Odesa fire tragedy remembered 

KYIV – Commemorations were held in Odesa to remember those who died a year ago in clashes between supporters and opponents of the government in Kyiv. In all, 48 people died in Odesa in the May 2, 2014, violence. Trouble began with fights between two factions marching in the city on the Black Sea. It ended with a fire at a labor-union building where supporters of autonomy for Ukraine’s east took shelter from government backers. It’s unclear how the fire started. Government supporters did throw firebombs at the building, but official accounts say those inside the building may have caused the fire by throwing firebombs from the roof of the building at their opponents. Forty-three people died in the building. In Kyiv, about 1,000 demonstrators gathered for another commemoration, some of them carrying signs saying, “We won’t forget, we won’t forgive.” Another memorial gathering with flowers and candles took place outside the Ukrainian Embassy in Moscow. Aleksandr Zakharchenko, leader of the separatist rebels in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, on May 2 decried the Odesa deaths as the work of “crowds of brutal Nazis.” (RFE/RL, with reporting by the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse)