A tent camp set up on Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Kyiv by demonstrators protesting against President Petro Poroshenko was dismantled by unknown attackers early on June 8.
The protesters blamed the attack on thugs allegedly hired by the authorities, while the police started a criminal investigation against the attackers under the hooliganism article.
The protest was held by an obscure group, triggering speculation on who organized it.
One of the demonstrators who attended the protest site on Maidan Nezalezhnosti on June 8 told the Kyiv Post he was a former Aidar Battalion fighter with the nom-de-guerre Sukhoi and wore a uniform with Aidar insignia.
He blamed the attack on “titushki” hired by Interior Minister Arsen Avakov or Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
Titushki is a common term for pro-government thugs that originally referred to those financed by ousted President Viktor Yanukovych.
Another protester, Dmytro Zvolinsky, said the tents had been dismantled by a special forces unit. He argued that the fast and professional character of the attack proved his theory.
Artem Shevchenko, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said at a news briefing on June 8 that the police did not know who the attackers were.
“A group of up to 17 people took these tents and threw them away,” he said. “We don’t know who these people were but we hope to identify them.”
He also said that no one had been arrested at the Maidan Nezalezhnosti protest camp.
But Zvolinsky claimed that the organizer of the protest, Rustam Tashbayev, had been kidnapped and then “hidden” by the police.
After that he was transferred to the Security Service, which is checking his passport because he failed to change his photo at a certain age, Zvolinsky added.
When asked about Tashbayev, Shevchenko urged reporters to contact the Security Service, which was unavailable for comment.
The demonstrators have called their movement the Third Maidan, intended to be a follow-up to the 2004 Orange Revolution on Maidan Nezalezhnosti and the 2013-2014 EuroMaidan Revolution.
They have protested against increases in utilities prices, the General Staff’s mistakes, pervasive corruption and a lack of progress in the investigation into the murders of EuroMaidan protesters.
Dozens of protesters have permanently camped on Maidan Nezalezhnosti since May 25 and set up tents there on June 7.
They have urged Poroshenko to come to Maidan Nezalezhnosti and report on his achievements.
“I gave the president a month to fulfill at least one of his small promises,” Zvolinsky said. “When nothing was done, I joined the opposition.”
The protest was organized by obscure groups and activists that have never surfaced before, prompting speculation that the demonstrators were hired by someone for money, possibly by the Kremlin – an accusation that the demonstrators deny.
“I think these (events) are aimed at destabilizing the situation in Kyiv at the same exact time when a G7 meeting was held in Germany, and (Russian President Vladimir Putin) was told: ‘No peace in Donbas and no return of Crimea – no abolition of sanctions’,” Anton Gerashchenko, an advisor to the interior minister and a member of parliament, wrote on Facebook on June 8.
Tashbayev’s Facebook page says that he works at two little-known groups, the Ukrainian Political Alliance and the Ukrainian Foreign Legion.
On June 6, he posted a link to a story about the Maidan Nezalezhnosti protests by RIA Novosti, a Russian state-run news agency.
Tashbayev, who was not available for comment, used to live in the U.S. and has boasted that he knows U.S. Senator John McCain, a staunch ally of Ukraine. McCain’s office could not immediately comment on whether this is true.
The protests have been actively used by Kremlin propaganda to demonize Ukrainian authorities in an effort to destabilize the political situation.
In a Facebook post published on June 8, Ukrainian journalist Irina Kaminskaya cited some of the demonstrators as calling for talks on a peaceful resolution of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict with Viktor Medvedchuk, Ukraine’s pro-Russian politician par excellence, and claiming that they would soon have a meeting with him.
They also accused Ukrainian authorities of being reluctant to hold talks with Russia, Kaminskaya wrote.
However, Sukhoi, one of the protesters, said he supported a more hardline stance towards Russia and called for introducing martial law.
Kyiv Post staff writer Olena Goncharova contributed to this report. Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected]
