Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich said he would meet with his three predecessors Tuesday in an effort to resolve a political crisis that escalated with the storming of an opposition party headquarters by armed riot police.
Yanukovich announced plans Monday for what he said would be a nationally televised round-table discussion with the other three men who have served as president of Ukraine since it broke away from the Soviet Union in 1991.
Yanukovich was also expected to meet with European Union envoy Catherine Ashton, who is expected to talk to both sides in Kiev on Tuesday.
The capital, Kiev, has been rocked by massive demonstrations in recent weeks after Yanukovich’s decision to reject a proposed trade pact with the EU. By default, that leaves Russia as Ukraine’s leading economic ally, angering Yanukovich’s Western-leaning opponents, LA Times informs.
The demonstrations continued peacefully Monday, although there were moments of tension.
Late Monday, riot police armed with Kalashnikov rifles stormed the central Kiev headquarters of the Batkivshchyna party, led by former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Tymoshenko, who is in prison for abuse of power, has been urging her followers to seek the ouster of Yanukovich.
“They are breaking doors, furniture, seizing computers and other things,” Tymoshenko’s press secretary, Marina Soroka, said in a telephone interview during the raid. “They have also detained some of our employees who were there during the attack and offered no resistance.”
She later said that the police had spent about an hour and a half in the party’s offices, making no arrests but ransacking the premises and taking away computer servers and other equipment that belong to the party and three affiliated media organizations.
