Ukraine: presidency vandalized after demonstration for justice reform

Demonstrators launch smoke bombs in front of the Ukrainian presidency in Kiev on March 20, 2021. AFP - GENYA SAVILOV

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3 min

On the night of Saturday to Sunday March 21 in Kiev, while radical demonstrators vandalized the facade of the presidency building, clashes took place at the end of a demonstration in support of an imprisoned nationalist.

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With our correspondent in Kiev,

Stéphane Siohan

The individual case of Serhiy Sternenko has for weeks crystallized a much more general movement in society, calling for a profound reform of a totally corrupt and politicized judicial system.

However, on Saturday evening, civil society and the liberals let themselves be overwhelmed by radical nationalists, who this time attacked an institution building. 

They were several hundred to demonstrate in Bankova Street, the seat of the Ukrainian presidency, to demand the release of

Serhiy Sternenko, an ultra-nationalist militant

from Odessa, sentenced to 7 years in prison, but also to demand the departure of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Irina Venediktova, and denounce the hold on the current judiciary, of personalities of the former Yanukovych regime.

Anti-system and anti-police slogans

At the end of the meeting, radical nationalists elbowed, they tagged the facade of the presidency with anti-police and anti-system slogans, and they tried to set fire to the door of the building as well as to windows, as fumes entered the chair. 

Corruption in the courts and injustice itself are the major preoccupation of Ukrainians, and the fight for

an in-depth reform of the justice sector

is carried by the liberal, democratic and anti-corruption activists.

Only, recurrently, the nationalist far-right nestles in these demands carried by the majority, by imposing its methods and its violence, which are in the minority. 

Liberal and Democratic activists have long refused to address this disturbing neighborhood, with some arguing that the end justifies the means.

but this Sunday they wake up with a hangover, as their protest for justice ended with an attack on a symbol of the state. 

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• Ukraine

• Volodymyr Zelensky