VIDEO: Smoke bomb protest in Ukraine’s parliament
April 27, 2010 03:47 pm
As protesters threw eggs and set off smoke bombs,
The egg artillery barrage ended when the attackers ran out
of ammunition, at which point they moved in for hand to hand combat, reports
CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips.
The agreement, reached last week by the two country’s
presidents in a clear sign of
Former President Viktor Yushchenko adamantly tried to move
The extension outraged Ukrainian nationalists who regard the
fleet’s presence as tantamount to Russian occupation.
“This is a permanent threat to
The voting session was unruly even by the Ukrainian
parliament’s notoriously freewheeling standards.
Opponents of the measure threw eggs at parliament speaker
Volodymyr Lytvyn as he opened the session and he spent much of the rest of it
shielded by an umbrella held by an aide. Two smoke bombs went off and deputies
shouted defiantly over the squeal of a smoke alarm.
The extension passed with 236 votes in the 450-member
parliament, but opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko vowed it wouldn’t last.
“Parliament ratified this agreement on a treacherous path. We
will change it as soon as we return to power,” she said, according to the ITAR-Tass
news agency.
That was the concern of some of the few Russian parliament
members who abstained from voting when the measure passed in the State Duma 410-0.
“There’s no certainty that the agreement will be fulfilled
by the Ukrainian side,” said Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the nationalist
Liberal Democratic party. “In 10 years there may be another Yushchenko in power.”
In return for the lease extension,
CBS/ AP