Dmytro Korchynsky, the leader of the radical Bratstvo (Brotherhood) party, has been declared internationally wanted.
“I am sure that this person’s whereabouts will be established shortly and due measures will be taken,” chief of the ministry’s criminal search department Vasyl Paskal has said.
“We also have reports saying that individual members of Korchynsky’s organization – 15 people – lived in his office. He used these individuals during most radical actions,” the official said.
Earlier reports quoting the Interior Ministry said Korchynsky who is suspected of organizing clashes between protesters and police in the center of Kyiv on December 1 is abroad and Ukraine is taking measures to have him arrested.
Speaking at a Saturday briefing in Kyiv Mykola Chynchyn, head of the ministry’s investigative department, Chynchyn did not mention Korchynsky’s exact whereabouts.
According to official reports, nearly 140 police officers were injured in the clashes blamed on Korchynsky and some representative of the Svoboda party, and 75 of them were hospitalized. Also, 165 protesters sought medical assistance after the violence.
The Kyiv police authority said soon after the clashes that more than 300 Bratstvo members had been involved in them.
Bratstvo is accused of continually provoking violence since the 2000s.
Prime Minister Mykola Azarov claimed on December 2 that it was not in the interests of the government to provoke violence. “The only thing that is in our interest is to avoid such provocations. We know very well now who organizes those provocations,” Azarov said at a meeting in Kyiv with the ambassadors of the European Union, Canada and the United States.
He said he was referring to “ultras” – Bratstvo and “some well-trained people representing the Svoboda party.”
