Ukraine Marchers Clash With Police as Putin Resumes Bailout (2)

Ukrainian protesters seeking
President Viktor Yanukovych’s ouster clashed with police as they
tried to reach parliament to pressure lawmakers struggling to
end a deadly three-month political standoff.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk, a lawmaker and former central banker,
and Oleh Tyahnybok, who heads the nationalist Svoboda party, led
thousands of demonstrators into a park a couple of hundred
meters from parliament before police halted the advance,
triggering clashes. It’s the first mass action outside their
compound, formed around Independence Square three months ago,
since Jan. 19, when attempts to reach parliament were repelled.

Police used consussion and flash grenades to stop rock-throwing marchers on Shovkovychna Street, about 100 meters from
parliament. Molotov cocktails thrown from the crowd set a
government truck on fire. Protesters burned tires on another
route to parliament, producing a cloud of thick black smoke that
covered the same area where three activists were shot dead on
Jan. 22. At least one protester, leg bloodied, was taken away in
an ambulance.

Russian Colony

“Today, we face the choice of whether we’ll be a colony of
Russia or an independent state,” lawmaker Andriy Parubiy told a
swelling crowd before the march. “We are not afraid.”

Vitali Klitschko, a former boxing champion, Yatsenyuk and
Tyahnybok are seeking to overturn constitutional changes that
strengthened Russia-backed Yanukovych’s powers and to put
Ukraine on a path toward European Union membership. The standoff
began Nov. 21, when Yanukovych pulled out of a free-trade deal
with the EU, opting instead for President Vladimir Putin’s offer
of $15 billion of aid and cheaper gas.

Today’s parliamentary agenda doesn’t include bills on
constitutional changes or any of the other issues raised by the
opposition, according to lawmaker Pavlo Rozenko.

Russia, which stopped buying bonds from Ukraine’s cash-strapped government after Yanukovych’s Russian-born prime
minister, Mykola Azarov, resigned on Jan. 28, said yesterday it
will resume purchases, including $2 billion this week. Russian
Finance Minister Anton Siluanov made the announcement just as
Klitschko and Yatsenyuk were meeting with German Chancellor
Angela Merkel in Berlin to seek financial and political backing
to form a new government.

‘Playing Hardball’

“Russia is playing hardball,” Alexander Valchyshen, head
of research at Investment Capital in Kyiv, said by phone.
“Russia gave a clear signal that it knows who’ll be the next
prime minister, that it’s ready to financially support him, and
that no other players are acceptable here.”

Yanukovych, 63, will submit his candidate for prime
minister this week, Speaker Volodymyr Rybak told reporters
yesterday, after meeting with the president. Yatsenyuk rejected
Yanukovych’s offer to become premier on Jan. 25.

Merkel told Yatsenyuk and Klitschko that the EU will “do
everything” it can to help Ukraine out of the crisis, according
to government spokesman Steffen Seibert. She also expressed
sympathy for the “legitimate concerns” of Ukrainians, Seibert
said.

Dwindling Reserves

The standoff has hurt Ukraine’s bonds and helped push its
foreign-exchange reserves to a seven-year low. The yield on the
nation’s dollar debt due in June fell 83 basis points to 22.157
percent yesterday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The
hryvnia weakened 0.9 percent to 8.86 per dollar, extending this
year’s loss to 7 percent.

Before the rally, Tyahnybok and other opposition leaders
agreed to cede control of five government buildings, including
Kyiv’s City Hall near Independence Square, prompting prosecutors
to drop charges against hundreds of demonstrators as part of an
amnesty bill.

“Our plan is to besiege parliament until they come up with
a solution, like the way cardinals elect the Pope,” said Ihor,
a 41-year-old contractor from the industrial city of
Dnipropetrovsk in eastern Ukraine, Yanukovych’s power base. “We
don’t want a fight, nothing more than maybe jostling with the
police a bit.”

Yanukovych, whose victory in rigged elections triggered the
2004 Orange Revolution, won a five-year term in February 2010
and strengthened the office of president. In 2011, former Prime
Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, his opponent in the 2010 vote, was
convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison for abuse of
power — a case the EU has called politically motivated.

‘We’re Fighters’

In addition to Yanukovych’s removal, his opponents are
seeking to free Tymoshenko and restore the 2004 version of the
constitution to give more power to the 450-seat parliament. The
president’s Party of Regions and its allies, the Communists,
hold 237 seats. Opposition parties have 167 seats, with the rest
belonging to independents.

“If politicians don’t make a decision, we the people
will,” Serhiy, a 23-year-old from the Lviv region near Poland,
said inside the encampment before the march, wearing camouflage
and a bulletproof vest adorned with a paper “self defense”
badge. “We’ve had enough. We’re fighters. We haven’t come here
to listen to talks. If we decide to act, we’ll act.”