Guilty verdicts in a criminal case denounced as a sham triggered a night of violent conflicts on Jan. 10 between Berkut riot police officers and demonstrators, injuring at least a dozen protesters.
The tense standoff lasted well past 2 a.m. on Jan. 11 as demonstrators followed buses carrying police officers and blocked their path on 109 Peremohy Ave.
Demonstrators poured paint on the windshields of the police buses, rendering them useless for driving away. People shouted "shame on you" to officers who made their way on foot past the crowd. They demanded that the officers take off their masks concealing their identities before they were allowed to pass a "corridor of shame" enforced by the protesters. It appeared that all officers were able to escape to safety. Six busloads of police reinforcements were brought in shortly before 2 a.m. on Jan. 11.
Ex-Interior Minister and former political prisoner Yuriy Lutsenko was one of the injured, seen with his face covered in blood as he was being attended to at the scene before being taken to a hospital for treatment.
Three members of parliament from the opposition Svoboda Party were also injured, allegedly by police, earlier in the evening. Police said they filmed the confrontation and will review the video as part of an investigation.
The conflict started late afternoon on Jan. 10 inside Kyiv Svyatoshinskyi district court, where guilty verdicts against the so-called "Vasylkiv terrorists" were announced.
Watch the live stream on Hromadske.tv.
The convicted men are activists from the Patriot of Ukraine civic movement. The trio — Volodymyr Shpara, Ihor Mosiychuk and Serhii Bevza — were arrested on Aug. 22, 2011 and held in pre-trial detention for two years. They were accused of plotting to dismantle a monument to Soviet Union leader Vladimir Lenin in Boryspil during Ukrainian Independence Day celebrations two days later.
Police say the search of the Patriot of Ukraine organization office in Vasylkiv, a city in Kyiv Oblast, found multiple leaflets calling for the demolition of the monument and the assassination of President Viktor Yanukovych, as well as a homemade bomb. All three denied the accusations and claimed the leaflets and the bomb were planted by police.
Casting even greater doubt about the credibility of the case is the fact that, after a local city council vote, the Lenin monument was dismantled before the alleged plot was discovered.
After two years in custody on Jan. 10, the suspects were sentenced by the Svyatoshyskyi district court to six years in prison after the guilty verdicts.
During the court hearing on Jan. 10, more than a 100 people had gathered to support the accused. After the verdict, police and protesters started clashing inside the courthouse before demonstrators outside blocked the police bus in which the convicts were being transported, according to a witness, opposition Svoboda Party member of parliament Pavlo Kyrylenko.
Soon about a half-dozen buses filled with riot police arrived, with some 40 police officers in each one. “The number of riot police was two times a number of protesters, besides that police were using tear gas and batons,” Kyrylenko said.
More than 10 people got injured in an initial spate of violence, some of them seriously, with reports of multiple broken hands and legs, as well as head injuries. Two photojournalists were injured by police and camera equipment was broken.
As of 8 p.m., more than 10 ambulances were giving medical assistance near the spot. At least six people were confirmed to be hospitalized.
The three members of parliament injured include Kyrylenko and two fellow party members — Eduard Leonov and Yuriy Bublyk. All were beaten by police. “I was beaten on my legs and hands, but I am more or less fine now,” Kyrylenko assures. “Leonov also got hands and legs injuries, Bublyk was beaten on his head.”
The news website Levey Bereg has dozens of photos of the confrontation here.
Later in the evening, Lutsenko and at least one other demonstrator were injured near 109 Peremohy Ave.
Lutsenko’s injuries caused him to faint and he suffered head wounds that, while not life-threatening, left him hospitalized in an intensive care ward.
One witness said that police targeted the former interior minister and political opponent of Yanukovych for violence. The protester, Mykola Franko, said he witnessed Lutsenko being dragged into a bus and beaten there.
Lutsenko’s wife, Iryna, said police started striking her husband when he attempted to intervene between police and protesters to bring peace to the situation.
“When people and Berkut (police) started clashing, Lutsenko got in between them, trying to calm them down. They started beating him with truncheons until he fainted,” Iryna Lutsenko told journalists. “For an hour we were trying to get Berkut (riot police officers) to show their documents and tell who gave the order. We didn’t succeed.”
Earlier, protesters interviewed by 5th TV channel after the first clash near the court building claimed they were not provoking the police. But officers say they had to call in Berkut riot police because of the disruptions caused by the demonstrators. “People were blocking police cars carrying the convicts and throwing stones, you have seen it yourself, so police just had to ask Berkut for help,” said Tetyana Malysheva, a spokeswoman for the Svyatoshynsky district police station.
Demonstrators on Jan. 10-11 confront police and demand that officers take off their masks.
It is just this sort of violence that may prompt the United States and the European Union to slap targeted sanctions against top Ukrainian officials implicated in the police crackdown and other human rights abuses. Earlier this month, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a resolution threatening sanctions if police continued to resort to violence, as they have periodically since the EuroMaidan protests began.
Video shows injured ex-Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko.
The protests are entering their 52nd day on Jan. 11, triggered by widespread opposition to alleged corruption in the Yanukovych administration and the president’s foreign policy pivot on Nov. 21 away from the EU and towards Russia, in exchange for a $15 billion bailout loan from the Kremlin and a 33 percent discount on Russian natural gas imports.
Moreover, each incident of police violence has motivated even larger crowds at the weekly Sunday protests that have been going on since Nov. 24. The eighth consecutive Sunday protest is scheduled for noon on Jan. 12.
About a dozen ambulances remained on standby past 2 a.m. on Jan. 12. Singer Ruslana, the informal emcee of the EuroMaidan movement, arrived at the scene to plea for calm. By 2:35 a.m. on Jan. 11, Hromadske TV was reporting that demonstrators were leaving the scene, feeling victorious at forcing police officers to take off their masks.
Watch the live stream on Hromadske.tv.
Kyiv Post staff writer Daryna Shevchenko can be reached at [email protected].
