KIEV, Ukraine — Four explosions rocked an eastern Ukrainian city Friday, injuring 27 people. Authorities said it was a terrorist attack, but an opposition lawmaker claims it could be a government plot to divert attention from the imprisonment of opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko.
Top law enforcement officials rushed to Dnipropetrovsk, 250 miles southeast of Kiev, to investigate, but there was no immediate claim of responsibility. The violence undermined Ukraine’s security weeks before it co-hosts the European soccer championships in June.
President Viktor Yanukovych vowed to investigate and punish the perpetrators.
The president’s office declined to comment on opposition charges that the blasts were meant to deflect the world’s attention from Tymoshenko. But Prime Minister Mykola Azarov commented on his Facebook page that the blasts “are profitable to those forces that are interested in destabilizing the situation in the country.”
