You're reading: Protesters march for impeachment, clash with police (VIDEO)

Thousands of protesters marched on Dec. 17 to demand the impeachment of President Petro Poroshenko, clashing with police as some tried to enter the municipally owned October Palace near Maidan Nezalezhnosti.

Demonstrators first went from Shevchenko Park through Khreshchatyk Street to Maidan Nezalezhnosti.

Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said at the rally that the protesters would set up headquarters at the October Palace, a symbolically freighted move given that the concert hall was seized by protesters during the 2013-2014 EuroMaidan Revolution.

The demonstrators went to the October Palace but were blocked by police and National Guard members who were both inside and outside the building. At the time, a concert was being held inside by the Glenn Miller Orchestra directed by Wil Salden.

Some of the protesters clashed with the police and National Guard while trying to enter the October Palace. The police used tear gas, while the demonstrators used smoke grenades.

Saakashvili – who called the impeachment march – urged both the police and protesters to stop the clashes and urged the protesters to return to Maidan Nezalezhnosti.

Saakashvili said he had had no plans to seize the October Palace. He said the protesters went there in support of a demand from the wives of three former soldiers who were arrested in November.

The soldiers’ wives want to rent an office at the October Palace for the protection of their husbands’ rights.

The 49-year-old politician was referring to Oleksandr Novikov, Anatoly Vynohrodsky and Leonid Lytvynenko – Ukrainian volunteer veterans of Russia’s war against Ukraine who were arrested in two criminal cases in November. They were among the co-organizers of the current protest tent camp in front of the Verkhovna Rada.

Their supporters argue that the veterans were arrested because of the protests as part of a political vendetta. Novikov is accused of kidnapping a fellow Donbas volunteer fighter – a charge that he denies, while Vynohrodsky and Lytvynenko are accused of attacking a security guard and robbery during a standoff between alleged corporate raiders and local residents over land rights in Kyrovohrad Oblast earlier this year, which they also deny.

Protesters clash with police in front of the October Palace on Dec. 17. 

“(Saakashvili’s) Movement of New Forces has always adhered to the unshakeable principle of absolutely legal, non-violent opposition intended to encourage Ukraine to move ahead quickly with reforms and finally begin a serious battle with endemic corruption,” the Movement of New Forces said in a statement. “Ukraine’s law enforcement agencies came out in incredible force and blocked access to the (October Palace) all with the apparent intention of provoking a conflict. This conflict then took place, though we immediately called for anyone involved in physical confrontation to withdraw, to leave the massed and masked “Berkut” riot police, National Guard and police alone.”

The party said that our “protest movement, which has increased in popularity quickly over the past several weeks, has always been and will always be peaceful, and it is the authorities who are interested in diverting attention away from our rightful demands and provoking a violent conflict.”

“I categorically denounce anyone who tries to seize any buildings, who falls for provocation by the authorities and resorts to force,” Saakashvili said. “We have nothing in common with such people and denounce any such attempts. We condemn anyone, whether from the opposition or on the part of the authorities, who uses violence as a provocateur.”

The police said that it had opened criminal cases against the protesters, and that 32 law enforcers had been injured.

Subsequently, the demonstrators marched to the protest tent camp in front of the Verkhovna Rada, where they built stronger barricades to fortify the camp against possible police attacks.

The protesters are demanding that next week the Verkhovna Rada fully meet their demands: Passing a law that would allow presidents to be impeached, creating an anti-corruption court, adopting new electoral laws, lifting lawmakers’ immunity from prosecution, and the resignation of Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko. They also demanded the release of political prisoners.

At the rally, Saakashvili called for negotiations with the authorities on the peaceful removal of oligarchs from power.

He also mentioned the ongoing criminal case against him that he believes to be a political vendetta. Lutsenko has accused Saakashvili of accepting funding from fugitive oligarch Serhiy Kurchenko, an ally of Yanukovych, to finance anti-government demonstrations and plot a coup d’etat.

“This was a special operation of Russia’s Federal Security Service implemented by the Security Service of Ukraine,” Saakashvili said, referring to the case.

Saakashvili was arrested on Dec. 8 and released by a Kyiv court on Dec. 11. The alleged evidence against Saakashvili, presented by prosecutors during a Dec. 11 court hearing, has been dismissed by independent lawyers as very weak.

Since Kurchenko and some of his associates are based in Russia, Serhiy Rakhmanin, a deputy chief editor of the Dzerkalo Tyzhnya newspaper, and Tzvi Arieli, an ex-instructor at Ukraine’s National Guard, have both argued in their blogs that the recordings of alleged conversations between Saakashvili and his associate and Kurchenko and his associate — whether fake or not — could have been obtained by Ukrainian authorities with the cooperation of Russia’s intelligence services.

Meanwhile, Poroshenko Bloc lawmaker Iryna Friz on Dec. 17 called for extraditing or deporting Saakashvili from Ukraine.

Saakashvili’s lawyers argue that such extradition or deportation would be illegal because it is banned for him as a stateless permanent resident of Ukraine and an applicant for political asylum.

Ukrainian and Georgian authorities are currently holding talks in Belarus on Saakashvili’s possible extradition to Georgia, according to Georgia’s Rustavi 2 television.

Protesters clash with police in front of the October Palace on Dec. 17.