You're reading: Police officer, suspected of being agent provocateur during Rada clashes, is arrested

Ukraine’s Security Service said on Oct. 15 that it had arrested a police officer accused of being an agent provocateur during the clashes between protesters and police near the Verkhovna Rada building on Oct. 14.

The 34-year-old police sergeant wore a balaclava and used a slingshot to shoot heavy screws at journalists, police and protesters, the Security Service said.

The police officer was “among other agent provocateurs who carried out a criminal scenario and were trying to disrupt the Verkhovna Rada meeting and destabilize the situation in the capital,” the Security Service said.

The clashes took place during a nationalist rally demanding a ban on communist ideology and recognition of soldiers of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) as veterans. The Svoboda party, which organized the rally, and the Right Sector, a major ultranationalist group, said they had nothing to do with the clashes.

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Volodymyr Aryev, a member of the Verkhovna Rada, has accused Dmytro Korchynsky’s Bratstvo far-right group of organizing the clashes. Korchynsky has also been accused of having ties with the police, former President Viktor Yanukovych and the Kremlin and of organizing clashes with police on Bankovaya Street, near the presidential administration, on Dec. 1, 2013.

Korchynsky has denied these accusations.

Russian intelligence agencies could have also been behind the clashes, Anton Gerashchenko, an advisor to the interior minister, said on Facebook on Oct. 14.

Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected].