Veterans of Ukraine’s volunteer Donbas Battalion and other units late on Oct. 28 said they had started a blockade of President Petro Poroshenko’s businesses.
They said at a protest tent camp near the Verkhovna Rada that this was a response to Poroshenko’s failure to comply with their ultimatum for him to submit by late Oct. 27 a bill allowing presidents to be impeached, and a bill on the creation of an anti-corruption court. The ultimatum was set on Oct. 22.
“The commander-in-chief has no right to profiteer from the war,” said a veteran of the war with Russia, who would only give his nom-de-guerre – Padre. “We’d like Mr. President to understand that he should choose whether he wants to run the state or pursue his business interests.”
Semen Semenchenko and Yegor Sobolev – Samopomich lawmakers closely allied with the Donbas Battalion – also joined the blockade and called for a boycott of Roshen products.
Padre and Sobolev said, however, that they would avoid any use of force and wanted their protests to be peaceful.
Veterans of Russia’s war against Ukraine posted pictures and videos of them picketing in front of storage facilities of Poroshenko’s Roshen confectionary in the Kyiv Oblast town of Yagotyn and the city of Vinnytsya, the president’s political base. They said they were planning to block trucks delivering supplies to the storage facilities.
Meanwhile, about 1,000 protesters held a weekly assembly, or viche, at their tent camp in front of the Verkhovna Rada on Oct. 29. The police blocked some of the streets leading to the Rada for vehicles in the run-up to the rally.
Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili proposed at the rally that investigative journalists and anti-corruption activists vet future opposition candidates and determine whether there is evidence of their corruption, or whether they have business interests. He also suggested holding primaries to choose the main opposition candidate, limiting the next president’s tenure to one term, and restricting the president’s functions.
Saakashvili said that his task was to make sure that 300 parliamentarians are elected to parliament with a comprehensive reform program. These candidates must be new to the political system, which means that those who have been in politics or government for a long time will be banned from this opposition list, he added.
He also proposed limiting the new parliamentarians’ tenure to just one term.
The protesters are gearing up for a major rally on Nov. 7, when parliament is scheduled to re-convene.
Saakashvili said that, if parliament fails to meet the protesters’ demands after Nov. 7, they would demand the resignation of both the president and the Verkhovna Rada. He said that in that case demonstrators could also re-locate to Maidan Nezalezhnosti, the site of the 2004 Orange Revolution and the 2013-2014 EuroMaidan Revoluton.
“If they don’t accept (the demands), we’ll find another place, and there will be 100 times more of us,” Saakashvili said.
Yuriy Derevyanko, a top member of Saakashvili’s Movement of New Forces, mentioned at the rally what he sees as political persecution of Saakashvili’s supporters, which is denied by the authorities. He said that EuroMaidan activist Pyotr Petish and chaplain Igor Petrenko, who came to the Polish border to meet Saakashvili when he broke through it on Sept. 10, had been kidnapped, or illegally detained, in the city of Kherson by the police before being released.
The Prosecutor General’s Office is refusing to investigate the alleged kidnapping, Pavlo Bogomazov, a lawyer for Saakashvili and his supporters, told the Kyiv Post.
Derevyanko also said that courts were refusing to release Saakashvili supporter Oleksandr Burtsev on bail despite his disease in what he sees as a politically motivated case.
In September Burtsev, a diabetic and veteran of the war with Russia, lapsed into a coma after jailers and judges refused to give him insulin. He is accused of illegally bringing Saakashvili over the border and assaulting a border guard.
Meanwhile, three associates of Saakashvili say they were kidnapped in Kyiv, beaten, and then illegally transported to Georgia by Ukrainian authorities without a court warrant on Oct. 21. The authorities deny accusations of wrongdoing but have warned that Saakashvili and 20 more Georgians can also be deported.
Demonstrators have camped out in front of the Verkhovna Rada since Oct. 17, when thousands rallied and set up more than 50 tents there.
The protesters initially limited themselves to three demands: the creation of an anti-corruption court, the lifting of lawmakers’ immunity from prosecution and a fairer electoral law. Currently new demands are being added, including a law on impeachment.
