At least 200,000 pro-European demonstrators began a mass rally in the Ukrainian capital yesterday in a fresh show of force against Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych after his failure to sign a key EU agreement.
Opposition parties have called on “all Ukrainians” to mass on Independence Square, where demonstrators angered by Yanukovych’s failure to sign the EU pact have held rolling protests for more than three weeks.
As protesters wearing the yellow and blue colors of the Ukrainian flag packed into the iconic square, EU Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighbourhood Policy Stefan Fuele said Brussels was suspending work on the Association Agreement that would have put the country on the path to EU integration.
Photo: AFP
“Work on hold,” Fuele tweeted, saying further discussions required a “clear commitment [to] sign” from the Ukrainian side.
Yanukovych is under intense pressure to decide whether to align his nation with the West by signing a deal with the EU, or to join a Moscow-led Customs Union.
He is set to travel to Moscow tomorrow to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin for talks expected to center on a proposed free-trade deal with Russia fiercely opposed by the demonstrators.
Photo: Reuters
“This is the last chance for Ukraine as an independent country,” said protester Leonid Khusachenko, a 43-year-old history teacher from the western city of Lviv, ahead of yesterday’s rally.
Ukraine’s security services were on high alert as about 5,000 Yanukovych supporters bussed in from the provinces began a rival rally in a park near Independence Square, vowing “non-stop protests.”
However, Khusachenko, sitting by a towering barricade of snow-filled bags, wood scraps and barbed wire, a Ukrainian flag wrapped around his neck, said he did not believe there would be a repeat of last week’s crackdown by riot police, given the presence of the world’s media on the square.
Opposition leader and heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko had said ahead of the rally that “all Ukrainians must go to the Maidan to voice their aspirations to live in a modern European country,” using the Ukrainian name for the square.
“We see the attempts to frighten us, but they will fail,” he said.
The latest mass protest came days after a failed attempt by riot police to drive the protest camp out of the iconic square, ramping up tensions in the ex-Soviet country’s deepest political crisis in a decade.
Protesters have been camped out on the square where the Orange Revolution unfolded in 2004 for more than three weeks, after Yanukovych failed to sign the Association Agreement.
The party of jailed opposition leader and former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko said on its Web site that yesterday’s rally would feature “leaders of opposition parties, public figures and foreign guests, particularly American senators.”
Outspoken US Senator John McCain flew into Kiev on Saturday and held meetings with Klitschko, nationalist leader Oleg Tyagnybok and the head of Tymoshenko’s All-Ukrainian Union Party, Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
NO-LIMITS PARTNERSHIP: ‘The bottom line’ is that if the US were to have a conflict with China or Russia it would likely open up a second front with the other, a US senator said Beijing and Moscow could cooperate in a conflict over Taiwan, the top US intelligence chief told the US Senate this week. “We see China and Russia, for the first time, exercising together in relation to Taiwan and recognizing that this is a place where China definitely wants Russia to be working with them, and we see no reason why they wouldn’t,” US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a US Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing on Thursday. US Senator Mike Rounds asked Haines about such a potential scenario. He also asked US Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has
China’s intrusive and territorial claims in the Indo-Pacific region are “illegal, coercive, aggressive and deceptive,” new US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo said on Friday, adding that he would continue working with allies and partners to keep the area free and open. Paparo made the remarks at a change-of-command ceremony at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii, where he took over the command from Admiral John Aquilino. “Our world faces a complex problem set in the troubling actions of the People’s Republic of China [PRC] and its rapid buildup of forces. We must be ready to answer the PRC’s increasingly intrusive and
UNWAVERING: Paraguay remains steadfast in its support of Taiwan, but is facing growing pressure at home and abroad to switch recognition to Beijing, Pena said Paraguayan President Santiago Pena has pledged to continue enhancing cooperation with Taiwan, as he and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida expressed opposition to any unilateral change to the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait using force, Japanese media reported on Saturday. Kishida yesterday completed a trip to France, Brazil and Paraguay, his first visit to South America since taking office in 2021. After the Japanese leader and Pena spoke for more than an hour on Friday, exchanging views on the situation in East Asia in the face of China’s increasing military pressure on Taiwan, they affirmed that “unilateral attempts to change the