Editor's Note: This is an occasional series from the newspaper's archives of the Kyiv Post's coverage of the EuroMaidan Revolution, the three-month uprising that ended with President Viktor Yanukovych fleeing power on Feb. 21-22, 2014.
Editor’s Note: This is an occasional series from the newspaper’s archives of the Kyiv Post’s coverage of the EuroMaidan Revolution, the three-month uprising that ended with President Viktor Yanukovych fleeing power on Feb. 21-22, 2014.
EuroMaidan protesters, after being evicted from Maidan Nezalezhnosti in a brutal attack by Berkut riot police, managed to find a new staging area for their mass protests that began on Nov. 21. They called for a large demonstration in Shevchenko Park at noon on Dec. 1, 2013. Meanwhile, public anger against the government of then-President Viktor Yanukovych began to simmer as news of the savagery of his forces’ attack on the student protesters began to spread.
This afternoon, it appears that police are putting Independence Square off-limits to continuing large-scale protests. They’ve erected a high iron fence perimeter staffed with riot police and made it difficult for people even to get into the metro. Still, small groups of demonstrators gathered outside the fence’s boundaries.
Earlier this morning, about 4 a.m., EuroMaidan after the police raid today was a mostly empty place, with city workers cleaning up after the violence that cleared Independence Square of EuroMaidan demonstrators. More than a dozen injuries were reported as police attacked a crowd of 400 protesters.
The demonstrations started on Nov. 21 in protest of President Viktor Yanukovych’s scuttling of a political and trade pact with the European Union. The president has justified his decision by saying that he faced tremendous pressure from Russia and that the proposed association agreement with the European Union was not in the best economic interests of the nation.
–Daryna Shevchenko
