Kiev police dispersed an anti-fascist rally calling on the authorities to stop violence from ultra-right Ukrainian groups against their citizens, Strana.ua reports.
The demonstration was timed to the day of the murder of journalist Anastasia Baburova and human rights activist Stanislav Markelov in Russia by nationalist groups. According to the portal, it lasted no more than ten minutes. The security forces detained the participants almost immediately after it began and put them in paddy wagons. The reason for the dispersal of the event was the coronavirus restrictions.
In an interview with the newspaper, the initiators of the action said that they decided to hold a rally, despite the ban, due to the increased incidence of attacks by radicals in Ukraine and their funding from the state. “We believe that impunity for right-wing extremists will have tragic consequences for society,” the organizers said. They also demanded that the country's leadership investigate a number of crimes committed by such groups.
Markelov and Baburova were shot dead in Moscow on January 19, 2009 by members of the radical nationalist group Fighting Organization of Russian Nationalists (BORN). Many anti-fascist movements on the territory of the former USSR annually take action against violence in their countries, timed to coincide with the death of a journalist and human rights activist.
Earlier, Ukrainian nationalists took offense at the Polish ambassador Bartosz Tsikhotski for his words about Stepan Bandera. They called on the diplomat to leave the country as soon as possible and said that during his lifetime the collaborator was “the ideologist of a free Ukraine.”
