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                        THURSDAY, MARCH 28, 2024
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Nation    

President will address unrest, says ally
Journal Staff Report

KIEV, May 11 – President Viktor Yanukovych will take steps to stop escalating tensions between Ukrainian regions following street clashes between nationalists and pro-Russian groups in Lviv on Monday, a presidential ally said Wednesday.

Yuriy Miroshnichenko, a lawmaker, responded to criticism aired by opposition parties that it is Yanukovych’s divisive policies that had caused the clashes, leaving at least two with serious injuries during the Victory Day celebrations.

“In the future, we have to have a very balanced approach to issues like that,” Miroshnichenko said.

Interior Affairs Minister Anatoliy Mohyliov is due to address lawmakers on Friday over the clashes, and over the role of police that had made the clashes possible.

The clashes were apparently caused by the use of Soviet-era red flags that the Yanukovych’s Regions Party had last month agreed to hoist alongside the Ukrainian yellow-and-blue flags on May 9. The legislation, allowing the use of the red flag, was not yet signed by Yanukovych.

The red flag is widely associated with the Soviet state that had incorporated Ukraine for most of the 20-th century before it had broken free in 1992.

The Prosecutor General’s Office on Wednesday sent a team of investigators, including experts from the SBU security service and police, to Lviv to check what exactly had led to the clashes.

The dispute apparently erupted after a group of about 10 pro-Russian youths have suddenly unwrapped a huge red flag near the monument for the fallen Soviet troops in 1941-1945 at the Hill of Glory, provoking an angry reaction from mostly a nationalist crowd.

This has quickly escalated to a point that one of the pro-Russian activists pulling out a gun and shooting at the crowd, seriously injuring a 23-year old Ukrainian identified by police as Oleh Kovpak, an assistant to a local lawmaker.

Another person has been injured by police forces that had applied a rubber stick to the person’s head while apparently trying to calm the clashes.

The clashes triggered a diplomatic rift between Kiev and Moscow with the Russian foreign ministry urging a punishment for those that had attacked people carrying the red flag.

A group representing the Russian nationalist youth organization, Russia the Young, on Wednesday marched in front of the Ukrainian Embassy in Moscow, carrying slogans, such as “Yanukovych, stop the fascism!”

Ukraine’s Foreign Affairs Ministry reacted to Russia’s official pressure to investigation the clashes and to punish those responsible.

“Unfortunately, the reaction to the Lviv events by the Russian party shows that instruments from the anti-Ukrainian campaigns of the past had not been thrown to the garbage dump of history,” the ministry said in a statement.

The ministry pointed out that Ukraine has been watching with heartache the rise of ultranationalist movements in Russia,” and added that “we are ready to fight the evil together.”

Meanwhile, the conflict over the red flag on Wednesday has been expanding geographically with the Luhansk region, a traditionally Russian speaking region, demanding Svoboda nationalist party to be banned in Ukraine.

The Ivan-Frankivsk region in western Ukraine, however, has vowed to investigate the improper use of the red flags in the city, potentially creating another line of tensions with Moscow. (tl/ez)




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