You're reading: Ukraine police probing Victory Day assault on Russian diplomats

Lviv, May 27 (Interfax-Ukraine) - The Lviv police authority announced on Friday that it had launched an investigation into an incident in the city on May 9 in which alleged Ukrainian nationalists assaulted a group of Russian diplomats and seized from them a wreath they were planning to lay at a monument to Soviet soldiers killed during World War II.

The attackers would face charges of "hooliganism" if found, according to the authority, which asked anyone who might have audio or video recordings of the incident to make them available to the police.

Russian Consul in Lviv Oleg Astakhov and other Russian diplomats were attacked while carrying a wreath they wished to lay at a memorial in a military cemetery on the Hill of Glory.

The attackers wrenched the wreath from the diplomats and crushed it under their feet.

Astakhov qualified the assault as an insult to his country.

War veterans and public activists who were present on the Hill of Glory that day complained that the alleged nationalists were tearing off St. George ribbons – Russian symbols of military valor – off their clothes and swearing at them.

May 9 is observed in Russia and other former Soviet republics as Victory Day, commemorating the Soviet victory over Nazi forces.