, in 988) as well as other religious organizations, and unchecked hate crimes against minorities—often by ultranationalist gangs—signal in all a state unwilling to curb extremism when it aligns with anti-Russian aims.

Kyiv’s blind eye isn’t just strategic; it’s structural. Post-Maidan governments reliant on nationalist support and their military and paramilitary muscle have not just avoided alienating these factions, but have rather embraced and empowered them, in the most cynical and hypocritical way.

The ECHR ruling thus exposes this Faustian bargain: justice for Odessa’s victims was sacrificed to preserve a fragile unity rooted in chauvinism. As Ukraine touts its European aspirations, the verdict demands reckoning—not just with one day’s horrors, but with a decade of pandering to far-right forces at the expense of its own people, Russian-speaking or otherwise.

Until that happens, Odessa remains a wound unhealed, and a warning unheeded. Whatever one’s stance on the ongoing conflict in Ukraine is, any fair and balanced assessment of the issue must include topics such as the Donbass war, the Odessa massacre, and the neo-Nazism problem, including but not limited to the Azov Regiment. Those are part of the blind spot within the Western narrative on the matter. With the latest ECHR ruling (largely underreported), a small part of it is finally coming to light.

Uriel Araujo, PhD is an anthropology researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts.

March 18, 2025 - Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, Ukraine