Protestors storm Lviv City Council building

Protestors stormed the Lviv City Council building on
May 29 demanding the resignation of Mayor Andriy Sadovyi for alleged
corruption. They allege he has distributed real estate to insiders while
failing to fulfill state obligations to distribute land to Donbas war
veterans.  At a May 24 meeting at the City Council building to address the
conflict, protesters dumped paint on Sadovyi’s deputies.

In Facebook posts on May 29, Sadovyi accused the
storming protestors of assaulting council workers and wielding knives. He also
complained that the regional police chief failed to respond to complaints,
prompting him to travel to Kyiv to speak with Interior Minister Arsen Avakov
and the police leadership. “They are aware of what is happening in the city. I
expect real actions,” he wrote on Facebook. “If there’s no reaction, I will
reach the conclusion that there are no police in the region and defending the
city from bandits is exclusively our internal matter.”

Sadovyi accused the Solidary Poroshenko Bloc party of
organizing the violent attacks. Organizations openly involved in the protests
and violent events were the National Corps, believed to be controlled by
Avakov; the Sokil nationalists; and members of the Freedom nationalist party.
Donbas war veterans were also involved in the events, having been camping in
tents near the building.

Zenon Zawada: Sadovyi has
already said that he won’t run for re-election next year as Lviv mayor. We
don’t see him qualifying for parliament either as his Self-Reliance party has
lost support, particularly in his home base of Lviv, which is Ukraine’s
seventh-largest city.