Monday, December 9, 2013

Ukraine Raids Party’s Office and Encircles Protesters

9 December 2013
KIEV, Ukraine — Ominous new action by Ukraine’s security forces on Monday, including a raid on an opposition party and threats of treason charges, appeared to scuttle an opening for talks between the government and demonstrators, as Western leaders grasped to defuse the country’s intensifying political crisis, witnesses and opposition figures said. 

In a sign of renewed alarm, Vice President Joseph Biden and President Jose Manuel Barroso of the European Commission each made calls to Ukraine’s besieged president, Viktor F. Yanukovich, to warn him away from unleashing violence on a mass demonstration movement in its third week. And senior envoys including the European foreign affairs chief, Catherine Ashton, and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland were being sent to try to defuse the crisis. 

After seeming to lose control of Kiev on Sunday night following a huge rally of hundreds of thousands of people in Independence Square, police forces redeployed on Monday and began efforts to push protesters out of streets near main government buildings. Battalions of police officers moved in and took up positions just outside the square’s perimeter. 

Then, early Monday evening, the Ukrainian security service raided the headquarters of the opposition Fatherland Party and seized computer servers. 

The party’s parliamentary leader, Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, is one of the main organizers of the protest movement, which has ballooned in recent days to dominate the streets of Kiev and pressure Mr. Yanukovich after he refused to sign a political and trade pact with the European Union. But the party is best known as the opposition coalition formed by the jailed former prime minister, Yulia V. Tymoshenko, whose release has long been demanded by Western leaders. 

“They came without any notice, without any explanations, fully armed,” said Natalia Lysova, a spokeswoman for Fatherland who often accompanies Ms. Tymoshenko’s daughter, Evgenia, at public appearances. “They broke the door, took all the servers and left.” Ms. Lysova said that the security officers did not arrest anyone. 

A day earlier, the security service, known as the S.B.U., issued a curt statement saying that it had opened an investigation into possible treason charges against unnamed politicians. At a news conference with other protest leaders on Monday, Mr. Yatsenyuk said that he had been summoned for questioning on Tuesday. 

Just hours before the raid, Mr. Yanukovich had signaled that he would accept a proposal by three predecessors to hold “a national round table for finding a compromise” and that initial discussions would begin on Tuesday. But any sense that his willingness to negotiate might defuse the crisis was quickly erased. 

“We saw on the Internet today some statement about the round table,” Mr. Yatsenyuk said. “We would like to start by saying that it is very difficult to fit a round table into a square сell.” 

He added: “We understood that this is the way Yanukovich invites us to the round table — a few thousands of Interior forces have arrived already, and I received a summon for interrogation from the General Prosecution Office.” 

The raid and police remobilization brought a fresh round of warnings from Western leaders, who reacted in alarm after the security forces violently cracked down on protesters on Nov. 30. 

White House officials said that Vice President Biden pressed Mr. Yanukovich to immediately de-escalate the crisis and open talks with opposition leaders. And he warned that “violence has no place in a democratic society and is incompatible with our strategic relationship,” according to a White House summary of the leaders’ phone conversation. 

Ms. Ashton, the European Union’s envoy, was to arrive on Tuesday. She had been deeply involved in efforts to draw Ukraine into closer ties with the European Union through the trade deal that President Yanukovich abruptly backed away from late last month.