You're reading: Judges leave Klovsky Palace in Kyiv after protestors disrupt their congress

A protest was held outside Klovsky Palace in Kyiv where judges were to hold an extraordinary congress.

As a result of the protest, all representatives of the judicial corps
have left the Klovsky Palace building, an Interfax correspondent said.

Maidan Self-defense representatives, who picketed and blocked the
palace to demand the judges’ lustration and prevent their congress,
remain in an area adjacent to the palace.

Protestors have so far ignored a request by Lustration Committee Chairman Yehor Sobolev to leave the courtyard.

“Thanks to our position, the judges left,” Sobolev told reporters.

On Tuesday, there will be another picket outside Verkhovna Rada to demand a law dismissing the judges to be passed, he said.

Ukrainian Justice Minister Pavlo Petrenko, who was also at the scene
of events, told reporters about what was going on at Klovsky Palace on
Monday: “I asked our citizens to retreat from the Supreme Court building
and not to give any pretext which could be used by Russia, because any
such things can be used to claim that the situation in Ukraine is being
destabilized and that the Ukrainian Supreme Court was seized.”

Kyiv police received no reports about what was going on outside the
Klovsky Palace on Monday morning, the police spokesperson told Interfax.

Ukraine’s Deputy Interior Minister Mykola Velychkovych, who also
attended the scene, told reporters that police did not meddle in their
affairs “so as not to aggravate the situation.”

Klovsky Palace is one of the buildings of the Ukrainian Supreme
Court. Presently, it is still effectively blocked because, as Sobolev
said earlier, the Self-Defense Hundred remains inside the palace to
prevent judges from getting back inside and holding the extraordinary
congress.