A recording of a phone conversation between EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet on Ukraine has been leaked online.
In the recording, Urmas Paet told Baroness Catherine Ashton that there was an “increasing understanding” in Ukraine that ousted President Viktor Yanukovych’s government was not responsible for the deaths of police and protesters during clashes last month in Kiev.
Urmas Paet said some Ukrainians believed elements from within the new regime in Kiev had employed snipers.
He said Ukrainian doctor Olga Bogomolets had told him that victims from both sides were shot by snipers using the same weapons.
However, Dr. Olga Bogomolets told the UK’s Telegraph newspaper that she had never had access to victims from the government side and was unable to comment on how they had been killed.
Urmas Paet confirmed that the conversation with Baroness Ashton had taken place on February 26.
In a news conference on Wednesday, Urmas Paet called for an inquiry into the deaths in Kiev, but warned against using his comments to discredit the new government.
“I call for journalists to treat this recording very carefully. I was talking about the theories there were about what happened in Ukraine,” he said.
Viktor Yanukovych fled Ukraine shortly after the bloodshed and is now in Russia.
Moscow has since flooded the Crimea region with military personnel, claiming that Viktor Yanukovych had asked for their help.
However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov earlier insisted Moscow had no power to remove what it calls “self-defense forces” currently guarding key sites in Crimea, explaining that they were not Russian troops.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) says it has sent 35 unarmed military monitors to Ukraine in response to a request from Kiev.
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