A man died of a heart attack Wednesday as pro-Russian demonstrators brawled with supporters of Ukraine’s new interim authorities in the capital of the Russophone Crimea peninsula, as the local government ruled out debating a split from Kiev.
Scuffles erupted in Simferopol as thousands of pro-Moscow residents and Muslim Crimean Tatars backing the new leadership in Kiev held competing rallies outside the regional parliament, amid fears that Ukraine’s pro-Moscow east could push for partition following the weekend ousting of Kremlin-backed president Viktor Yanukovych.
Crimea’s health ministry said that an unknown elderly man was found dead at the scene “without any traces of bodily injuries”.
“According to initial information from medics, the cause of death was acute cardiac arrest,” the ministry said.
An AFP journalist said that the two sets of demonstrators sprayed each other with pepper spray and used batons as police struggled to keep them apart during the brief fighting.
Ambulances were called as several people could be seen nursing light injuries before crowds dispersed following appeals from local lawmakers for them to go home.
Meanwhile the head of the parliament of the autonomous region — where Russia’s Black Sea fleet has been based for some 200 years — rejected demands to discuss breaking away from the rest of Ukraine at an emergency session Wednesday, dismissing the idea as a “provocation”.
“The question of leaving Ukraine will not be put before the parliament of Crimea,” parliament speaker Volodymir Konstantinov said.
Up until 1954, Crimea belonged to Russia but it was then given to the Ukrainian Soviet republic by USSR leader Nikita Khrushchev and has long been seen as a potential source of conflict.
Ukraine’s interim leader Oleksandr Turchynov on Tuesday warned there were “dangerous signs of separatism” after some 10,000 pro-Russian protesters took to the main square of the Crimean port town of Sevastopol over the weekend.
Western countries have warned the Kremlin not to meddle with Ukraine’s territorial integrity and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov toned down the rhetoric from Moscow on Tuesday by saying it was sticking to a policy of “non-interference”.
The avalanche of change in the deeply divided former Soviet state came after scores of demonstrators were killed in Kiev last week when three months of anti-Yanukovych protests exploded into violence.
The demonstrations were sparked in November by Yanukovych’s decision to spurn a historic pact with the EU in favour of closer ties with old master Russia, and grew into a titanic diplomatic tug-of-war over Ukraine’s future direction.