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The Ukrainian Interior Ministry (MVD) has announced that the leader of the far-right Svoboda party, Oleh Tyahnybok, has been summoned for questioning in connection with yesterday’s violence outside the Rada.
According to the official statement on the MVD website, Tyahnybok and around 30 others, including at least five members of Svoboda have received subpoenas summoning them for questioning by the Central Investigative Committee of the MVD.
The MVD noted photos revealing members of Svoboda and another far-right organisation on the front line at the protests against the decentralisation bill:
Oleh Tyahnybok
Yuriy Sirotyuk, head of Svoboda’s press office.
Ihor Shvayka, former chairman of the Kharkiv regional Svoboda organisation and, for several months in 2014, the minister for agricultural policy.
Ihor Kryvoruchko, chairman of the Social-National Assembly.
Serhiy Boyko, Svoboda member
Ihor Sabiy, Svoboda MP
A statement published on the official website of the Presidential Administration this evening says that four people have already been declared suspects in connection with the violence.
— Pierre Vaux
Ukraine's Anti-Terrorist Terror
Earlier today the relative peace of Ukraine 's capital, Kiev, was shattered when a demonstration outside the parliament building, the Verkhovna Rada, turned violent. Rioting reached a climax when a man in the crowd threw a grenade at police, killing a 24-year-old National Guard riot police officer and injuring more than twenty others.
Interfax-Ukraine reports that Oleh Lyashko’s Radical Party is to secede from the governing parliamentary coalition and join the opposition.
Radical Party supporters featured prominently in yesterday’s protests against the decentralisation bill outside the Verkhovna Rada that ended in violence after a member of the far-right Svoboda party threw a grenade at the security forces, killing three.
Interfax-Ukraine reports:
“On behalf of the Radical Party faction, I am announcing our decision to withdraw from the coalition,” Liashko told reporters after a parliament sitting on Tuesday.
He said the party would be in opposition to the incumbent authorities which, in his opinion, united with the Opposition Bloc and ‘members of oligarchic groups’ during the first reading of decentralization amendments to the Ukrainian constitution.
In addition, Liashko said they had decided that heads of parliament committees nominated by the Radical Party would resign.
“The faction has made a decision regarding the heads of three committees of the Verkhovna Rada delegated to those positions by the Radical Party. Those heads of parliament committees are tendering their resignations,” he said.
Radical Party member Valeriy Voschevsky refused to hold the position of deputy prime minister for infrastructure in the Arseniy Yatseniuk Cabinet.
“The Radical Party faction’s decision to secede from the coalition has been unanimous… hence, the Radical Party cannot have its representative in the government. This means I will tender my resignation from the position of deputy prime minister,” he told reporters at the parliament on Tuesday.
Viktor Chumak, a deputy in President Poroshenko’s party, says that a new coalition agreement may be required in the aftermath of the Radical Party’s departure.
Chumak noted that there remain enough deputies within the coalition to pass such a decision without Lyashko’s members.
Ukrainska Pravda reports that Igor Kononenko, another member of Bloc Petro Poroshenko, claims that the coalition will be able to continue functioning and that 281 deputies will remain after the Radical Party’s departure.
According to the extant coalition agreement, the coalition would be automatically dissolved if there were 226 or fewer members remaining.
— Pierre Vaux
Olha Bohmolets, chairman of the Parliamentary Health Care Commission and an adviser to President Poroshenko, reports this afternoon that a third person has died from wounds sustained during yesterday’s grenade attack outside the Verkhovna Rada.
Writing on her Facebook page, Bohomolets said that a 20-year-old from the Kherson region had died in hospital from brain injuries caused by shrapnel.
The BBC Ukrainian Service has named the deceased as conscript soldier Aleksandr Kostina.
Earlier today the interior minister, Arsen Avakov, announced that 21-year-old National Guardsman Dmitry Slastikov had died. 25-year-old guardsman Igor Debrin died shortly after the attack yesterday.
— Pierre Vaux
With a ceasefire due to come into force today, the official reports from the front are generally calm. The Ukrainian military’s ATO Press Centre reported that there had been no attacks recorded between midnight and 6 am today.
Dariia Olifer, press secretary for former president and Contact Group envoy Leonid Kuchma, wrote this morning that the Joint Centre for Control and Coordination (JCCC) was reporting that, as of 11 am, both sides were adhering to the ceasefire.
However there are unconfirmed reports of renewed fighting around the separatist-held city of Donetsk this afternoon:
Translation: Beating really hard…in the Donetsk Airport area or the Kuybyshevsky district. In ordilo*, it seems, the 1st of September has ended.
*: Ordilo is a play on the phrase “Otedelnye Rayony Donetskoy i Luganskoy Oblastey” (Certain areas of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions), the Ukrainian government’s official euphemism for the occupied areas of the Donbass. It conjures up the term “orda” or “horde.”
Translation: Donetsk. I guess “peace” prevailed… I can hear clear incoming in the direction of Peski.
— Pierre Vaux
The Ukrainian interior minister, Arsen Avakov, has announced that a second National Guard servicemen has died from wounds sustained during yesterday’s grenade attack outside the Verkhovna Rada.
Interfax-Ukraine reports that the deceased has been named as Dmitry Slastlikov, a conscript from Zhovti Vody in central Ukraine.
Avakov said that another serviceman remains “in a critical condition.”
The Interior Ministry said today that 141 people, 131 of them police officers and guardsmen, had been hospitalised as a result of yesterday’s violence, which included stone throwing and beatings in addition to the grenade attack.
10 of these casualties are seriously wounded.
President Poroshenko has announced that both the dead guardsmen will be posthumously awarded the Order for Courage.
Ukrainska Pravda reports that Zoryan Shkiryak, an adviser to the Interior Ministry, said this morning that 31 people had been arrested in connection with yesterday’s violence. Two of them are members of the Carpathian Sich unit. 13 have since been released.
— Pierre Vaux