Anti-government protesters gather on and around barricades at a road block in central Kyiv, Ukraine, Jan. 26, 2014. (SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty Images)
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Bloomberg
Ukraine Braces for March on Parliament as Putin Resumes Bailout
By With assistance from Patrick Donahue Feb 17, 2014 4:01 PM CT
Ukraine’s
opposition will march on parliament to pressure lawmakers struggling to
end a deadly three-month political standoff, jeopardizing compromises
that eased tensions over the past week.Vitali Klitschko, a former boxing champion, and Arseniy Yatsenyuk, a lawmaker and former central banker, plan to lead thousands of demonstrators today on the first mass action outside their Independence Square compound since Jan. 19, when the last attempt to reach parliament erupted in clashes with police.
“If politicians don’t make a decision tomorrow, we the people will,” Serhiy, a 23-year-old from the Lviv region near Poland, said inside the encampment yesterday, wearing camouflage and a bulletproof vest adorned with a paper “self defense” badge.“We’ve had enough. We’re fighters. We haven’t come here to listen to talks. If we decide to act, we’ll act.”
Klitschko and Yatsenyuk are seeking to overturn constitutional changes that strengthened Russia-backed Yanukovych’s powers and put Ukraine on a path toward European Union membership. The standoff began Nov. 21, when Yanukovych pulled out of a free-trade deal with the EU, opting instead for President Vladimir Putin’s offer of $15 billion of aid and cheaper gas. It turned bloody on Jan. 22, when three activists were shot dead.
Russian ‘Hardball’
Russia, which stopped buying bonds from Ukraine’s cash-strapped government after Yanukovych’s Russian-born prime minister, Mykola Azarov, resigned on Jan. 28, said yesterday it will resume purchases this week. Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov made the announcement just as Klitschko and Yatsenyuk were meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to seek financial and political backing to form a new government.“Russia is playing hardball,” Alexander Valchyshen, head of research at Investment Capital in Kiev, said by phone. “Russia gave a clear signal that it knows who’ll be the next prime minister, that it’s ready to financially support him, and that no other players are acceptable here.”
Yanukovych, 63, will submit his candidate for prime minister this week, Speaker Volodymyr Rybak told reporters yesterday, after meeting with the president. Yatsenyuk rejected Yanukovych’s offer to become premier on Jan. 25.
Merkel Sympathy
Merkel told Yatsenyuk and Klitschko yesterday that the EU will “do everything” it can to help Ukraine out of the crisis, according to government spokesman Steffen Seibert. She also expressed sympathy for the “legitimate concerns” of Ukrainians, Seibert said in Berlin.The standoff has hurt Ukraine’s bonds and helped push its foreign-exchange reserves to a seven-year low. The yield on the nation’s dollar debt due in June fell 83 basis points to 22.157 percent yesterday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The hryvnia weakened 0.9 percent to 8.86 per dollar, extending this year’s loss to 7 percent.
“Let’s form columns here at 8 a.m. on Tuesday and march to parliament,” Oleh Tyahnybok, who heads the nationalist Svoboda party in parliament, told tens of thousands of protesters at Independence Square on Feb. 16. “We need you to press them.”
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