Pro-European integration protesters clash with Ukrainian riot police during a rally near government administration buildings in Kiev yesterday. Photo: Reuters

Protesters clashed with riot police in the Ukrainian capital yesterday after tough anti-protest legislation, which the political opposition says paves the way for a police state, was rushed through Parliament last week.

A group of young masked demonstrators attacked a cordon of police with sticks and tried to overturn a bus blocking their way to the Parliament building after opposition politicians called on people to disregard the new legislation.

Despite appeals from opposition leaders not to resort to violence, and a personal intervention from boxer-turned-politician Vitaly Klitschko, protesters continued to throw smoke bombs and hurl fireworks and other objects at police.

Tough anti-protest legislation paves way for police state

The police appeared to show restraint during that fracas. The interior ministry said 30 police were hurt, including more than 10 admitted to hospital and four in serious condition.

A spokeswoman for Klitschko tweeted that President Viktor Yanukovych had agreed to meet Klitschko immediately at the presidential residence outside Kiev, although there was no confirmation from Yanukovych’s side.

As tensions continued into the night, police used water cannon against demonstrators gathered near the Parliament building and the heavily protected government headquarters, eyewitnesses said.

Earlier, some distance away from the clashes, up to 100,000 Ukrainians massed on Kiev’s Independence Square in defiance of the sweeping new laws, which ban rallies and which Washington and other Western capitals have denounced as undemocratic.

The rally, the biggest of the new year, was the latest in a cycle of public protests in the former Soviet republic since Yanukovych made a policy U-turn in November away from the European Union towards Russia, Ukraine’s former Soviet overlord.

Several big protests in December attracted hundreds of thousands of people, while thousands maintained a vigil in a Kiev square demanding Yanukovych resign.

Since the new year demonstrations have become smaller, but hundreds of people are still camping in the square and 50,000 turned out a week ago.

The court ban on protests published on January 15, and last Thursday’s legislation aimed at prohibiting all form of public protests, have inflamed tensions again.

The laws – denounced by the US and other Western governments as anti-democratic – ban any unauthorised installation of tents, stages or use of loud-speakers in public.

Heavy jail sentences were imposed for participation in “mass disorder” and the wearing of face-masks or protective helmets. Dissemination of “extremist” or libellous information about the country’s leaders was outlawed. In a gesture of scorn for the ban, many protesters yesterday wore saucepans and colanders on their heads.

The crisis has highlighted a divide in the country of 46 million people between those, particularly in Russian-speaking eastern areas, who identify more closely with a shared past with Russia and those, especially in the Ukrainian-speaking parts of western and central Ukraine, who look westwards.

Opposition leaders announced a plan to gather people’s signatures expressing no confidence in the leadership of Yanukovych and Parliament. Denouncing as unconstitutional last Thursday’s hurried vote in Parliament by Yanukovych loyalists, they called for moves to set up a parallel structure of power – including a people’s assembly and a new constitution.

“Yanukovych and his henchmen want to steal our country. Ukraine is united as never before in its struggle against those in power today, in its determination not to allow a dictatorship,” Klitschko said.