You're reading: Small LGBT pride parade takes place in Odesa under police guard

About 100 representatives of the queer culture have participated in a LGBT pride parade in downtown Odesa, they marched from the Vorontsov Palace to the building of the Odesa City Council, an Interfax-Ukraine correspondent reported.

The event took place without incidents, apart from an attack of two men on a participant in the parade before its beginning.

Policemen detained the attackers and brought them to the Prymorsky district police department. According to Ivan Ischenko, the head of the preventive activities department of the Ukrainian National Police’s Odesa regional branch, the detainees’ actions may be qualified as petty hooliganism.

Around 800 police officers were involved in guarding participants in the parade, Ischenko said. Law enforcers also cordoned off the parade’s route with fences and equipment.

However, such measures proved to be excessive, as only about 30 members of nationalist organizations met participants in the parade at the end of the route and shouted insults at them for some time without trying to attack.