KIEV, Aug. 24 – About three thousand protesters, led by former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s allies, marched in downtown Kiev Wednesday, but were stopped by massive police forces, marking a short-lived Independence Day confrontation.

Police again overpowered protesters, a sign that opposition groups failed to live up to their promise to generate a sustainable protest against President Viktor Yanuykovych.

“This is what the government is for: to keep order,” Hanna Herman, a top advisor to Yanukovych said in an interview with Channel 5. “There will be as many police forces as we need to make sure there is order in Kiev, to make sure there is no bloodshed.”

The failure to summon up more protesters for igniting the sustainable protest as had been earlier declared underscores the fact that popular support for Tymoshenko has remained weak even despite her arrest on August 5.

Tymoshenko was arrested on contempt of the court charges as she is on a trial for negotiating a controversial natural gas agreement with Russia in January 2009.

In a letter written by Tymoshenko and posted by her party, Batkivshyna, on Wednesday, she said that the government has been arresting her twice since the country had gained independence 20 years ago.

Tymoshenko vowed to change that pattern within the nest five years, a suggestion that she plans to win the next presidential election and to arrest her current political opponents.

“At 25-th anniversary of the Independence, this pattern will be changed!” Tymoshenko wrote. “Those will be not political prisoners, but real criminal that will be jailed. “Today we know them by name.”

The opposition groups, united in the Dictatorship Residence Committee, held a massive rally in front of the Taras Shevchenko monument, but later tried to march across downtown Kiev towards the administration of Yanukovych.

“We will have a peaceful march toward the presidential administration to hand them a resolution of the rally,” Oleksandr Turchynov, the No. 2 in command in the Tymoshenko party, said. “Let them pack their bags.”

But the march was stopped by massive riot police force several blocks away from the original place of the rally. The protesters tried to breakthrough the police force, but had failed.

In the meantime, more police have been shuttled by buses to the area of the confrontation, cementing its domination, and dispersing the crowd.

Serhiy Sobolev, a senior lawmaker and a member of Tymoshenko’s group in Parliament, said recently there will be “very serious” protest actions in August and September, and said those protests may shake the government and lead to early parliamentary election in the fall.

Meanwhile, Herman said the deployment of massive police force was a tactic helping Ukraine to move towards further integration with the European Union.

“Europe does not need a country on its border that has bloodsheds, conflicts,” Herman said. “If our politicians were responsible they would have said: ‘Let’s come and celebrate the {indepdence] Day together.”

“Those who want to fight, break through and battle the police are provocateurs that don’t want our country to move towards Europe,” Herman said. “Those that want us to have Egypt or Libya, to have bloodsheds.”

“But there is the government in Ukraine. This government is strong and the government will maintain the order,” Herman said. (tl/ez)