NEW YORK, Sept. 23 – Ukrainian American organizations boycotted a meeting with President Viktor Yanukovych accusing him of attempting to introduce dictatorship, restrict freedoms and follow an openly pro-Russian foreign policy course.

The boycott is embarrassing to Yanyukovych, who had specifically requested the meeting with the Ukrainian diaspora organizations in the U.S. in order to engage in a “constructive dialog.”

Instead, almost 300 protesters, led by the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, gathered in front of Ukraine’s permanent mission to the U.N. in New York to slam Yanukovych’s policies.

“Arrests of scholars in Ukraine and the disappearance of a journalist suggest that Yanukovych’s current policies have reverted to dictatorial and repressive ones,” a statement posted on Brama, a New York-based Website representing the Ukrainian organizations in the U.S., said.

This is the second time that an organization boycotts a meeting with Yanukovych in less than two months, underscoring his highly divisive and conflicting policies.

Mejlis, the ruling body of Crimean Tatars, the third largest ethnic group in Crimea, skipped the meeting in early August in protest of his ethnic policy.