Police on the evening of Oct. 18 again clashed with protesters at their tent camp near the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament in Kyiv, and for some time prevented demonstrators from entering the camp.
Meanwhile, scheduled talks between President Petro Poroshenko and lawmakers representing the protesters failed to take place.
Protesters are calling for the creation of an anti-corruption court, the lifting of lawmakers’ immunity from prosecution, and a more fair electoral law.
During the first scuffles, police prevented protesters from bringing sleeping mats to the camp: protesters countered by throwing them over the police officers’ heads into the fenced-off protest camp.
During the second clash, the police advanced on demonstrators in one of the tents and detained 11 people. The police said that the demonstrators had been detained for refusing to give back police shields they had taken from the police.
On Oct. 17, demonstrators took about 30 unattended police shields piled on a pavement. They promised to give them back as soon as the tent protest was over.
Later the police released the 11 demonstrators.
The police also blocked streets leading to the tent camp to anyone without press accreditation for some time, claiming that this was necessary because of the protests. Later in the evening the police unblocked the streets.
Three lawmakers from the Poroshenko Bloc who are critical of the president – Sergii Leshchenko, Svitlana Zalishchuk and Mustafa Nayyem, as well as Yuriy Derevyanko from ex-Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s Movement of New Forces and Yuriy Levchenko from the Svoboda nationalist party, were delegated by the demonstrators to talk to Poroshenko.
However, Poroshenko agreed to meet only with Leshchenko, Zalishchuk and Nayyem and refused to meet Derevyanko and Levchenko. As a result, the lawmakers rejected the talks because they said that they could not legitimately represent the protesters without Derevyanko and Levchenko.
On Oct. 17, thousands of protesters rallied, clashed with police, and set up more than 50 tents near the Verkhovna Rada building.
The rally is one of the biggest demonstrations since the 2013-2014 EuroMaidan Revolution and the first large-scale protest tent camp since 2014.
The police estimated the turnout at 6,000, while protest leaders put the figure at 10,000. Hundreds of protesters stayed at the camp during Oct. 18.
Under the protesters’ pressure, the Rada scheduled consideration of the electoral law and lawmakers’ immunity for Oct. 19. The protesters have pledged to camp out in front of the Rada until the vote and hold another major rally on Oct. 19.
One of the rally’s organizers, Saakashvili, said that Poroshenko should resign if he fails to meet the protesters’ demands.
