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Derechos | Equipo Nizkor
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Derechos | Equipo Nizkor
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19Feb14
25 Deaths Are Reported in Fierce Clashes in Kiev
Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday that 25 people had been killed after hundreds of riot police officers advanced on antigovernment demonstrators mounting a desperate act of defiance in what remained of their all-but-conquered encampment on Independence Square in Kiev.
The Health Ministry, quoted by news agencies, said that 241 people had been injured and that nine of the dead were police officers.
In an indication of deepening concern in Washington, the State Department issued an urgent warning late Tuesday telling American citizens in Ukraine to avoid all protests, keep a low profile and remain indoors at night while the clashes continue.
On Wednesday morning, the scene in Independence Square was apocalyptic, with black smoke billowing from fires and the streets leading to square piled with debris. The protesters' stage, a focal point of resistance, was still intact and apparently beyond the reach of the riot police.
Police units with a water cannon were massing in front of the Khreschatyk Hotel but made no immediate attempt to move forward. The incinerated hulk of a police armored vehicle, which was lost in the initial push into the square, was still entangled in remnants of the protesters' barricade.
With hundreds of riot police officers advancing from all sides after a day of deadly mayhem here in the Ukrainian capital, antigovernment demonstrators mounted a seemingly doomed act of defiance late on Tuesday, establishing a protective ring of fire around what remained of their encampment on Independence Square.
The attack on the square began shortly before 8 p.m., when police officers tried to drive two armored personnel carriers through stone-reinforced barriers outside the Khreschatyk Hotel on the road to the square. The vehicles became bogged down and, set upon by protesters wielding rocks and fireworks, burst into flames, trapping the security officers inside one of them and prompting desperate rescue efforts to save those caught in the second vehicle, which managed to pull back from the protesters' barricade.
A phalanx of riot police officers, backed by a water cannon, had more success in a separate thrust, pushing through protesters' barricades near the Ukraina Hotel and firing tear gas as they advanced toward the center of the square. People covered in blood staggered to the protesters' medical center.
Feeding the blazing defenses around Independence Square on Tuesday night with blankets, tires, wood, sheets of plastic foam and anything else that might burn, the protesters hoped to prolong, for a while longer at least, a tumultuous protest movement against President Viktor F. Yanukovych, a leader who was democratically elected in 2010 but is widely reviled here as corrupt and authoritarian.
"It is called the tactic of scorched earth," said a protester who identified himself as Andriy.
Doctors and nurses treating protesters in a temporary medical center in the Trade Unions building on Independence Square reported gunshot wounds and evidence that the police had doctored percussion grenades to inflict more serious injury. By early Wednesday, the union building had caught fire and the blaze raged out of control, with flames spreading to adjacent buildings.
With the center of the city engulfed in thick, acrid smoke and filled with the deafening din of the grenades, fireworks and occasional gunfire, what began as a peaceful protest in late November against Mr. Yanukovych's decision to spurn a trade deal with Europe and tilt toward Russia became on Tuesday a pyre of violent chaos.
The violence, which will resonate for weeks, months or even years around this fragile and bitterly divided former Soviet republic of 46 million, exposed the impotence, in this dispute, of the United States and the European Union, which had engaged in a week of fruitless efforts to mediate a peaceful settlement. It also shredded doubts about the influential reach of Russia, which had portrayed the protesters as American-backed "terrorists" and, in thinly coded messages from the Kremlin, urged Mr. Yanukovych to crack down.
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. telephoned Mr. Yanukovych to "express grave concern regarding the crisis on the streets" of Kiev and urged him "to pull back government forces and to exercise maximum restraint," the vice president's office said in a statement on Tuesday.
Secretary of State John Kerry urged Mr. Yanukovych to stop the bloodshed. "We call on President Yanukovych and the Ukrainian government to de-escalate the situation immediately, and resume dialogue with the opposition on a peaceful path forward. Ukraine's deep divisions will not be healed by spilling more innocent blood," he said in a statement.
The German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, warned the Ukrainian government that it could face sanctions.
"Whoever is responsible for the decisions which have lead to the bloodshed in Kiev and other parts of Ukraine should expect Europe to reconsider its position on imposing sanctions on individuals," Mr. Steinmeier said in a statement on Tuesday night. The bloodshed erupted only hours after Mr. Steinmeier had received the two main opposition leaders, Vitali Klitschko and Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, in Berlin, where they also met Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The State Department, in its alert to American citizens, said that travel into and out of the center of Kiev was restricted and described the situation as "currently very fluid." It also warned that roving gangs had attacked journalists and protesters and committed other random acts of violence in Kiev and other cities.
"U.S. citizens whose residences or hotels are located in the vicinity of the protests are cautioned to leave those areas or prepare to remain indoors, possibly for several days, should clashes occur," the notice said. "Further violent clashes between police and protesters in Kiev and other cities are possible. The location and nature of demonstrations and methods employed by the police can change quickly and without warning."
Mr. Yanukovych had repeatedly pledged not to use force to disperse protesters, but after meeting President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia at the opening of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, he had clearly changed his mind. The fighting also broke out only a day after Russia threw a new financial lifeline to Mr. Yanukovych's government by buying $2 billion in Ukrainian government bonds.
The Russian aid appeared to signal confidence that important votes in Parliament expected this week, to amend the Constitution and form a new cabinet, will go in Russia's favor.
The fateful shift in Mr. Yanukovych's thinking and tactics will silence what had been chants night and day from Independence Square for him to resign, but it will by no means guarantee his future grip on power in a country that, despite its deep divisions rooted in language, culture and huge disparities of wealth, prides itself on avoiding violence.
Even one of the president's most stalwart supporters, the billionaire businessman Rihat Akhmetov, Ukraine's richest man, seemed distressed by the president's decision, warning in a statement on Tuesday that "there are no situations whatsoever that vindicate the use of force against a peaceful population."
With opposition politicians and other protest leaders vowing defiance late into the night from a stage at the center of their crumbling encampment, it was unclear how long even the greatly feared and detested riot police, known as Berkut, could hang on to Independence Square in the event that residents poured into the area.
The authorities shut down the subway system on Tuesday to prevent people from reaching the area and said they would restrict traffic into the city starting at midnight.
Activists in the west of the country, a bastion of support for the antigovernment cause, had earlier vowed to send buses with reinforcements to Kiev.
Volodomyr Pogorily, a doctor at the protesters' medical center, said he had removed five bullets from wounded protesters. Many of the injuries were from percussion grenades, which create a deafening noise but are not meant to be lethal or cause serious injury. But a nurse said the wounds she had treated on Tuesday suggested that the grenades had been wrapped in tape with nails and stones to make them more dangerous. Other victims had been hit by birdshot from shotguns.
[Source: By Andrew Higgins and Andrew E. Kramer, The New York Times, 19Feb14]
 | This document has been published on 19Feb14 by the Equipo Nizkor and Derechos Human Rights. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. |