A former ally of deposed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych has been found shot to death in his home in Kiev.

The Ukrainian interior ministry said Oleg Kalashnikov, a former member of the Ukrainian parliament, was found dead Wednesday evening. It said he had died of gunshot wounds but did not say whether it was believed to be homicide or suicide.

Kalashnikov was a deputy for the Party of Regions in Ukraine’s previous parliament.

At least six former Ukrainian government officials from Yanukovych’s time have died over the past two months in various circumstances that police have said were most likely suicides.

Yanukovych fled in February 2014 after months of increasingly violent protests. He later resurfaced in Russia.

deadken posted:

after the 24/7 front page coverage of the nemtsov murder i'm very excited to hear some weighty discussion of this man's sensible decision to suicide himself to death all over the news all day every day

about a month ago william blum made this comparison too lol. the anti-empire report, every rhizzonite should subscribe!!

Following the murder of Russian opposition leader, and former Deputy Prime Minister, Boris Nemtsov in Moscow on February 27, the West had a field day. Ranging from strong innuendo to outright accusation of murder, the Western media and politicians did not miss an opportunity to treat Vladimir Putin as a football practice dummy.

The European Parliament adopted a resolution urging an international investigation into Nemtsov’s death and suggested that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the European Council, and the United Nations could play a role in the probe.

US Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham introduced a Senate Resolution condemning the Nemtsov murder. The Resolution also called on President Obama and the international community to pursue an independent investigation into the murder and redouble efforts to advance free speech, human rights, and the rule of law in Russia. In addition, it urged Obama to continue to sanction human rights violators in the Russian Federation and to increase US support to human rights activists in Russia.

So it went … all over the West.

Meanwhile, in the same time period in Ukraine, outside of the pro-Russian area in the southeast, the following was reported:

January 29: Former Chairman of the local government of the Kharkov region, Alexey Kolesnik, hanged himself.
February 24: Stanislav Melnik, a member of the opposition party (Partia Regionov), shot himself.
February 25: The Mayor of Melitopol, Sergey Valter, hanged himself a few hours before his trial.
February 26: Alexander Bordiuga, deputy director of the Melitopol police, was found dead in his garage.
February 26: Alexander Peklushenko, former member of the Ukrainian parliament, and former mayor of Zaporizhi, was found shot to death.
February 28: Mikhail Chechetov, former member of parliament, member of the opposition party (Partia Regionov), “fell” from the window of his 17th floor apartment in Kiev.
March 14: The 32-year-old prosecutor in Odessa, Sergey Melnichuk, “fell” to his death from the 9th floor.

The Partia Regionov directly accused the Ukrainian government in the deaths of their party members and appealed to the West to react to these events. “We appeal to the European Union, PACE , and European and international human rights organizations to immediately react to the situation in Ukraine, and give a legal assessment of the criminal actions of the Ukrainian government, which cynically murders its political opponents.”

We cannot conclude from the above that the Ukrainian government was responsible for all, or even any, of these deaths. But neither can we conclude that the Russian government was responsible for the death of Boris Nemtsov, the American media and politicians notwithstanding. A search of the mammoth Nexus news database found no mention of any of the Ukrainian deceased except for the last one above, Sergey Melnichuk, but this clearly is not the same person. It thus appears that none of the deaths on the above list was ascribed to the Western-allied Ukrainian government.

tpaine posted:

it sounds like they shot, not drank, themselves to death.

LOL HAHA. BUT NOW ABOUT ISLAM