Woyzeck in Donetsk

Life imitating art: so tedious, but what can you do? Sometimes it happens.

The mystery surrounding the attack by the Latvian OMON (a contradiction in terms, if there was one) on the Ministry of Interior building in Riga has finally been solved. It took 23 years, but good things come to those who wait. I wrote about the tragedy -- resulting in five casualties -- after I had paid a visit to the Latvian capital at the end of July. 

The attack was provoked by a "third party," shooting at the OMON and the police, citizens, everybody, from the roof of the Ministry of Interior building.

On video footage from the attack, the tracer rounds shot by the OMON are going up, towards the roof. The idea that they are shooting at someone sounds plausible to me.

The crime scene: 6 Raiņa bulvāris

Yet nobody knew for sure who the third party was.

Until now, that is. Now we know, thanks to an interview granted to Novaya Gazeta by Vladimir Antyufeyev -- the current deputy prime minister of Dontesk People's Republic -- and summarized in The Moscow Times. If anybody should know, it's Antyufeyev. He was one of those boys doing the shooting in the street.

It was the masons. Or the Mansons. The Band! They did it. And the ground is hollow. Hear, hear!

Late at night, a severed head rolls out, just about here. A fellow saw it, thought it was a hedgehog. Two days later...

Enough! All you Büchner fans know the story already; for those who don't, this is the perfect opportunity to familiarize yourself with the twisted play. Go watch the opera, for God's sake! (The masons have messed with the name of it -- Wozzeck instead of Woyzeck -- but you'll figure it out.) 

If you don't like the idea of Vladimir Putin's bagman acting like a broke-ass paranoid schizophrenic from the 19th century, there really isn't much I can do.

These are the facts, that is all.

Still, I believe the Bilderbergs did something to mess the story up. Back in 1991... or afterwards. It just doesn't sound right.

Correct me if I'm mistaken, Ant.

Isn't that the LATVIAN flag

flying in the pole of the Riga Castle

in the photo below?

From 1991 to 2014 It's a Short Leap... Backwards

IN THE EVENING of 20 January the special unit of Soviet police, OMON, storms Latvia's Ministry of Interior. The crowd surrounding the building fights back. The OMON shoot their way into the building, they trash the offices, and flee. There will be five casualties: two policemen, two tv cameramen and a high school kid.

In the Latvian OMON serves an officer called Vladimir Antyufeyev.


  

   

A week earlier the occupying army has attacked the crowd defending the tv tower in Vilnius, the capital of neighboring Lithuania. The images of civilians being crushed by tanks have spread throughout the world. It is happening again, everyone seems to think. Is this what perestroika and glasnost stood for, after all?

The next day barricades start going up in Riga.

Historians haven't been able to show an airtight motive for the strike of 20 January. According to one theory, the whole event was a result of a provocation. There was allegedly a third party on the roof of the Ministry of Interior shooting at the crowd and the OMON.

The guide at the Museum of Barricades gave his best guesses on who the Third Party Shooters were. GRU or KGB, he said, or somebody on their payroll.

During the war in Ukraine, 23 years later, officer Antyufeyev pops up again.

He's bold enough to use his own name now, unlike in Transnistria. The amount of self-confidence "The Ant" employs is an alarming progress report on the memory disorder of the human race - and the speed at which the patient's condition has deteriorated. The bastard's arrogance, however, is not a sign of some universal revisionism that has replaced the horror with which we all witnessed the dying throes of the Soviet Union.

Oh, did I forget? Antyufeyev is the deputy prime minister of "Donetsk People's Republic" now. Even a blind pig living on truffles sees he's no separatist from Ukraine, but the last of the KGB Mohicans instead.

Well... that is not news any more, is it?

_____

4 August, 2014

The New York Times revealed today another reason why The Ant can use his Christian name without a care in the world... that is, the statute of limitations.

I thought there was no such thing for murder.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/08/04/world/europe/separatist-pro-russian-leadership-in-eastern-ukraine-with-a-goal-of-establishing-government.html?referrer=

The Times stole my story, but all is forgiven, since this closing line by Antyufeyev himself will become an instant cult classic, 

... we are not doctors, but lawyers and political scientists.

Do the results of The Ant's work, above and below, look like political science to you?

Sorry for the poor quality of the pics... you probably can't decipher the names. They are: Sergejs Konoņenko and Vladimirs Gomanovičs (the policemen), 

Andris Slapiņš and Gvido Zvaigzne* (the cameramen) and Edijs Riekstiņš  (the high school kid).  Raimonds Salmins, whose memorial stone is also in Bastejkalns park, was killed during the August coup, exactly seven months later.

*) I didn't find Zvaigzne's stone, but his picture is above, the penultimate one.

___

The scene of the crime -

6 Raina bulvaris

Many thanks for the guide at the museum of 1991 barricades for inspiring conversation and facts instead of fiction. You guys did, and do, a wonderful job! All remaining errors in this post are, of course, all mine.

AND THE STORY CONTINUES... here!