Protesters demanding a ban on communist ideology clashed with the police near the Verkhovna Rada building on Oct. 14.
Major
political groups said they had nothing to do with the clashes and
blamed agent provocateurs.
Demonstrators
exploded firecrackers, threw smoke grenades and rocks at riot police
and broke windows of the Verkhovna Rada building, while some attacked
police with long chains.
About
3,000 protesters demanded that the Rada pass bills banning communist
ideology and recognizing soldiers of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army
(UPA) as veterans. The parliament did not consider the bills, which
were sponsored by the Svoboda nationalist party.
The
new clash comes just a day after a highly publicized protest by a special police unit near the president’s office on Oct. 13 with demands
for demobilization. Some have speculated that the clashes are an
effort by the Kremlin or other forces to destabilize the situation in
Ukraine before the Oct. 26 snap parliamentary election.
The
protest was also attended by the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists
and Oleh Lyashko’s populist Radical Party. There were also
protesters who carried a flag of Dmytro Korchynsky’s
ultra-nationalist Bratstvo group.
Some
of the protesters had participated in the Svoboda-organized morning
march on the streets of Kyiv, commemorating UPA, which fought against
Nazi and Soviet troops in 1942 to 1954.
Svoboda
said it had nothing to do with the clashes. The Right Sector, a
nationalist group that had actively participated in many clashes
during the EuroMaidan revolution and after it, was also on the side
of law and order.
Boryslav
Bereza, head of the Right Sector’s information department, said on
Facebook that he was cooperating with law enforcement agencies to
detain agent provacateurs.
“Ukraine’s
enemies, both external and internal, have united to achieve their
goals,” he said. “They have common goals – to disrupt the
elections and take over Ukraine.”
Volodymyr
Aryev, a parliament member representing the Batkivshchyna party,
accused Korchynsky’s Bratstvo group of organizing the clashes and
said the attackers carried a flag of the organization.
Bratstvo’s
Vkontakte group published posts in favor of the clashes on Oct. 14.
“Online
‘Rambos’ who didn’t support the clashes for different reasons
have won,” one of the posts said. “… Don’t be surprised later
that we can’t get out of this shit.”
But
Korchynsky denied the allegations in an interview with
the gordonua.com news
site.
Korchynsky
has been accused of having ties with former President Viktor
Yanukovych and the Kremlin and of organizing clashes with police on
Bankovaya Street, near the presidential administration, on Dec.
1. Just like the protesters near the Verkhovna Rada building on Oct.
14, the demonstrators on Bankovaya Vulitsya used long chains.
Anton
Gerashchenko, an advisor to the interior minister, said that 50
protesters were arrested, and 15 police officers were injured. Some
of the police officers had their skulls or arms broken, he said.
“I
can’t rule out the idea that Russian intelligence services were
behind today’s provocation,” he said.
Interior
Minister Arsen Avakov also lambasted the organizers of the clashes.
“Who
benefited from the Rada clashes, except for Ukraine’s enemies?”
he said. “Who needed this? Only political forces that can only
prosper in chaos, only those who seek to use scuffles to score points
in the run-up to the election.”
Kyiv
Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected].
