The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) has launched a criminal inquiry into alleged funding of protests in Kyiv and said that the security services of the aggressor states may be involved in the attempts to destabilize the situation.
“Given that throughout April 22-24 officials [management] of several Ukrainian private coal mining companies, guided by their mercenary corporate interests and with the aim to pressurize state authorities, organizing financing of the protests in Kyiv, while blocking the work of the central-government agencies and administration, SBU investigators have registered a criminal inquiry under Article 110-2 part two of the Ukrainian Criminal Code,” SBU said in a statement on April 24.
The SBU noted that investigators were conducting interrogations, searches and detentions as part of this criminal case.
“‘Messenger’ who brought to Kyiv cash from former Prime Minister of Ukraine [Mykola] Azarov to finance the protests of the so-called ‘White Handkerchiefs’, who tried to join the miners’ rallies, have been detained,” the statement reads.
