10,000 Ukrainian citizens protest near monastery
KIEV, Ukraine — About 10,000 anti-government demonstrators angry about Ukraine’s refusal to sign a pro-European Union agreement converged Saturday on a square outside a monastery where protesters driven away in a predawn clash with police were taking shelter. Some opposition leaders called for nationwide strikes.
The demonstrators outside the St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery were shouting “shame” and “resign.” Opposition leaders at a news conference called on Ukrainians to mobilize en masse.
“Each of you have to come out and express your own position on what kind of country you want to live in — a totalitarian, police-controlled country where your children will be beaten up or in a European country,” said Vitaly Klitschko,and leader of the opposition Udar party.
Klitschko’s call encapsulated the two issues agitating the demonstrators: President Viktor Yanukovych’s refusal to sign an association agreement with the EU and the violent dispersal of protests denouncing that decision.
The association agreement would have established free trade and deepened political cooperation between Ukraine and the EU, but stopped short of membership in the regional bloc.
In the city of Lviv in western Ukraine, where sentiment for European integration is especially strong, 10,000 demonstrators protested the failure to sign Saturday.
Early Saturday, officers in riot gear moved against several hundred protesters at Independence Square in the Kiev city center, beating some with truncheons. Some protesters then went to the monastery to take shelter in its cathedral.