On July 24, several hundred cyclists drove their bikes to the Kyiv City Hall, demanding to upgrade Ukraine’s traffic laws to protect the rights of the bicyclists on the road.
Protesters complained about car drivers not considering them equal traffic participants, and often behaving dangerously towards them.
The protest was invoked by a recent high-profile road accident. On July 16, Vyacheslav Moskalevsky, director of Roshen confectionery corporation owned by ex-President Petro Poroshenko, hit a cyclist on the highway in the southern part of Kyiv. The cyclist was riding as part of a 40-member group of cyclists, participants of a local amateur cycling club, who were conducting a training.
The cyclists interpreted Moskalevsky’s actions as an intentional attack. When they tried to block his car with their bikes to make him wait for the police to come, he rode over several bikes and left.
While Moskalevsky said he was sorry for the incident, he also expressed irritation from having cyclists riding in groups on the general road and defended his actions.
Protesters blocked the Khreshchatyk Street for three minutes to draw the attention of the cars passing by. After the rally ended, nearly 100 cyclists drove around the downtown to show, in their words, that Kyiv is a bicycle city and it needs to change appropriately.
