SEE IT: Ukrainian politicians get into fistfight during heated parliament session
Sticks and stones may break your bones. But so can words, if you’re a Ukrainian politician — speaking Russian.
A Ukrainian parliament session in Kyiv morphed into a fistfight on Tuesday as men in suits threw punches after a leading politician decided to give a speech in Russian.
Parliamentary leader Olexander Yefremov reportedly called his opponents “neo-fascists” after they started booing. The hot-blooded lawmakers can be seen jumping out of their seats and squaring off face-to-face in the aisles.
© Stringer . / Reuters/REUTERS
The Parliament was scheduled to debate the date of a mayoral election in Kyiv, local media reported.
A small shove is answered by a flying fist. Within seconds, the slapping, grabbing, and hair-pulling spreads through the hall.
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One man springs nimbly over desks, purportedly to break up the melee.
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The brawl started after the leader of the ruling Regions Party faction, Oleksandr Yefremov, delivered a speech in Russian.
In the background, Speaker Volodymyr Rybak shouts, “Stop it. What are you doing?” and “Calm yourselves,” the BBC reported.
The session was suspended briefly while the lawmakers cooled down. It reopened hours later.
Use of the Russian language remains a sore point for many Ukrainians. Riots erupted last year, both on the streets and in parliament, after the government passed a law that would make Russian an official language in some parts of Ukraine. Ukrainian is still the official national language, but millions of people in the former Soviet republic consider Russian their mother tongue.
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Nationalist Svoboda faction members then hissed at Yefremov and chanted “Ukrainian,” demanding that he speak Ukrainian.
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The two sides in the brawl were President Viktor Yanukovich’s Party of Regions and his far-right opposition, Svoboda (Freedom). The Regions party gets major support from Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the country’s east and south, while Svoboda’s power base is in the Ukrainian-speaking west.
Svoboda found a foothold in parliament after the country’s October 2012 elections.
Sergei Chuzavkov/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Ukrainian lawmakers fight around the rostrum during the first session of Ukraine’s newly elected parliament in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, Dec. 13, 2012.
A similar brawl erupted last December during the first session of Ukraine’s newly elected governing body.
With Reuters
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