KIEV, February 18. /TASS/. Russia’s embassy in Kiev has filed a note of protest with the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry over Ukrainian radical activists’ attack on the Russian Center for Science and Culture in the Ukrainian capital on Saturday, the embassy’s press service told TASS.
"We call on the Ukrainian authorities to give a relevant legal assessment to radicals’ actions, bring to accountability the organizers and participants in the assault and to take comprehensive and effective measures to prevent any such incidents in the future. The embassy has filed a note of protest with Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry," the press service said.
The embassy has expressed indignation at "a blatant aggressive step against the Russian Center for Science and Culture which violates the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and the bilateral intergovernmental agreement on creation and operation of cultural centers signed in 1998."
Earlier on Saturday, members of the S14 (Sich), Right Sector and Tradition and Order nationalist groups mounted an attack on the Russian Center for Science and Culture in Kiev. Led by Andrey Lugovoi, a member of Verkhovna Rada [parliament] from the Radical Party, they stormed into the building and ransacked it. The assailants daubed abusive anti-Russian graffiti on the walls, destroyed notice boards and exhibition stands, splashed paint on CCTV cameras and burnt a Russian flag. As a result, the building has been considerably damaged.
The center’s staff faced a flow of threats and insults and some were even attacked physically. At that time, there were about several dozens of visitors in the center. Most of them were children.
The Russian embassy underlined that police were passively watching what was happening.
The attack on the Russian center was not the first. In August 2016, nationalists hurled smoke grenades into the building and spray-painted graffiti with their symbols on its walls. In July 2017, about 30 members of Svoboda movement headed by a member of the Kiev Council Igor Miroshnichenko stormed the center's building and occupied the second floor to disrupt the presentation of a book on Russian history.