BRUSSELS, February 20 (RIA Novosti) – The European Union resolved Thursday to impose sanctions against government officials in Ukraine linked to violence that has claimed dozens of lives.
Measures to be adopted by the EU include an asset freeze and a travel ban against officials believed to be guilty of human rights infringements and excess of force.
“No circumstances can justify the repression we are currently witnessing. We condemn in the strongest terms all use of violence,” the EU said in a resolution following a gathering of its foreign ministers.
EU member States also agreed to ban exports to Ukraine of any equipment that the resolution stated could be used for “internal repression.”
The resolution said the EU would work in close cooperation with the international community to find a solution for the situation in Ukraine.
Russia, which has consistently supported the government of President Viktor Yanukovych, said earlier in the day that sanctions would only serve to increase tensions.
“Threatening sanctions and other means of influencing the situation are inappropriate and can bring no good and can only exacerbate the confrontation,” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich.
Officials in Kiev say 67 people were killed in fighting over three days, although international media have reported higher figures. The Associated Press cited a doctor working with the opposition as saying at least 70 protesters had been killed and another 500 wounded.
Interior Ministry says at least 13 police officers have been killed, many of them from gunfire.
The violence in Ukraine is the worst the nation has seen since it gained independence in 1991.
The increasingly intransigent standoff between the government and opposition took a bloody turn Tuesday after a crowd marching on parliament was confronted by law enforcement officers. Pictures from the front lines showed rioters ripping up cobblestones to hurl at police.
Deputies in parliament had at the time been tussling over proposed changes to the constitution that opposition parties say would water down presidential powers and thereby lead of the political crisis.
The truce called by the hardened opposition forces camped out on Kiev’s central Independence Square and the authorities was broken Thursday morning with a new round of clashes.
The government has accused radical demonstrators bearing firearms of being at the vanguard of an attempt to seize power by force.
Opposition representatives, meanwhile, accuse the authorities of deploying snipers to fire upon the crowd. Eyewitnesses on Twitter posted numerous photos apparently showing police officers wielding automatic and sniper rifles. The photographs could not be independently verified.
With ever-increasing reports of a soaring death toll, the Interior Ministry announced that it would allow law enforcement officers to use live ammunition.
Mass protests initially erupted in late November after the government backed away from deals to deepen political and economic cooperation with the European Union and instead opted for closer ties with Russia.
Although discontent was at first focused on that about-face move on EU ties, protests have since taken on a more general anti-government quality, calling for the president’s ouster and early elections.
In a statement that appeared to underline the broader national risk posed by the unrest in Kiev, the head of the regional legislature in heavily ethnic Russian-populated Crimea, in southern Ukraine, warned on Thursday that the country could fall apart if the situation worsened.
Ukraine is deeply divided between its east, where much of the country’s industry is concentrated and people have closer ties with Russia, and the west, which is more orientated toward Europe and where people favor Ukrainian ahead of the Russian language, which was made compulsory in Soviet times.
Violence rippled out in all directions, to both the east and west of the country, overnight Tuesday from Kiev. As well as Lviv, the occupation of government buildings by anti-government activists and confrontations with police were reported Wednesday in the western cities of Ivano-Frankivsk, Lutsk, Rovno and Ternopil.
