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Mykola Azarov

Ukraine’S prime minister denounced anti-government protesters as “terrorists” yesterday, but in what appeared to be his first real move to end weeks of unrest President Viktor Yanukovich held talks with opposition leaders.
Prime Minister Mykola Azarov’s tough line, at a cabinet meeting, appeared to foreshadow a police crackdown on protesters who yesterday massed anew in their hundreds, inflamed by reports of at least three demonstrators dying overnight – two of them from gunshot wounds.

However Yanukovich, who has so far refused to make any concessions to the protesters, raised cautious expectations of a negotiated settlement, saying he wanted no bloodshed and agreeing to meet opposition leaders.

In a statement deploring the three deaths and urging people not to heed the calls of “political radicals”, Yanukovich said: “I am against bloodshed, against the use of force, against inciting enmity and violence.”

His website said talks had begun between the president, his aides and three opposition leaders – boxer-turned-politician Vitaly Klitschko, former economy minister Arseny Yatsenyuk and far-right nationalist Oleh Tyahnibok.

Bloody clashes
Yanukovich has rebuffed opposition demands for the dismissal of the Azarov government and the prosecution of the interior minister for heavy-handed police tactics.

Even as the meeting began, black-helmeted riot police appeared to be gearing for a further attempt to push back radical protesters from a street leading to the main government building and parliament, scene of bloody clashes since Sunday.

A heavy armoured vehicle moved down the road followed by scores of police bearing shields, pushing back protesters under a curtain of smoke rising from burning tyres.

But the police operation stopped well short of Independence Square, crucible of the so-called “Euro-Maidan” protests where hundreds of anti-government demonstrators have been camped for the past two months.

“Terrorists from the ‘Maidan’ (Independence Square) seized dozens of people and beat them. I am officially stating that these are criminals who must answer for their action,” Azarov told a cabinet meeting yesterday.

Azarov accused opposition leaders of inciting “criminal action” by calling for anti-government protests, which he said destabilised the situation in Ukraine, a large former Soviet republic of 46 million people.

In the worst violence that anyone can remember in Kiev, a 200m stretch of the city centre close to government buildings has been turned into a battle zone as hard-core protesters, ignoring opposition leaders’ pleas for calm, have bombarded police with petrol bombs and cobblestones.

Riot police have replied with rubber bullets, stun grenades and teargas.
Yesterday’s violence erupted ironically as Ukraine marked National Unification Day – the day in 1919 which brought together that part of the country that had been under Russian rule with that which had been in the Austro-Hungarian empire.

In a Unification Day message, Yanukovich expressed the conviction that 2014 would be a year of “mutual understanding and frank discussion about our common future”. – Reuters.