Cops hurt as crowd storms motorcade

FAR-RIGHTISTS LASH OUT: ACCUSING GOVT OF GRAFT

Protesters are blocked from venue of President Poroshenko’s speech.

Kiev

Ukraine’s police said yesterday that 25 officers were injured in clashes with ultra-nationalists who tried to attack a presidential motorcade ahead of elections at the end of this month.

Nineteen police officers were hospitalised in the city of Cherkasy, where supporters of the farright National Corps party tried to block President Petro Poroshenko’s motorcade and accused the government of corruption.

Three officers were also injured in clashes with the same group in Kiev near the presidential offices, with one hospitalised.

The incidents further exacerbate tensions ahead of the presidential elections on March 31 in a country plagued by graft scandals and an ongoing conflict with pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Police spokesperson Yaroslav Trakalo said probes have been opened into the events in Kiev and Cherkasy. A police video from the city about 150km southeast of Kiev showed a crowd of men, some with masks on, swarm around a motorcade of police cars, with some climbing on the roofs, opening car doors and punching policemen.

The protesters lit flares, filling the street with smoke, and shouted obscenities. “Who are you protecting, these scumbags devastated Ukraine’s army!” one protester said in the video.

National Corps spokesperson Oleksandr Alfyorov confirmed the group’s activists were involved in clashes in both cities.

He accused police of blocking streets to prevent people accessing the square where Poroshenko was giving a speech.

The protesters wanted to “raise the question of corruption in government,” including misappropriation of funds in the military.

Poroshenko was recently accused of ignoring a scheme smuggling military parts. Last week, he said he had fired the official allegedly profiting from the

Probes opened into events in Kiev and Cherkasy

scheme.

Poroshenko was in Cherkasy on Saturday to honour poet Taras Shevchenko. Poroshenko is one of three leading candidates in the presidential polls, alongside TV actor Volodymyr Zelensky and former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko. – AFP