Police in Kyiv have released six people, including the head of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, Mykola Kohanivsky, who were arrested during a rally in support of a blockade of coal supplies from areas in eastern Ukraine controlled by Russian-backed forces.
Around 1,000 protesters rallied on Feb. 19 in the center of Kyiv to support the blockade, which is now into its fourth week.
Earlier, the government lashed out at the activists blocking the coal supply in a statement, claiming on Feb. 13 that Ukraine’s coal-fired power stations would run out of coal within 40 days.
The police put 6,500 officers on duty in central Kyiv – the rally was held on the same day Ukrainians commemorated protesters murdered during the EuroMaidan revolution in 2014.
Security forces had been escorting the blockade supporters as they marched from Maidan Nezalezhnosti – Kyiv’s central square and the epicenter of protests – to the nearby Presidential Administration Building.
Once there, some of the rally participants set up tents and claimed they were going to stay the night protesting. Then Ukrainian ultra-nationalist demonstrators among the organizers of the protest were involved in clashes with the police.
As a result, seven people were injured. Law enforcers arrested six people, including Kohanivsky, whom they released in the early hours of Feb. 20, after charging them with public order offences.
A video shot by Ukrainian online television station Hromadske.TV shows rally participants shouting at police officers as they attempt to get past a police cordon set up in front of the building of the Presidential Administration.
Lawmaker Yehor Sobolev, one of the leaders of the rally, said the protesters wanted to remind President Petro Poroshenko that the trade with the occupied territories of the Donbas needs to be legally stopped.
“The meeting has been broken up, the tent has been torn apart. A brilliant victory for the new police with state troops,” Sobolev wrote on Facebook, attaching a photo of his bruised face after the clashes with the police.
Sobolev called his supporters to join him for another rally on Feb. 20 on Maidan Nezalezhnosti Square, where the EuroMaidan Revolution camp stood three years ago.
Trade between the Donbas and Kyiv has never stopped, despite Russia’s war on Ukraine in the Donbas having claimed more than 10,000 lives over nearly three years.
The blockade, which began in late January, has led to power shortages in government-controlled parts of the country.
Ukraine’s leaders say the blockade could lead to more power cuts, with President Poroshenko saying Kyiv and other cities might be left without heating and electricity supplies.
Kyiv Post staff writer Denys Krasnikov can be reached at [email protected].
