The parliament vote for the amendment of Ukrainian constitution initiated by Petro Poroshenko took place nine month after signing Minsk Peace Accords this February and was aimed at making a first modest step towards granting Donetsk and Lugansk republics more autonomy. However, the first working session of Verkhovnaya Rada which resumed its work after summer vacations turned into an unprecedented scandal.
Deputies from the Radical Party blocked the presidium and chanted anti-Poroshenko slogans calling for fellows MPs to fight “tooth and nail” against the bill, seen by them as a betrayal of national interests and an attempt to give Kiev’s stamp of approval to separatists’ movements in Eastern Ukraine.
The standoff in Rada was followed by a bloody carnage near the parliament walls with hundreds of well-trained nationalists attacking security forces with batons and stones and throwing grenade in the police which claimed the lives of two soldiers of national guard.
Despite parliament‘s approval of the amendment to the Constitution in the first reading. the cost for the embattled President Poroshenko can be quite high. With a looming threat of a new political crisis and fresh elections, his political future is in doubt. Moreover, the rise of Ukrainian radicals can further complicated implementation of already troubled Minsk peace accords.
The article entitled Ukraine’s Poroshenko: Violent Kyiv Protest ‘Stab in the Back’ which was carried by the Voice of America web-site says: “Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko has described as a "stab in the back" a violent nationalist demonstration against legislation that grants more autonomy to pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine”.
Gleb Ivashentsov, Member of the Russian Council for International Relations and Russia’s Former Ambassador to South Korea and Myanmar (studio guest); Vladimir Sotnikov, Director of the East-West Strategic Studies Center (studio guest) and Jan Van Benthem foreign commentator at the Nederlands Dagblad (The Netherlands Daily) commented on the issue.
