by Gordon M. Hahn
It needs to be acknowledged that, yes, as some claimed there was foreign involvement in the 20 February 2014 terrorist sniper attacks on Ukraine’s Maidan that killed some 47, wounded more, and sparked the overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. However, according to information from an Italian documentary film (www.occhidellaguerra.it/ucraina-le-verita-nascoste-parlano-cecchini-maidan/) and published on Facebook by the world’s leading expert on the Maidan sniper attack, Ottawa University Professor Ivan Katchanovski, it appears not to have been a group managed by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s advisor, Vyacheslav Surkov, or a Russian ‘wet team’ as claimed by US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. Rather, it included both Lithuanian and Georgian snipers recruited by Mamuka Mamushvili, a Georgian military advisor to former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, Washington’s ‘beacon of democracy’ in Eurasia, and an American military operative, Brian Christopher Boyenger, formerly of the famous 101st Airborne Division, based in Fort Campbell, Tennessee (www.facebook.com/ivan.katchanovski/posts/1805064986190046). Mamuka Mumashvili organized and fought with the Georgian National Legion, which included according to one FB post I show below, “three retired US officers.” One of the Georgian snipers allegedly recruited by Mamulashvili and Boyenger was a member of Saakashvili’s body guard detail at the time. [*]
[ AS OF 2O NOVEMBER AN ENGLISH VERSION OF THE ITALIAN DOCUMENTARY BECAME AVAILABLE, SEE PART ONE AT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR1NFI6TBH0 – SEE PART TWO AT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0rR2Fh1zWI ]
The following is a Google translation provided by Prof. Katchanovski of the transcript of the bombshell Italian documentary which contains the confessions of purported Georgian snipers and describes Boyenger and Mamulashvili:
Prof. Katchanovski assesses the information in the Italian documentary as follows: “The information given by them appears to be generally consistent with various publicly available evidence that I examined in my studies and that was revealed at the Maidan massacre trial. This includes locations of many of the snipers in the Hotel Ukraina and the Music Conservatory, exact calibers of firearms used to massacre protesters, the involvement of the Right Sector-linked special Maidan armed company under Parasiuk’s command, and a well known video of a Maidan leader who was filmed evacuating a Maidan protester with a rifle. But my study is concerned with the research question as to which side of the conflict was involved in the massacre and not with involvement of specific persons and with identities of specific snipers and massacre organizers. Experts, government investigations, and journalists in the West, Ukraine, and Georgia can verify the identities of these people and the government document id shown by one of them” (www.facebook.com/ivan.katchanovski/posts/1805064986190046).
Georgia Today published a full-length feature article on Mamulashvili and Boyenger on 26 February 2016: http://georgiatoday.ge/news/3112/American-Ex-Paratrooper-Joins-Georgian-Legion-Fighting-in-Ukraine
US soldier Boylenger appeared in videos and photographs while in Ukraine that were posted on FB. A FB search <

Gordon M. Hahn, UKRAINE OVER THE EDGE: Russia, the West and the “New Cold War”, forthcoming from McFarland Books in December 2017.
Gordon M. Hahn, WORKING PAPER: “The Real Snipers’ Massacre, February 2014, Revised and Updated,” Gordonhahn.com Russian and Eurasian Politics, 9 March 2016, https://gordonhahn.com/2016/03/09/the-real-snipers-massacre-ukraine-february-2014-updatedrevised-working-paper/.
About the Author – Gordon M. Hahn, Ph.D., is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS), Akribis Group, San Jose, California, www.cetisresearch.org; an expert analyst at Corr Analytics, www.canalyt.com; and an analyst at Geostrategic Forecasting Corporation (Chicago), www.geostrategicforecasting.com.
Dr. Hahn is the author of the forthcoming book from McFarland Publishers Ukraine Over the Edge: Russia, the West, and the ‘New Cold War. Previously, and three well-received published books: Russia’s Revolution From Above: Reform, Transition and Revolution in the Fall of the Soviet Communist Regime, 1985-2000 (Transaction Publishers, 2002); Russia’s Islamic Threat (Yale University Press, 2007); and The Caucasus Emirate Mujahedin: Global Jihadism in Russia’s North Caucasus and Beyond (McFarland Publishers, 2014). He has published numerous think tank reports, academic articles, analyses, and commentaries in both English and Russian language media and has served as a consultant and provided expert testimony to the U.S. government.
Dr. Hahn also has taught at Boston, American, Stanford, San Jose State, and San Francisco State Universities and as a Fulbright Scholar at Saint Petersburg State University, Russia. He has been a senior associate and visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Kennan Institute in Washington DC as well as the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
