The Ukrainian police have opened a hooliganism case based on the actions by participants in the nationalist torch march near Kyiv's Premier Palace Hotel on Jan. 1.
“A criminal case has been opened based on Part 1 of Article 296 (hooliganism),” the press service for the Kyiv police told Interfax-Ukraine on Thursday.
According to earlier reports, a torch march was conducted in central Kyiv on January 1 to mark the anniversary of the birth of Stepan Bandera. A video of some march participants hurling burning flames at the central entrance to Premier Palace Hotel was posted on social networking sites.
The Ukrainian Interior Ministry’s public relations department reported that a woman contacted the Kyiv Shevchenkivsky district police department on January 1, saying that an object resembling a smoke pellet had been thrown into a hotel in central Kyiv.
An official with the hotel’s security service told the police, who came to the scene, that “an unknown torch march participant threw an object resembling a smoke pellet into the hotel in Shevchenko Boulevard at around 1900.” “The police examined the scene and questioned witnesses,” the police said.
The all-Ukrainian national association Svoboda said the incident near Premier Palace Hotel was a provocation and two people had been expelled from the association over it.
