Research concludes the Maidan Square snipers were anti-government militants.

[leveymg]

114. I don't see any such internal contradictions.

I'll respond to your points in order.

1) The media did not clearly assign blame - they reported that both sides blamed each other. (That was what I had remembered and the various quotes to western media from the paper show there were reports that blamed the protesters.

The overall impression given by the western media is that snipers supporting the regime attacked and massacred peaceful demonstrators. That is shown to be untrue, and those reports that confirm it are cited. Reports were mixed. The better newspapers reported both sides using violence accusing each other about who the snipers were working for.

2) I have no problem with the paper explaining the choice of models used. By POV, I was referring to what seemed to me to be a biased description of the known "facts". These - in addition to the theoretical models - influence the results.
I have rarely read a paper in the field of political science that does not have detectable biases. The only ones that don't have a point of view and prove to be neutral are essentially meaningless.

3) the OP and his source claims this "proves" it was the protesters who shot people - not the government. This really overstates what the model did.
That's for the author's colleagues to show, or claim they can show by their own sources and methods. I suspect that we are both able to read this for ourselves and pick up on biases and omissions. But, that doesn't refute the study.

As to something better, I have not looked or seen anything that addresses the question and attempts to take all the independent primary sources of information into account -- and this does not attempt to do that. Most of the best reporting done reported claims from both sides and gave whatever supporting information they had.
So, we are both in agreement on that. The subject needs far more and better analysis. Same thing with the similar precedent of the "third force" snipers in Libya and Syria. Looks like the same sort of provocation.

I would guess that there will eventually be a good study of what happened, but, like with many historical reports, it might be decades before a definitive history is written about this --- and even then, there are likely to be people on both sides.
Agreed.

Unfortunately, there were people capable of doing something as deplorable as this on both sides.
I very strongly agree with you on that.