Boxing world champion Vitali Klitschko was injured in violent clashes with police after Ukraine’s government voted to make Russian an official language instead of his home tongue.
The Ukrainian prizefighter-turned-politician had to be treated after he was sprayed in the eyes with teargas and suffered a gash to his left arm in the unrest.
The WBC Heavyweight Champion was among rioters angry at the Ukranian government’s decision to make Russian, rather than Ukrainian, the main language in schools and local government in some parts of the former Soviet republic.
‘There are millions of us and they cannot pretend that nothing has happened,’ he said.
Police fired teargas and used batons to disperse hundreds of protesters in the capital Kiev.
The clashes occurred after protesters, led by opposition members of parliament defending the role of Ukrainian as the only state language, massed in front of a building where President Viktor Yanukovich was due to hold a press briefing.
The chamber rushed the language bill through on Tuesday giving opponents little time to cast their vote and prompting scuffles both in parliament and on the streets.
Though the bill needs Yanukovich’s signature and that of parliament speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn – who has offered to quit – to become law, protesters took to the streets and stayed there overnight to bring pressure on the president.
Opposition parties and millions who speak Ukrainian as their first language see the bill as a threat to sovereignty, keeping Ukraine in Russia’s sphere of influence after 20 years of independence following the break-up of the Soviet Union.
As black-helmeted riot police moved to push the crowds back, Lytvyn himself tendered his resignation, apparently siding with the opposition which complained of procedural irregularities.
Klitschko, who sees the European Union as Ukraine’s ‘model for our future political and economic development’, became the leader of the political party UDAR of Vitaliy Klychko in April 2010.
He has been vocal in his opposition of Yanukovych who he blames for ‘deliberately destroying the integration (into Europe) prospects of Ukraine’.
During the 2010 Ukrainian local elections, his party won representatives in Ukrainian municipalities and regional parliaments.
In October 2011, Klitschko announced that he would compete in the 2012 Kiev mayoral election.
Klitschko most recently hit the headlines after beating Brit boxer Derek Chisora in a high profile fight in Berlin last December.
After the fight Chisora was banned from the sport following a televised brawl with David Haye who had recently lost his WBO title to Vitali’s younger brother Vladimir.
People in large swathes of Ukraine speak Russian as their mother tongue and the bill would recognise it as a regional language in predominantly Russian-speaking areas in the heavily industrialised east and southern regions such as Crimea.
The bill will be welcomed particularly in neighbouring Russia whose leaders have pressed Yanukovich (pictured) to deliver on an election pledge in 2009 to upgrade the status of Russian.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is due to visit Ukraine on July 12 for a meeting with Yanukovich in Yalta on gas supplies when the language law seems certain to crop up in conversation.
But given the level of protest, it is by no means certain that Yanukovich will sign the bill into law even though it will be popular in his power base in the east of the country.
Opponents of the bill say it was pushed through by Yanukovich’s party in order to win back disenchanted voters in Russian-speaking regions ahead of the October poll.
WRITTEN BY MATT BLAKEÂ & FULL STORY HERE
