President’s representative in the Verkhovna Rada Miroshnichenko stated that the state of emergency is not being discussed. He said this in an interview on Hromadske.TV replying to the question about what was the legal basis for blocking all the subway stations in Kyiv. Miroshnichenko could not comment on legal justification for the closure of the subway.
He also said that there is no reason to use force against the protesters in Kyiv. “Basically, we have quite a stable situation. There are no attempts to disrupt the status quo neither by the protesters nor by the government,” said Miroshnichenko commenting on the ultimatum of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ukrainian Security Service. “There is no reason to use force at all,” he said responding to the question about armored vehicles that have been allegedly sighted on the streets of Kyiv. He said he did not know whether a mourning for the dead victims of clashed will be announced on Wednesday but thought it would be an appropriate idea.
At the same time, an emergency state has been de-facto introduced.
Traffic movement in the direction of Kyiv will be limited starting from midnight of February 19, as reported by the press-service of the Cabinet of Ministers.
“Because of mass riots and for the sake of preventing human losses and conflict escalation we ask Ukrainian citizens to take into account that traffic movement in the direction of Kyiv will be limited starting from 00.00 19 February, 2014”, – is stated in the announcement.
Apart from that, Kyiv’s appointed mayor Volodymyr Makeyenko calls upon Kyivans and guests of Kyiv not to visit the city center. As reported earlier, Kyiv’s metro was stopped on February 18 during the day.
Translated by Oksana Poliakova&Alya Shandra, edited by Mariana Budjeryn
Source: pravda.com.ua
