Demonstrators on the main downtown avenue of Ukraine’s capital set piles of tires ablaze on Saturday to protest authorities’ call to end the encampment that began six months ago.
A few hundred meters away, workers in hard hats cleared debris from torn-down barricades.
The contrasting scenes on Kreshchatik Street in Kiev highlighted just one of the many uncertainties facing Ukraine.
Photo: EPA
Even after the election on Sunday last week for a president to replace the interim leader who took power amid chaos in February, many Ukrainians remain deeply suspicious of the government, and several hundred are still holding out at a vast protest camp.
Three months of protests during the winter eventually drove pro-Russia former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych to flee the country.
Yet the extensive protest tent camp and the barricades of wooden pallets, tires and trash that protected the camp remained even after interim Ukrainian President Oleksandr Turchynov was appointed.
The holdouts say they want to keep up the encampment until the new government and Ukrainian president-elect Petro Poroshenko carry out important reforms in a country long riddled by corruption.
“Personally, I have no plans to leave. They need to show the people that the new laws are working — they are where they are thanks to us,” demonstrator Anna Chaikovska said.
Newly elected Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko, the former world heavyweight boxing champion, has called on the demonstrators to fold up their tents and go home.
Yet aside from removing some of the barricades, Ukrainian authorities have taken little action.
Russia has repeatedly criticized the Ukrainian authorities for failing to clear out the encampment and free buildings occupied by demonstrators, which was among the terms stated in an agreement reached between Russia, Ukraine, the US and the EU in April aimed at cooling tensions in Ukraine’s crisis.
In Ukraine’s east, where separatists have declared two provinces independent and are fighting government forces, many are deeply suspicious of the Kiev demonstrations and the new government they have propelled to power.
The conflict between government forces and the insurgents in the east escalated markedly in the past week, including rebels’ attempt to seize the airport in the city of Donetsk on Monday last week and the shooting down of a Ukrainian military helicopter on Thursday.
Twelve people, including a general, died in that incident.
On Saturday, Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs criticized a suggestion by an official from the Organization for Security and Co-operation (OSCE) in Europe that it could withdraw its observer mission from Ukraine because of safety concerns, as shooting between government troops and pro-Russian rebels continued in the region.
The international monitoring body says it lost contact on Thursday with a group of five monitors in separatist eastern Ukraine.
Another four-member team has been held by eastern rebels since Monday last week.
Wolfgang Ischinger, the OSCE’s negotiator on national dialogue in Ukraine, told German broadcaster ZDF last week that the monitor mission might have to withdraw if the organization fears for its employees’ lives.
Yet the Russian ministry said in a statement on Saturday that “amid Kiev’s intentionally intensified punitive operation in the east of the country, it is essential to step up the work of international observers.”
Confrontations continued on Saturday between government troops and the rebels, who have seized administrative and police buildings across the east and want to join the region to Russia.
At a government-controlled checkpoint in the city of Slovyansk, which has been the epicenter of the conflict, troops came under fire but repelled the attack.
No casualties were reported in the latest attempt to break the army’s ring of checkpoints around the city.
Vladislav Seleznev, press secretary for Ukraine’s anti-insurgent operation in the east, said on Saturday that the army had successfully destroyed a cannon in Slovyansk, which he said rebels had been using to shell civilian buildings in the town.
As violence escalated in the region, the Ukrainian and pro-Russian sides have blamed each other for the rising number of civilian casualties in the conflict.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
HOLLYWOOD IN TURMOIL: Mandy Moore, Paris Hilton and Cary Elwes lost properties to the flames, while awards events planned for this week have been delayed Fires burning in and around Los Angeles have claimed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Billy Crystal, Mandy Moore and Paris Hilton, and led to sweeping disruptions of entertainment events, while at least five people have died. Three awards ceremonies planned for this weekend have been postponed. Next week’s Oscar nominations have been delayed, while tens of thousands of city residents had been displaced and were awaiting word on whether their homes survived the flames — some of them the city’s most famous denizens. More than 1,900 structures had been destroyed and the number was expected to increase. More than 130,000 people
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
RSS