Riots Fuel Fear of Russian Provocation in Ukraine’s Second City
This article is for subscribers only.
Police patroled Ukraine’s second-biggest city, near the Russian border, after riots last night left two people dead and an officer critically wounded.
An attack late yesterday on a Ukrainian cultural organization’s office was a “well planned provocation by pro-Russian activists,” Kharkiv’s regional governor, Ihor Baluta, said today in statement on the administration’s website. A fire still smoldered this morning by the office of Prosvita, a group set up in 1868 to protect and promote Ukraine’s language, as forensics officers removed evidence. The blaze burned a smaller building in a courtyard and the offices were ransacked.