Between 1,000 and 2,000 protesters rallied on March 18 on Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Kyiv to demand the resignation of President Petro Poroshenko. Protests for Poroshenko’s resignation were also held in dozens of other cities in Ukraine.
The rally coincided with the sham election of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and the fourth anniversary of Russia’s annexation of Crimea on March 18, 2014.
Protesters dismantle metal structures on Maidan Nezalezhnosti on March 18.
The protesters called for the restoration of Ukraine’s sovereignty over Crimea and warned that the Ukrainian government should not turn into a copy of Putin’s dictatorship by violating human rights and restricting civil liberties.
The demonstrators dismantled the metal structures that had been set up on Maidan Nezalezhnosti.
The structures had been ostensibly established to commemorate Russia’s annexation of Crimea with slogans like “Crimea is ours (Ukrainian)”. The protesters argued that the real purpose of the installation was to block their rally.
Metal structures had been set up during all the previous marches for Poroshenko’s impeachment and resignation in December and February in what demonstrators saw as efforts to block them, and they had previously had to rally on other squares.
“I saw you getting back the Maidan that had been stolen from us the way Putin stole Crimea,” ex-Georgian President and Ukrainian opposition politician Mikheil Saakashvili said via an Internet link at the rally. “We’ll get Crimea back too.”
Saakashvili was deported from Ukraine without a court warrant in February. Under Ukrainian law, forced deportation is only possible if authorized by a court.
Meanwhile, late on March 17, the police blocked the truck with the stage and sound equipment for the rally from being installed on Maidan Nezalezhnosti despite the fact that the protest organizers had notified City Hall about the rally and the stage.
The police claimed that they wanted to search the equipment, surrounded the truck and said they were waiting for investigators to search it.
However, investigators failed to come within almost five hours, and the police seized the truck and drove it away without the owner’s permission. The protest organizers interpreted the police’s actions as theft of their equipment.
About 20 cars with protesters also went to Poroshenko’s house in Kyiv’s wealthy suburb of Kozyn on March 18.
When the protesters were leaving the center of Kyiv, dozens of police cars blocked them, saying that one of the vehicles had allegedly violated traffic rules.
But the cars went away, and, as they approached Poroshenko’s estate, they were blocked by the police and pro-government thugs, or titushki. The titushki assaulted the demonstrators and tried to prevent them from going further.
However, the protesters left their cars there and then proceeded to Poroshenko’s house by foot and held a rally there.
The rally was partially a reaction to the destruction of a protest tent camp in front of the Verkhovna Rada by the police on March 3. There was no court ban that would have given the police the authority to demolish the camp, and at least 19 protesters received heavy head injuries.
