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Demonstrators in front of Russian consulate in Kiev end protest rally

“The situation has stabilized, protesters have wound up the protest rally," the press-attache of the Russian embassy in Ukraine said

KIEV, June 22 /ITAR-TASS/. Demonstrators have ended their protest rally in front of Russia’s consulate-general in Kiev, the press-attache of the Russian embassy in Ukraine, Oleg Grishin, said Sunday.

“The situation has stabilized, protesters have wound up the protest rally,” Grishin told an Itar-Tass correspondent.

The Ukrainian Interior Ministry’s Main Department in Kiev told Itar-Tass that some 50 people picketed Russia’s consulate-general in Kiev on Sunday. It also said that “picketers threw walnuts at the consulate-general” but said they “did not violate public order.” No one was reportedly detained, according to local media.

Earlier Sunday, extremists organized a rampage inside an office of Russia’s largest savings bank Sberbank in Kiev. They smashed windows with cobblestones and hurled firecrackers into the building. Before that, a few hundred nationalist radicals under Ukrainian flags held a demonstration near the world-famous Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, or Monastery of the Caves, in Kiev.

The Russian Embassy in the Ukrainian capital came under a violent attack on June 14, with embassy cars overturned, the Russian flag torn down and the premises pelted with eggs, smoke barrels and firecrackers. Ukrainian police did nothing to stop the attack.

The developments come amid turmoil in Ukraine, whose Southeast has seen violent clashes between the Ukrainian army and law enforcers on the one hand and local militias, who had not recognized the authorities brought to power by a coup in Ukraine in February on the other hand.

Kiev’s military operation against residents of the Southeast who support federalization involves armored vehicles, heavy artillery and attack aviation. It has already killed hundreds of people, including civilians, left some buildings destroyed and damaged and forced tens of thousands to cross the border from Ukraine to Russia.

Newly elected Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko announced a ceasefire in Ukraine’s embattled Southeast from June 20 to June 27 and presented a peace plan to settle the situation during his first working trip to the eastern Donetsk Region on June 20, but the ceasefire has reportedly been violated.