KYIV (Reuters) – Ukrainian police on Sunday detained a group of individuals suspected of getting ready mass riots within the capital Kyiv and different cities to trigger instability as tensions rise with neighbouring Russia, Ukraine’s inside minister mentioned on Monday.
The United States and different Western international locations have mentioned Russia may very well be getting ready for a brand new invasion of Ukrainian territory after massing greater than 100,000 troops close to the border, and Ukraine has mentioned Russia is making an attempt to intimidate and destabilise it.
Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskiy advised a televised briefing that round 5,000 individuals had been supposed to participate in riots and clashes with police in 5 cities in northern and central Ukraine.
“This motion, which was deliberate prematurely, was initially geared toward violent actions and organising riots and had nothing to do with peaceable protests,” he mentioned.
“It was … supposed exactly to shake up and destabilise the state of affairs in Ukraine.”
The minister didn’t say how many individuals had been detained or who was behind the deliberate unrest.
Russia, which seized the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 and backs pro-Russian rebels within the east, has repeatedly denied planning to invade once more.
(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
