Removal of riot police boost for protesters

The withdrawal of riot police from two areas in Ukraine’s capital is raising opposition hopes that three weeks of escalating protests have begun to erode police support for President Viktor Yanukovych and his government.

Yuri Lutsenko, a former interior minister who is now an opposition leader, declared that the police retreat shows that “basically only some units remain at the service of the regime.”

“This is a great victory,” Arseniy Yatsenyuk, leader of the largest opposition party in parliament, said from the stage at Kiev’s central Independence Square, where protesters have set up an extensive protest tent camp manned around the clock.

“I want to calm everyone down — there will be no dispersal” of protesters,” the current Interior Minister, Vitaly Zakharchenko, said in a statement.

However, his statement did not explain why thousands of helmeted and shield-bearing police were deployed in the first place.

The manoeuvres took place as Western diplomats increased their pressure on Yanukovych to seek a solution to the tensions that have paralysed this economically troubled nation of 46 million. Protesters want Yanukovych to dismiss the government, appoint a new one committed to signing an accord with the EU, release all the arrested protesters and punish the police who beat peaceful demonstrators.

Assistant US Secretary of State Victoria Nuland met with Yanukovych after visiting the protest camp.

“I made it absolutely clear that what happened last night, what is happening in security terms here, is absolutely impermissible in a European state, a democratic state,” she said after the talks, standing a few yards away from buses that were blocking the street to the presidential administration building in Kiev, the capital.

It was Yanukovych’s shelving in November of an agreement with the European Union to deepen economic and political ties that set off the protests. Supporters of the pact want Ukraine to become closer to Western Europe and distance itself from Russia, which ruled or dominated Ukraine for centuries.

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton was also in Kiev to meet both government officials and opposition figures to urge them toward holding talks, which so far has appeared to be a distant prospect.

The police action began about 1am when phalanxes approached Independence Square from several directions, tearing down some of the tents and barricades erected by protesters and scuffling with some.

Scuffles broke out between police and opposition lawmakers, one of whom lay down on the snow to block a vehicle from advancing on the camp. One Orthodox priest sang prayers, and a popular Ukrainian rock song with the lyrics “I will not give up without a fight” blared from speakers. Pop singer Ruslana sang the national anthem from a stage.