KIEV, Ukraine - Anti-government unrest spread from Ukraine’s capital, and the government recalled lawmakers from a winter break for an emergency session after weeks of protests claimed their first lives.
Activists on Thursday took over the headquarters of governors picked by President Viktor Yanukovych in three cities, marking a widening of the 2-month-old protest movement. The parliament will convene Tuesday to consider a no-confidence motion against the Cabinet and the repeal of laws curbing rallies, opposition leaders said after a four-hour meeting with the president.
Yanukovych is struggling to stem rallies against his November snub of a European Union cooperation deal, with police crackdowns fanning people’s anger. Four days and nights of clashes left at least two people dead and about 1,250 injured as legislation to stem the protests took effect this week and the government gave the police special powers to quell the demonstrations.
Regional-administration buildings in the western cities of Lviv, Ternopil and Rivne were taken over as protesters flooded in. Demonstrators also targeted government buildings in another seven of the nation’s 24 regions, smashing their way in when police offered resistance, Espreso TV reported.
Emerging from hours-long talks with Yanukovych, opposition leader Oleh Tyahnybok asked demonstrators in Kiev for several more days of a truce, which he had called Wednesday night, saying the president agreed to ensure the release of dozens of detained protesters and stop further detentions. Police also pledged not to use fire-arms, he said.
Some in the crowd appeared defiant, jeering and chanting “revolution” and “shame.”
“We are not going to sit and wait for nobody-knows-what,” said ski-mask-wearing protester Andriy Pilkevich, who was building barricades near police lines from giant bags of ice. “Those who want to win must fight.”
Interior Minister Vitali Zakharchenko issued a statement guaranteeing that police would not take action against the large protest camp on Independence Square, known as the Maidan. He also called on police to exercise calm and not react to provocations.
But ex-heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko, an opposition leader, said Yanukovych once again refused to meet the opposition’s demands for early elections.
Prime Minister Mykola Azarov didn’t show any willingness to compromise.
“It’s absolutely impossible to hold snap presidential elections now,” he said Thursday in Davos, Switzerland, where he was attending the World Economic Forum. “How can one speak about elections when the center of Kiev is occupied by gunmen? A coup attempt is in progress.”
Although one opposition leader, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, said after the talks with Yanukovych that “there is a really good chance” to stop the bloodshed, Klitschko was more downbeat.
“The only thing we were able to achieve was not much,” a grim Klitschko told the demonstrators Thursday.
He urged protesters to refrain from violence and continue peaceful protests to avoid further bloodshed.
“I am afraid, yes, I am afraid of human losses,” Klitschko said. “We will be widening the territory of the Maidan further until these guys start reckoning with us.”
The extraordinary session of the parliament, which defeated a no-confidence motion against the government in December, also will vote on dropping charges against demonstrators in custody, Tyahnybok said. The Interior Ministry said Thursday that 73 people have been detained, 52 of whom are being investigated for “mass riots” - a new criminal charge that carries a prison sentence of up to eight years.
The protests that have gripped Kiev since last year escalated this week with the first deaths.
Police were investigating Wednesday’s discovery of two bodies with gunshot wounds. The deaths resulted from live ammunition, the Interior Ministry said Thursday, denying that its officers fired the bullets. One of the deceased was a 20-year-old Armenian with Ukrainian citizenship. The other was from Belarus.
The opposition says five people have died, including one who fell off a colonnade after being beaten and another who was identified by his relatives after police found a body outside Kiev with signs of torture. Some 1,000 people have been injured and 30 remain missing, including an instigator of protests that targeted officials’ homes, activists say.
About 250 policemen have sought medical help, according to the Interior Ministry.
“Blood hasn’t been spilled for nothing,” said Ihor Lavrinyuk, a 27-year-old computer programmer who joined the protest Wednesday and plans to volunteer as a computer specialist. “There’s no way back and the government must go.”
In recent days, demonstrators have thrown Molotov cocktails and stones at police, who’ve responded by firing rubber bullets, deploying smoke bombs and beating activists with batons. Under Wednesday’s truce, protesters extinguished tires that had been set on fire to disrupt the movements of law-enforcement officers, but they lit them again Thursday evening.
Groups of activists, many of them elderly women, broke stones out of the pavement, packing them into bags to strengthen barricades up to about 13 feet tall around Independence Square and a street leading to the parliament.
In Lviv, a city in near the Polish border about 290 miles west of Kiev, hundreds of activists burst Thursday into the office of the regional governor, Oleh Salo, a Yanukovych appointee, shouting “Revolution!” and singing Christmas carols.
After surrounding him and forcing him to sign a resignation letter, an activist ripped it out of Salo’s hands and lifted it up to the cheers and applause of the crowd. Salo later retracted his signature, saying he had been coerced.
Meanwhile, hundreds of protesters smashed windows, broke doors and stormed into the governor’s office in the city of Rivne, shouting “Down with the gang!” - a common reference to Yanukovych’s government. Once inside, they sang the national anthem.
Meanwhile, anger spread after a video was released online appearing to show police abusing and humiliating a naked protester in what looked like a location close to the site of the Kiev clashes.
In the video, a young man, his body covered in bruises, wearing nothing but socks, is made to stand on the snow in freezing temperatures, while a policeman punches him in the head and others force him to pose for photos.
The Interior Ministry issued a statement, apologizing “for the impermissible actions of people wearing police uniforms” and began an investigation into the episode.
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden called Yanukovych on Thursday and urged him to immediately put an end to bloodshed between protesters and the government.
The White House said Biden urged Yanukovych to address the protesters’ legitimate concerns and protect democratic freedoms. Biden said violence by any side is unacceptable, but only Ukraine’s government can ensure an end to the crisis.
Biden also told Yanukovych that more violence would have consequences for Ukraine’s relationship with the U.S.
The U.S. has pledged to revoke the visas of people linked to violence last year, and White House press secretary Jay Carney said Thursday that sanctions remain under consideration. The EU warned it was considering its course of actions.
Russia warned the West against meddling in Ukraine.
Russia is convinced Ukraine’s authorities “know perfectly well what to do” and “resents” the interference of Western governments, President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, was cited as saying in the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.
European leaders maintained their criticism.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned Ukraine to stem the violence and condemned last week’s anti-protest bill.
“We are very concerned - and not only concerned, but outraged - at the way in which these laws were pushed through and that call into question these fundamental freedoms,” Merkel said outside Berlin.
After European Commission President Jose Barroso spoke Thursday with Yanukovych by phone, EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule will start a two-day visit today to Kiev to discuss the recent developments. Catherine Ashton, the bloc’s foreign-policy chief, said she would visit next week to meet the president and the opposition.
“The EU has to reinforce the efforts in support of the political solution to the current crisis,” she said in a statement. “It is imperative to avoid further worsening of the situation and to pave the way for a genuine dialogue between the authorities, the opposition and civil society.” Information for this article was contributed by Daryna Krasnolutska, Ott Ummelas, Volodymyr Verbyany, James G. Neuger, Jones Hayden, Henry Meyer and Patrick Donahue of Bloomberg News and by Maria Danilova, Yuras Karmanau, Svetlana Fedas, John-Thor Dahlburg, Raf Casert, Josh Lederman, Geir Moulson,Vladimir Isachenkov and staff members of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/24/2014