Ukrainian opposition leaders emerged from crisis talks with President Viktor Yanukovych yesterday saying he had failed to give concrete answers to their demands, and told their supporters on the streets to prepare for a police offensive.
Using emotional language following the deaths earlier in the day of at least three protesters – two of them from gunshot wounds – the three opposition leaders who met Yanukovych said they were ready to face police bullets.
Boxer-turned-politician Vitaly Klitschko told the thousands of protesters gathered on Kiev’s Independence Square that during three hours of talks the President had given no clear response to their demands that the government be dismissed and sweeping anti-protest laws ditched. “Today they (the police) are preparing to clear us out of the ‘Maidan’ (Independence Square),” Klitschko declared.
Leaders tell supporters to prepare for police offensive
“We must do all we can to stop them clearing us out,” he said.
He urged people to stay overnight and defend the square in central Kiev, and drew a roar of support from protesters when he declared: “If I have to go (on to the streets) under bullets, I shall go there under bullets.
“Tomorrow if the President does not respond... then we will go on the offensive,” he said.
Former economy minister Arseny Yatsenyuk echoed his words, and referred to the overnight shooting deaths which the Opposition has blamed on police despite official denials. A third man died after plunging from the top of Dynamo football stadium while fighting with police.
“I will not live in shame. Tomorrow we will go forward together. If there will be a bullet in the forehead, so be it. It will be honest, just and brave action,” he said.
The deaths were the first protest-related fatalities since the crisis erupted last November after Yanukovych ditched a trade deal with the European Union in favour of financial aid from Soviet-era overlord Russia to prop up Ukraine’s ailing economy.
The direct talks between Yanukovych and the opposition were the first concrete move towards negotiating an end to two months of civil unrest which have culminated in violent clashes between hard-core radical protesters and police.
The protesters, inflamed by news of the deaths, faced off again yesterday with riot police, whom they have battled near the government headquarters since Sunday night. Though repelled by occasional forays of baton-wielding riot police, they have continued to return to the spot, setting tyres ablaze and sending clouds of black smoke wafting into police lines.
Fifty people were detained overnight and 29 of them were officially charged with taking part in mass unrest, police said. A total of 167 police have been injured, officials said. There was no estimate of the number of civilians injured. Ahead of the talks with Klitschko, Yatsenyuk and far-right nationalist Oleh Tyahnibok, Yanukovych issued a statement deploring the overnight loss of life.
But his Prime Minister, Mykola Azarov, took a tough public line before flying off to the economic forum in Davos, denouncing the protesters as “terrorists” and “criminals”. He blamed Opposition leaders for inciting “criminal action” by backing the protests, which he said had destabilised Ukraine.