KIEV, January 24. /ITAR-TASS/. Participants in the violent protest in Ukraine, who have seized the administration buildings in Lvov and Rovno on Thursday, have built barricades around the buildings, local media reported.

According to protesters, thus they hope to protect themselves from possible police attacks.

The local administrations are picketed in Ivano-Frankovsk and Zhitomir, where protesters demand not to send police to Kiev and to immediately call meetings of the regional councils to adopt resolutions over the situation in the country.

Opposition supporters have built a new barricade on Institutskaya Street in central Kiev, near Independence Square.

Leader of the Batkivshchyna party in the parliament Arseny Yetsenyuk and leader of the Freedom party Oleg Tyagnibok participated in the construction of the blocking structure. According to witnesses, demonstrators built a wall about four meters high in three-four hours.

Police did not react to the construction of a new barricade, which started right after the results of the talks between opposition leaders and President Viktor Yanukovich were announced.

 

Interior Minister urges protesters out of Kiev’s downtown, pledges no persecution

Meanwhile, Ukrainian Interior Minister Vitaly Zakharchenko on Friday urged protesters to withdraw from central Kiev pledging no prosecution. If demonstrators rallying against a new protest ban on Grushevskogo Street in central Kiev “leave the dangerous territory, law enforcement agencies will take no measures to prosecute these people,” the minister said. Besides, he pledged that “police will not use force” to dislodge protesters from Independence Square.

He also called on his colleagues “to demonstrate restraint, not to react to small provocations and to exercise self-possession”.

“We have always favored a peaceful settlement of the situation. The Ukrainian people can settle thorny conflicts and have demonstrated it more than once. I hope wisdom on both sides will prevail over emotions and will finally end the standoff that nobody needs,” the interior minister added.