After a measure granting a degree of autonomy to eastern Ukraine was passed in Parliament, clashes between protestors and police intensified, the New York Times reports. One policeman was killed after a grenade was thrown at police lines.
According to the Times, Ukrainian nationalists (and others) see Monday’s vote as a concession to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who demanded the change of status for the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk, currently in rebellion, as part of peace talks in Minsk, Belarus, last winter. The war there has claimed more than 6,500 lives.
The measure won preliminary approval on Monday, the Associated Press reports. 265 deputies voted for it out of 450:
But three parties that are part of the majority coalition in parliament refused to give their support, showing the difficulty that [Ukrainian President Petro] Poroshenko faces even within his own pro-Western camp in fulfilling the peace agreement.
When the decentralization bill comes up for final approval, he will need to get at least 300 votes as required for amending the constitution.
“This is not a road to peace and not a road to decentralization,” said the leader of one of those dissenting parties, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. “This is the diametrically opposite process, which will lead to the loss of new territories.”
Interior Minister Arsen Avakov told reporters the police officer who was killed was a 25-year-old conscript. He also said 122 people—mostly officers, but also some Ukrainian and French journalists—were hospitalized.
According to the AP, no injuries were reported amongst the several hundred protestors outside parliament, although about 30 people were detained, including the man accused of throwing the lethal grenade.
Russia denies any involvement in region’s unrest, but no one believes them. “Everything is created by Russia and supported by Russia,” a researcher at the Kiev School of Economics, Ilona Sologoub, told the Times. “If Russia doesn’t want it to exist, it will not exist in a few days.”
Photo credit: AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.