On December 16, 2010, a group of “Regionnaires” broke into the Ukrainian Parliament and beat the opposition bloody. The goons viciously attacked opposition politicians protesting government harassment of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
Alexander J. Motyl wrote more about these thugs at World Affairs Journal.
Last winter’s health scare in Ukraine was swine flu. This year’s is far worse: Regionnaires’ Disease, an illness that eats away at political organisms and turns them into ethical zombies.
The carriers of this terrible illness are the cadres of the Party of Regions, the hierarchically organized, anti-democratic, and Russian supremacist political force that brought President Viktor Yanukovich to power and serves as his political base. The Regionnaires control the Parliament, the cabinet, and most regional and local governments.
…On December 16, a band of Regionnaire thugs broke into the Ukrainian Parliament and viciously attacked opposition politicians protesting government harassment of Yulia Tymoshenko. This wasn’t just an instance of the run-of-the-mill fisticuffs for which the Parliament has become known. It was, as one democratic website put it, nothing less than a “pogrom.” Take a look at the YouTube video of the attack. The big guys throwing punches and swinging chairs are Regionnaires. The little guys hiding for cover are the opposition politicians. Oh, and by the way, the Regionnaires have officially declared that the violence was “provoked” by the opposition.
Just a few days earlier, another Regionnaire deputy, the 34-year-old pretty boy, Vitaly Khomutynnik, exhibited his party’s classy side. When asked by a female journalist to name the date of the Treaty of Pereiaslav — the Russo-Ukrainian accord was signed in 1654, and it’s about as elementary a part of Ukrainian, Russian, and Soviet history textbooks as 1776 is in American texts — the married head of the Regionnaire youth wing refused to answer the “provocation,” as he put it, and quipped that, after all, he wasn’t asking her about her bust size.
In America we call these goons the SEIU.
More background on the brawl here.