Kharkiv bombers were trained in Russia, says Ukraine’s Security Service

“[The terrorists] were captured while attempting to attack with a flamethrower a club where soldiers and volunteers gather, as well as a shopping centre,” Markiyan Lubkivskiy, a senior adviser in the Security Service of Ukraine, known as the SBU, posted on Facebook.

“They had planned other sabotage and terrorist activities. Discovered was a Russian-produced ‘Shmil’ [flamethrower]. According to the testimony of detainees, the group was trained in Belgorod (Russian Federation).”

Hundreds of marchers were marking the one-year anniversary of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s flight from the country in its second largest city, with a population of some 1.43 million, when an explosion ripped through the crowd.

Eyewitnesses believe the explosive device was timed to explode after all the marchers had arrived on the square, but a delay and a truck moving ahead of the marchers prevented the bomb taking significantly more casualties.

“The march was delayed by 10 minutes, then just as people started to move, we saw the explosion go off just one hundred meters away, to our left and on the road side. It seemed like the device was hidden in the snow near a tree,” Dmitriy Komaykov, one of the march participants, told the Kyiv Post.

“Luckily a truck was maneuvering there, and it took most of the shrapnel. I saw two dead, lying in blood, just next to the truck, which was completely torn apart by metal shards. Can you imagine if it had been later? My wife and I went to the march with our baby daughter and our older son.”

A video of the scene in Kharkiv after the attack. Warning: Graphic content.

A local journalist and contributor to Euromaidan PR, Vasiliy Ponomarev, told the Kyiv Post he had seen at least three people killed.

“I heard an explosion but thought at first it was a banger, then I looked in that direction and saw people start to fall,” he said. “Thirty steps from me I saw a man with his head smashed, covered in blood. He was dead.”

“Another was lying on the ground and medics rushed to resuscitate him. They couldn’t. Three ambulances arrived, one took another guy who was bleeding, his guts were ripped open. They put him in an ambulance but they had no defibrillator. Eventually he died too.”

National Security and Defense Council head, Olexandr Turchynov, said that a joint operation by the SBU and Interior Ministry had resulted in the arrests of “four members of the group that organized the explosion, seized weapons, including a rocket launcher.”

“The anti-terrorist operation continues,” he added. “In connection with the attack the city introduced the highest level of terrorist threat and initiated an anti-terrorist operation.”

The Interior Ministry confirmed that there had been a terror attack on the march and said that one of those killed and five of the wounded were police officers.

“Today at 1320 during a peaceful march of EuroMaidan activists and patriotic citizens, there was an explosion. About 11 people are injured. Two died on the spot, including a police officer,” read a statement on the Ministry’s website.

“At Moscow avenue near the metro station Marshal Zhukov an unknown explosive device went off in the crowd. There was an explosion, which wounded about 11 people, five of them policemen.

“Explosive and forensic experts are currently working at the site alongside the investigation team, and medics are attending to the victims.”

The attack in Kharkiv is just the latest in a series of successful and unsuccessful terror attacks in the country, with an attempt to blow up a restaurant in Odessa thwarted by police overnight, according to local media. Ukrainian security officials, speaking to Mashable in December on condition of anonymity, said they believe the terror campaign to be sponsored by Russia as an attempt to destabilise the country.

Kyiv Post news editor Maxim Tucker can be reached at tucker@kyivpost.com or via Twitter @MaxRTucker/