Police to assess actions of protesters who stormed Odesa City Council and private security guards
The police are taking measures to identify all of the circumstances of Friday's storming of the building of Odesa City Council, the media liaisons department of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry's main office in Odesa region has told Interfax-Ukraine.
In this connection, the police launched a pre-trial investigation and will make a legal assessment of the actions of both parties to the conflict: the protesters and employees of a private security firm who did not let them into the building of the city council.
The police said that about 30 people, led by Ukrainian MP Pavlo Kyrylenko, had tried to enter the building of the city council, but they had been stopped by private security guards.
"In protest, citizens broke the door, intending to enter the building by force. In response to such conduct, security guards used fire hydrants and dispersed the aggressive attackers," the police said.
Nobody was injured in the incident.
As reported, about a hundred activists of the Svoboda All-Ukrainian Union broke into the building of Odesa City Council on Friday. Tear gas, fire extinguishers, and fire hydrants were used in the scuffle.
Svoboda activists protested against the adoption by the city council of a draft decision to rename around ten streets in Odesa, particularly on renaming Zooparkova Street into Soviet Army Street, etc.
Representatives of entrepreneurs of Odesa-based Pryvoz market and other organizations also took part in the attack. During the storming, Odesa City Council deputies approved some decisions in a rush, without discussing them.
Odesa Mayor Oleksiy Kostusev asked the head of Odesa Regional State Administration, the police and Berkut riot police unit to intervene in the situation.
Svoboda, in turn, said that the activists had decided to attack the building after MP Pavlo Kyrylenko, a member of the Svoboda faction in parliament and head of the Odesa regional branch of tbhe party, had not been allowed to attend the council session.
