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Ukraine’s SBU detains organizers of protest at presidential administration building

The traitors who were planning and committing criminal actions and offences have been detained, Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) head Valentin Nalivaichenko said

© ITAR-TASS/Valery Matytsyn/Archive

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Protesters in Kiev hand over 'call-up notice' to President Poroshenko

KIEV, February 4. /TASS/. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has detained and arrested the organizers of a protest action at the presidential administration building, SBU head Valentin Nalivaichenko said on Wednesday.

"We have detained and arrested the organizers of yesterday’s attempts to stage provocations in the centre of Kiev, one of which took place not far from the residential administration building," he said.

"The traitors who were planning and committing criminal actions and offences have been detained," he said. According to the SBU head, the detainees "provoked and passed to the volunteer battalions and civil activists false, distorted information" about the situation in the military operation zone in the south-east of Ukraine.

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Crowd of several hundred tries to storm Ukrainian presidential administration office

The protest action of representatives of the Battalion Brotherhood, relatives of fighters of the Kievan Rus battalion, representatives of the Council of Mothers was held on February 3. It began at the building of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada (parliament). The action participants demanded the introduction of a martial law in the country, insisting on the resignation of the leadership of the entire security bloc — from the defense minister to prosecutor general. Representatives of the protest rally were admitted to the Ukrainian parliament building where they made an address in the parliament’s press lobby. Then they decided to go to the presidential administration to voice their demands to President Petro Poroshenko. During a rally at the Ukrainian presidential administration building the protesters made an attempt to storm the building, broke though the first cordon of the National Guard, tried to penetrate into the conference hall and make a live broadcast of their demands.

One of their main demands is the withdrawal of soldiers of the Kievan Rus battalion of Ukraine’s armed forces from the town of Debaltsevo — a strategic area in the south-east of Ukraine where fierce fighting broke out between Ukraine’s army and militias of the self-proclaimed Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics. Representatives of the Mothers’ Union told TASS that they could not contact their sons for several days.

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