Hundreds of activists in several Ukrainian cities blockaded on Tuesday the cigarette distribution centres owned by a Russian tycoon with alleged links to ousted pro-Moscow president Viktor Yanukovych. Ukrainian lawmaker Sergiy Vystotskiy said the protest action was launched in Kiev and the Western city of Lviv and other locations around warehouses of a firm controlled by Moscow-based retail magnet Igor Kasaev.

Forbes magazine identifies Kasaev as president of the Mercury group of companies that controls 70 percent of the Russian cigarette market and more than 90 percent of those in Kazakhstan and Ukraine. A Kiev police spokesman confirmed to AFP that "activists" had launched a protest action in the Ukrainian capital on Tuesday around a warehouse owned by Mercury.

He provided no other details and directed all questions to the organisers of the protests aimed at getting the government to break up the Russian-linked firm. Vystotskiy claimed on Facebook that Kasaev had secretly split the Ukrainian branch of his company "50:50 with Yanukovych's family" - an expression used by the ousted leader's critics to describe insiders who allegedly profited from preferential deals.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2016