Protesters, including representatives of the far-right National Corps party, clashed with police in front of the President’s Office in Kyiv. Eight officers reportedly sustained minor injuries in the scuffles.
The demonstrators were protesting the so-called “Steinmeier formula,” named after German President Frank Walter-Steinmeier, which would allow more self-governance in the Kremlin-occupied parts of Donbas, in return for holding local elections there under Ukrainian law.
Opponents of the formula see it as a surrender to Russia. They also called for Ukraine not to unblock a key channel that delivers much of occupied Crimea’s water.
More than 4,000 protesters, including war veterans, public figures, volunteers and concerned citizens, gathered at Independence Square and headed towards the presidential administration on Hrushevskogo Street, according to the organizers. When they approached their destination, the police didn’t let them through because the protesters refused check their belongings.
The marchers then began throwing smoke bombs and flares and trying to break through.
The Interior Ministry wrote that anyone who submitted to inspection would have been allowed into the building’s territory.
The radical protestors, including representatives of National Corps Party, clash with police near the President’s Office in Kyiv on Aug. 14, 2021. (Volodymyr Petrov )
Head of the National Police Ihor Klymenko, who was at the scene, said the officers were trying to prevent clashes. Seven police officers suffered eye irritation from the smoke and tear gas released at the scene. Another officer suffered a cut in the arm.
The National Corps, previously called the Patriots of Ukraine, is a far-right political party that emerged from the paramilitary Azov Battalion that has fought in Donbas to defend Ukraine against Russia’s war, launched in 2014. Russia now occupies 7 percent of Ukrainian territory, including about half of the eastern Donbas and all of the Crimean peninsula. An estimated 14,000 people have been killed.
