Bringing The World Home To You

© 2024 WUNC North Carolina Public Radio
120 Friday Center Dr
Chapel Hill, NC 27517
919.445.9150 | 800.962.9862
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Fists Fly In Ukraine's Parliament After Lawmaker's Speech [VIDEO]

Members of Ukraine's Svoboda party fight with members of the Communist Party in Ukraine's Parliament Tuesday, during a debate over a law toughening responsibility for separatism.
AFP
/
AFP/Getty Images
Members of Ukraine's Svoboda party fight with members of the Communist Party in Ukraine's Parliament Tuesday, during a debate over a law toughening responsibility for separatism.

A speech in Ukraine's Parliament sparked violence Tuesday, after other lawmakers took exception to a Communist leader's speech that criticized the current government and Ukrainian nationalists who helped to oust the country's president earlier this year.

"You are today doing everything to intimidate people. You arrest people, start fighting people who have a different point of view," Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko said in Kiev, according to Euronews.

And with that, two members of the far-right Svoboda party grabbed the party official at the front of the chamber. Others rose to Symonenko's defense, in a tense situation that culminated in lawmakers wrestling and throwing punches at one another.

Symonenko "also accused nationalists of setting a precedent by seizing public buildings when they had protested against the rule of now ousted President Viktor Yanukovych," Euronews says.

Ukraine's Parliament recently adopted a law punishing people who are found to be working against Ukraine's territorial integrity.

One day after pro-Russian separatists seized public buildings in eastern Ukraine, acting President Oleksandr Turchynov said Tuesday that he would treat them as "terrorists."

Reuters says, "Symonenko did not appear to have been hurt in the brawl involving other deputies. But one deputy later resumed his seat in the chamber with scratches on his face clearly showing."

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Bill Chappell is a writer and editor on the News Desk in the heart of NPR's newsroom in Washington, D.C.
More Stories