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Ukraine Denies Political Links in Dnepropetrovsk Blasts

© 34.UA / Go to the mediabankUkraine Denies Political Links in Dnepropetrovsk Blasts
Ukraine Denies Political Links in Dnepropetrovsk Blasts  - Sputnik International
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The Ukrainian Interior Ministry has denied political motives behind Friday's bomb attacks in the eastern city of Dnepropetrovsk, Ukrainian top investigator Vasily Farinnik told Inter TV channel on Saturday.

The Ukrainian Interior Ministry has denied political motives behind Friday's bomb attacks in the eastern city of Dnepropetrovsk, Ukrainian top investigator Vasily Farinnik told Inter TV channel on Saturday.

“I don’t see any politics in it [attack]. It is of a criminal nature,” Farinnik said in an interview with Inter TV channel. The investigator also said that it was too early to speak about the specific goals of the attacks.

Ten bombs went off in Dnepropetrovsk on Friday afternoon, injuring at least 30 people, according to official information.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks. President Viktor Yanukovych described them as “yet another challenge for us, for the entire country.” He arrived in Dnepropetrovsk on Saturday to oversee the investigation into the attacks, Unian news agency reported.

The president said the explosions were “attempts to destabilize situation in the country.”

“Our main task today is to prevent similar situations in future,” Yanukovych said, adding the causes behind the attacks must be thoroughly investigated.

The attacks are an attempt to undermine Ukraine’s image ahead of the Euro-2012 which Ukraine will host along with Poland, the head of the Ukrainian Football Fedration, Grigory Surkis, said on Friday.

“I don’t know who is behind the Dnepropetrovsk blasts, but I think that these people…are attempting to undermine the authority of our country ahead of the Euro-2012,” Surkis said.

The Ukrainian opposition said that the explosions were a part of a government-backed plan to impose an emergency situation in the country and restrict people’s rights.

“When the country has plunged into such a situation, rights and freedoms should be minimized and an emergency situation should be imposed. The president as the Protector of the Constitution must react to this,” Ukrainian news website Obkom.net.ua quoted one of the leaders of the opposition Batkyvshchina party, Mykola Tomenko, as saying.

According to another version widely discussed in Ukrainian media, the blasts were carried out to avert public attention from the scandal with jailed ex-prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko who has recently complained of brutal beatings by prison authorities.

The Ukrainian nationalist party UNA-UNSO said on Saturday that it was Russia’s Kremlin that could be behind the blasts.

“It’s the Kremlin that, in our opinion, is interested in blasts, death and instability in Ukraine. It puts Euro-2012 under threat as well as foreign investments and the European choice as a whole,” the Novy Region news agency quoted a statement by the UNA-UNSO party as saying.

The party also did not rule out that it was one of the Ukrainian political forces who organized the attacks to undermine Yanukovych’s power.

“Everything leads to a political crisis that would leave both the [current] power and opposition at a loss,” UNA-UNSO told the news agency.

 

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