Pro-Russian vote sparks clashes in city of Euro 2012

Several hundred opponents of the draft bill, facing a first reading, marched from the parliament to be met by police in riot gear at Independence Square, which is being transformed into a pedestrian fanzone for the Euro 2012 football tournament starting this week.

They trampled official Uefa signage underfoot and a group of men scrambled up a structure supporting a giant display screen, on which spectators will view the football matches, and unfurled the Ukrainian flag.

Ranks of riot police pushed the crowd back after scuffles.

“Since they were not allowed to set up a tent protest near the parliament, the majority of protesters decided to occupy the fanzone on Maidan Nezalezhnosti [Independence Square],” said Ruslan Sekela, an activist for a nationalist group, Nastup.

The Russian language issue is an emotive subject in the former Soviet republic of 45 million whose state language is Ukrainian but where a significant number of people speak Russian as their mother tongue.

Ukraine is hosting the month-long Euro 2012 tournament with Poland. It opens with the first matches in Poland on Friday and will end with the final in Kiev.

Supporters of the bill say a law is required to meet the needs of the Russian-speaking population and to allow their children to receive schooling in their mother tongue. Opponents regard the use of Ukrainian as a touchstone of sovereignty and say the encroachment of Russian will keep Ukraine in Moscow’s sphere of influence.

They say the Regions Party of president Viktor Yanukovich is trying to push the bill through to win back votes in their Russian-speaking power bases in time for an October election.

Police threw up barriers round parliament yesterday as the vote took place while 6,000 demonstrators, split between those for and against the draft law, massed in nearby streets.

Regions Party MPs pushed the bill through without any debate after forming a cordon around the speaker to pre-empt any interference by the opposition.

Last month, deputies of the opposition Batkivshchyna party of jailed former premier Yulia Tymoshenko prevented the issue going to a vote by blocking the podium, leading to a brawl.

She has urged her supporters not to disrupt Euro 2012. But Kharkiv, the eastern city where she is imprisoned, is one of the four Ukrainian cities where Euro matches will be played and her supporters seem certain to try to take advantage of the presence of foreign media.

The bill would accord Russian the status of a “regional” language in predominantly Russian-speaking parts, and will be welcomed in Moscow.

Opponents say the move chips away at sovereignty and would mean that in traditional Russian-speaking areas Ukrainian would have no chance of becoming entrenched as a state language.

The bill will have a second reading later in the year and would become law when signed by Mr Yanukovich.