Ukrainian interior minister blames Tyahnybok, his Svoboda party for riots outside Rada
KYIV. Aug 31 (Interfax) - Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov has accused the All-Ukrainian Union "Svoboda" and its leader Oleh Tyahnybok of clashes outside the parliament building on Monday.
"I directly accuse Oleh Tyahnybok and his Svoboda party. I consider it a crime, not a political position," he said at a briefing in Kyiv on Monday.
"I don't know what this is for, and why he would need this. Is it just because he is not currently in government? Serving to Ukraine could mean this: apply yourself, serve and move on. That is the way it will be with everyone, with me and all the rest," the minister said.
"Tyahnybok did not bring protestors to the Verkhovna Rada, he brought gangsters who killed and maimed our soldiers. This is my position," Avakov said.
The interior minister is convinced that what happened outside the parliament has nothing to do with expressing one's political position. "I don't know what the reason is, why our soldiers have to die outside the walls of the Verkhovna Rada. I see not one political reason or political difference why someone has to injure National Guard soldiers," the minister said.
He also said that around 20 of those injured are soldiers and officers who took part in the anti-terrorist operation, received state awards and early ranks.
"Do we have to keep them outside the Verkhovna Rada to pay for somebody's political ambitions?" the minister said.
Avakov also said that he had seen video footage and photos showing "Mr. Tyahnybok standing nearby when a National Guard soldier was beaten."
For his part, Tyahnybok described such claims by Avakov as an attestation to the minister's involvement in the planning of what happened. "That Avakov so promptly 'appointed the responsible' attests to one thing: he was the one who planned the provocation," Tyahnybok wrote on its Facebook page.
"The scuffle began after 'Avakov's eagles' launched the offensive by stamping on the portraits of the slain Ukrainian Svoboda heroes fallen on the front. It is obvious that the government had the goal of creating foundations for the use by punitive authorities of weapons so that no one could no longer prevent the final passage of the treacherous changes to the Constitution," Tyahnybok said.
He also said that Svoboda parliamentarians demand that Rada Speaker Volodymyr Hroisman on Tuesday first consider Avakov's resignation which was proposed by a group of Samopomich and Petro Poroshenko Bloc deputies, as well as 18 extra-factional parliamentarians as early as May 14.
