KIEV, October 29. /TASS/. The protest in front of the building of the cabinet of ministers in Kiev is growing in size. Besides the tent camp of Ukraine’s Radical Party led by Oleh Lyashko, there have recently appeared tents of the Party of Ordinary People led by Sergey Kaplin. Both actions are designed to make the government lower utilities tariffs.
"Tariff maidan"
The tent camp of the "radicals" appeared in front of the cabinet 10 days ago. It has already acquired a stage. Some 500 people from different regions of the country are constantly in the camp.
Drunk men clad in camouflage control all entrances to the tent camp. Judging by their talk, they recently returned from the area of Kiev’s military operation in east Ukraine.
"Maidan of ordinary people"
The pre-election "tariff march" of the Party of Ordinary People led by deputy Sergey Kaplin who marched on foot from Poltava to Kiev finally ended with an indefinite protest rally. "Ordinary people" set their camp on Grushevskogo Street.
The camp has five large army tents housing 40-80 people each. Besides, the entire camp territory around the perimeter is surrounded by a wall of tents with Kaplin’s portraits.
Currently the number of Kaplin’s supporters, who keep arriving, exceeds 500. Some of the supporters stretched a 20-meter banner with the inscription against Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
Developments in Ukraine
After a coup occurred in Ukraine in February 2014, mass protests soon erupted in Ukraine’s southeast, where local residents, mostly Russian speakers, did not recognize the coup-imposed authorities, formed militias and started fighting for their rights.
In response, Kiev in April 2014 announced the start of "an antiterrorism operation" in east Ukraine, which involved the Armed Forces, the Interior Ministry’s National Guard and volunteer battalions made up of Euromaidan activists, many of whom hold far-right and neo-Nazi views.
Ukrainian troops have been engaged in fierce fighting with local militias during Kiev’s punitive operation, underway since mid-April 2014, against the breakaway territories - the Donetsk and Lugansk people's republics constituting parts of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions of Ukraine.
Massive shelling of residential neighborhoods, including with the use of aviation, has killed thousands and led to a humanitarian disaster in the area.
Kiev has regularly violated the ceasefire regime imposed as part of the Package of Measures on implementation of the September 2014 Minsk Agreements.
The Package (Minsk-2) was signed on February 12, 2015 in the Belarusian capital Minsk by participants of the Contact Group on settlement in Donbass.
The Package, earlier agreed with the leaders of the Normandy Four (Russia, France, Germany and Ukraine) envisioned an overwhelming cessation of fire and withdrawal of heavy armaments to create a security area in the region at least 50 kilometers wide.