MOSCOW, May 16. /ITAR-TASS/. Ukraine’s protesters on Kiev’s Independence Square, known as the Maidan, included a large number of drug addicts, Russia’s Federal Drug Control Service chief Viktor Ivanov told reporters on Friday.

Certain media reports said in February that bags with psychostimulant drugs used by US armed forces were brought to the Maidan as medical agents used in sports, he said.

“I have no information that the drugs were delivered from the United States,” he added. “But we’ve gained information that a large number of drug addicts took part in the Maidan protests - in other words, people in an absolutely inadequate, psychoactive condition.”

“This information exists and our Ukrainian counterparts have it, too,” Ivanov said.

Maidan is the name for downtown Kiev's Independence Square, which is the symbol of Ukrainian protests. The word “Maidan” is also used as a collective name for anti-government protests in Ukraine.

Ukraine is in political turmoil. Violent anti-government protests, which started in November 2013 when the country suspended the signing of an association agreement with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Russia, resulted in a coup in February 2014.

The Ukrainian crisis deepened when the Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol, a city with a special status on the Crimean Peninsula, where most residents are Russians, signed agreements to reunify with Russia on March 18 after a referendum two days earlier in which an overwhelming majority of Crimeans voted to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation.