Ukrainians Thwart Politician Medvedchuk's Meeting With Voters In Mykolaiv - Reports

KIEV (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st October, 2020) Activists on Wednesday thwarted a meeting of the Ukrainian party Opposition Platform - For Life's leader, Viktor Medvedchuk, with voters in the southern city of Mykolaiv, which he planned to have ahead of local elections, media reported.

Protests sparked in Ukraine after a Kiev court earlier this week ordered historian Vakhtang Kipiani to remove from his book about Ukrainian poet and dissident Vasyl Stus any mention of Medvedchuk. The book contains archival materials about the case of Stus, who was arrested for anti-Soviet activity in 1980 and died five years later in a camp in which he was serving his sentence. Medvedchuk was the poet's lawyer in the case. The Kiev court also banned the distribution of the already printed copies of the book until the verdict is carried out.

According to the UNIAN news agency, activists picketed a music hall, where Medvedchuk planned to address voters. The politician did not show up for the meeting and the protesters fixed the posters in support of the book on the windows of the music hall, lit fires and dispersed.

The book "The Case of Vasyl Stus" was released in May 2019 and shed light on Medvedchuk's role in the poet's imprisonment. In particular, Stus, who was imprisoned twice for what was called "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda," after the second arrest in 1980 tried to refuse the services of a state-appointed lawyer, but Medvedchuk was foisted on him. The latter did not attempt to refute the charges against Stus and, instead, asked only that mitigating circumstances were considered.

Commenting on the court's ruling on the book, the Ukrainian presidential office expressed surprise at some of the wording in the verdict but did not question its independence.