You're reading: Kyiv city council approves veteran status for volunteer fighters after scuffle

The municipal council of Kyiv has approved the granting of combatant status for volunteer battalion fighters who defended the nation against Russia’s invasion of the Donbas.

The war veterans burst into the assembly hall demanding the legal status on June 1.

The decision proposed by Svoboda Party representative Yuriy Syrotyuk was given preliminary approval, although final action as been postponed, Interfax News Agency reports.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko proposed changes before consideration of final passage during the next council meeting, but protesters forced the council to take a final vote.

Several persons in camouflage entered the hall, initiating a scuffle with the assembly’s security, and succeeding in persuading the city council to vote on the issue.

An overwhelming majority — 87 out of 120 representatives — supported granting volunteer battalion fighters the status of war veteran. This entitles them to annual financial benefits ranging from $105 to $135 per month, as well as free medical services at state-run hospitals, reduced tariffs on public transport and housing utilities, and also land plots for building houses or for business.

“Thanks to this decision, the Kyivan volunteer fighters will be able to get minimal welfare or social guarantees. The Kyiv City Council promised to form a commission on volunteers,” National Corps activists affiliated with the National Guards’ Azov Regiment reported on their Facebook page.

In the post, the activists also noted that the rally at the Kyiv City Council was held in order to demand war veteran status for the Right Sector’s Volunteer Ukrainian Corps and the Organization of Ukrainian National battalion fighters, as well as foreign volunteers and those belonging to the Armed Forces, the National Guards or Interior Ministry combat units that have yet to gain combatant status.

Since the beginning of the war in Donbas in 2014, as many as 200,000 Ukrainians have been given war veteran status, including 189,000 soldiers of Ukraine’s Armed Forces.