Two people were injured as a result of an explosion in the center of Kyiv on Aug. 8, the Interior Ministry said. The explosion took place near the Ukrainian House, some 500 meters away from Maidan Nezalezhnosti, where the remaining protesters there clashed with law enforcement personnel on Aug. 7 after municipal workers tried clearing tent city.
Deputy Interior Minister Mykola Velychkovych told Interfax-Ukraine news agency that an unknown man threatened the director of Ukrainian House, which for months has been occupied by protesters, and then hurled a hand grenade in his direction.
“The official (from Ukrainian House), reacting to the malicious intents of the attacker, promptly neutralized him. Witnesses helped detain him and called an ambulance and the police,” Velychkovych said.
But Yuriy Stelmashchuk, head of the Ukrainian House, told the Kyiv Post that there were no threats, and that the explosion was caused by “some drunken passer-by who threw something like a firecracker.”
Velychkovych said the severity of injuries as well as the type of explosive device is still to be confirmed.
“This is the illustration of the urgent need of cleaning up Kyiv’s downtown,” he told Hromadske TV.
The city government attempted to clean up Maidan, or Independence Square on Aug. 8, but their attempt was thwarted and new barricades were built instead. The camp city on the central square has remained since EuroMaidan Revolution ended with the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych on Feb. 22. Demonstrators set tires on fire on Kyiv’s main square to prevent the government’s attempt to free the city’s main road for traffic.
Kyiv police reported that when clearing the street, officers confiscated “guns, grenades, knives and Molotov cocktails” from the protesters, who sang patriotic songs as some threw Molotov cocktails. “Fighters of the special unit and the police officers received various wounds during the clashes mostly being hit by parts of pavement.”
A Kyiv Post reporter also saw young men carrying grenades, knives, Molotov cocktails, and one armed with an automatic rifle standing on the second-floor window sill of the central post office.
Mayor Vitali Klitschko’s spokeswoman Oksana Zinovieva said that the city will continue its attempts to clean up the square. She said Klitschko frequently talks to Maidan residents to persuade them to leave voluntarily. “He was there first thing morning, but there is nobody to really talk to,” she said.
Klitschko has previously complained that people who still remain on Maidan no longer represent the voice of the people, and insisted that central streets have to be cleared for traffic.
“But these people were speaking with the stance – bring us refrigerators, WCs or something else. Is this a fight for democracy?” Klitschko said on Aug. 7. “When there is a war on the east, where there is a need to restore the country and work some people privatized Kyiv’s center and is dictation their conditions. Moreover the major demands with which Maidan stood have been fulfilled.”
