KIEV, Sept. 20 – Thousands of angry protesters stormed a Parliament building on Tuesday clashing with riot police and forcing lawmakers to postpone a bill aimed at cutting pensions and social benefits.

The protesters, mostly veterans of the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan and Chernobyl clean-up operation workers, retreated after lawmakers promised to postpone the controversial bill.

The development marks a rapid escalation of tensions as the government tries to reduce spending to win resumption of lending from the International Monetary Fund.

The storming, which appears to be a spontaneous action, was not led by any political party.

But several opposition lawmakers, including Anatoliy Hrytsenko, a former defense minister, took the stage at the rally to attack President Viktor Yanukovych’s government.

“Today, the people showed their fist to the Yanukovych team. They also demonstrated their intention to defend their rights by any means,” Hrytsenko said.

“But if the government does not stop cheating the people, it will face massive street protests throughout the country,” he said.

The number of protesters was estimated at 10,000, while police has said there were about 3,000 protesters in front of Parliament building. Only a handful of protesters had managed to breakthrough the police cordon to briefly enter the building.

The bill, known as No. 9127, calls for scrapping separate legislation outlining social benefits to more than 10 million people, and instead allowing the government to decide on the size of benefits and the groups receiving them.

The bill, submitted by the government, was quietly approved in the first reading on September 9, and was supposed to be approved in the final reading later this week.

The government has been seeking the right to decide on the benefits because it alleges that many of current recipients may be receiving the benefits illegally.

Serhiy Tyhypko, deputy prime minister, who is in charge of the benefit legislation reform, said he will get together with the protesters on Wednesday to go through the bill to ease the most tensions issues.

“The talks will continue until the parties reach a compromise,” Tyhypko said. “This is the word of the prime minister and the word of parliamentary speaker.”

The government plans to spend 16.6 billion hryvnias on state bureaucrats ion 2012, but spending on the poor, including people with disabilities, Afghanistan war veterans, Chernobyl clean-up workers and other groups was projected at 13.9 billion hryvnias.

“This means that bureaucrats will cost more than social benefit programs to all vulnerable groups of people put together,” Andriy Novak, a Kiev-based economist, wrote on his blog.

This is the second major street protest since
in Kiev since massive rally held by small business owners late last year following the approval of the tax reform.

The reform, which was also supervised by Tyhypko, apparently led to greater tax and regulatory burden on small businesses, triggering the massive protest that had continued for almost two weeks until Yanukovych had promised to amend it.

The developments underscore a massive potential for social street protests in Ukraine that will further put pressure on the government and may limit its determination to launch unpopular reforms.

Yanukovych and his Regions Party have been already facing a major decline in public support, and may lead to the party’s defeat at upcoming parliamentary election in October 2012. (tl/ez)