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More than two thousand Ukrainians, mostly young people, demonstrated on Saturday, March 20, 2021, in front of the presidential headquarters in Kiev to protest the prison sentence of a nationalist activist, breaking the windows of the building and writing on its walls.
The youths threw homemade smoke bombs and attempted to burn the metal plaque with the words “President of Ukraine” attached to the facade before firing arrows. Police were deployed to the scene, but did not intervene.
In February 2021, an Odessa court sentenced Sergey Sternenko, a former head of a local branch of the ultra-nationalist Prave Sector party, to seven years and three months in prison after being found guilty of an armed attack on a pro-Russian. local legislator elected in 2015.
The activist denied his involvement and appealed the verdict. His case sparked a wave of protests, as Sergey Sternenko’s supporters considered the evidence against him inconclusive and saw selective and corrupt justice in his conviction.
The protesters who gathered on the occasion of Sternenko’s 26th birthday demanded his release and the removal of the Interior Minister and the Attorney General.
They sang “Freedom for Sternenko” and “Out, Zelia”, a nickname given to President Volodymyr Zelensky. They raised banners saying “We are not afraid” and “Judicial reform is free for Sternenko” or “Today is your role and tomorrow it will be ours.”
Ukraine’s Deputy Interior Minister Antoine Gerachenko saw the protesters’ actions on his Facebook page as a “provocation” aimed at pressuring “the police to use force” to provoke a “bloodbath,” he said.
