This is really bad. I've been watching the livefeed the last 5 hours. Police has built good position, trying to strom Maidan, but no luck so far. They probably won't be able to storm the place without a lot more deaths on both sides. Lviv has lost police HQ, also government buildings in Ternopil seized.

26 dead. 10 of them policemen. Very rare to see the numbers so equal. Police still doesn't use firearms. Russia's officials claim that most protesters deaths are not caused by police.

Protesters are officially not interested in negotiations anymore. They went all-or-nothing at this point, they want civil war if they don't get what they want.

The west is infuriated, but who in his right mind takes them seriously? They are not interested in the fate of Ukrainian people.

Next step will be to mobilize Ukrainian military, but for now they are busy securing their weapons. Government has lost control over Lviv. Protesters have taken a Lviv military base and have accesss to their weapons.

All this for just a few politicians..

Funny how Russian media keeps calling it The Ukraine. Country is called "Ukraine". "The Ukraine" was a Russian province. This matters, a lot, to Ukrainians.

I've never heard of that. Where did you get this information? If this is indeed true then probably because journalists simply don't know better, not just Russian journalists. For example look at German journalism, there is no norm over whether to say "Ukraine" or "die Ukraine".

Do you speak Russian? I do. In Russian there is no use of "the". You just say "Украина", it's the official name of the state and has nothing to do with provinces or whatever. The province was called "УССР", Ukraine Soviet Socialist Republic and nobody calles Ukraine that way anymore.

Yeh, im wrong. was a quote from a journalist ..

Sorry, but this is so wrong on so many levels. I can only shake my head.

The fact is that Yanukovich and parliament are democratically elected. Months ago he was good enough for the EU to negotiate an assosiation plan with. And now that he has rejected the plan all of a sudden they call him a dictator and organize riots.

In 2015 are the next presidential elections. That's the opportunity of Ukrainians to elect a new president. Why create all this bloodshed? It has nothing to do with democracy.

From what I understand, they're killing each other over a new master. Whoever wins, they all lose.

I agree with this. I just want the violence stopped, no side taking.
From a economical point of view he did the right thing..

Ukraine president, protest leaders agree to a truce

The development came as U.S. and European leaders strongly condemned the violence here



russia only condemns protesters?

You don't know what ur talking about. He was elected with powers of German president (Do you know even German president's name?) and then reverted back to old constitution with powers US president can only dream about by bribing judges of Constitutional court.

Typical Russian reasoning: whoever is anti-Russian is automatically Nazi. They've even called the Israelis nazis. Nicely done, tovarish! Can u prove that Svoboda has sympathies for Hitler, or is it just Reductio ad Hitlerum based on ur own fantasies? And who told you that Svoboda is the only political opponent of Yanukovich?

And check out this phenomenon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titushky

Yes, they act so professionally shooting protesters on the eyes and making them blind, dozens have fallen victims to this brave police officers. And this guy was beat up by these heroes and left to die nakid in the forest at night when it was like -30 centigrade:

Next presidential elections are 2015.

Like I already said in this thread, I know very well about this phenomenon and I'm sure that at the beginning of the protests they may have been active. But what is happening now in Ukraine is obviously waaay beyond agent provocateur level, so I'm not sure why you even bring up this point.

Sorry, but I don't debate on such a low level.

There is no proof for any of this. And even if some of it is true, what is your point? ACAB? The fact is that the whole world is watching, it's obvious that so far Yanukovych has been less aggressive than most would have been in his position.


Do you live in Ukraine? If yes, where do you get your information? Are you involved or just watching TV?

Wait Germany helped anti-EU, anti-NATO, pro-Russia president? Makes no sense.


And why would Nazis be anti-Russia and pro-EU? I mean EU is pro-diversity while Russia has raising neo-nazism.

Thanks to that topic Im even more confused.

No, he means that Yanukovych reformed the presidential post and thereby gave himself more powers. The German president has no powers, he is simply supposed to sign everything that the parliament puts on his desk, and if he doesn't then they simply make him resign.* Obama on the other hand has much more powers. But like I said, it's not much of an argument. The next elections are 2015. Why not just wait, see what Ukrainians actually want and live with it?

*In the last four years two German presidents resigned, which is unprecedented for Germany, iirc a German president has never resigned before in history, and then it's two in a row, in such a short time, perfectly timed with Euro-crisis. First was Horst Köhler, he claimed it was because some part of the press was infuriated that he defined the mandate of the German Bundeswehr as also being responsible for defending German economic interests. The better explanation is that he wasn't willing to sign the new EU laws that would strip Germany of important powers conerning its sovereignity and hand it over to EU. Same thing with the next president Christian Wulff. The press (led by "Bild") made a huge scandal accusing him of curruption. The trial is still going on, but it's about not even a 1000€ I think, it's ridiculous. Shortly before the scandal broke out Wulff made remarks that he is very skeptical about the direction the EU is going, so there was a danger that he would refuse to sign the EFSF or ESM (I forget which of the two). And now they have Joachim Gauck, a self-infatuated idiot without any sort of integrity or understanding of historic responsibility. And interestingly, a note for historians, Gauck openly defined the mandate of Bundeswehr as also being responsible for German economic interests, this time the press didn't protest.

EU has absolutely no problems with neo-nazism, they not only tolerate it (although of course not openly in press conferences), they also organize and finance it via the secret intelligence services. And I think neither does Russia, as long as they serve the bigger interest.

What bigger interest?

I don't know much about the Russian neo-nazis, but I can't imagine that they operate autonomously. In order to better understand the structure of contemporary European neo-nazis you should start by looking into "Stay-behind" and "Gladio".

Anton Shekhovtsov, a blogger and a researcher of far-right movements in Europe:
http://anton-shekhovtsov.blogspot.no/ random internet person:

From tomorrow there will be no connection with Ukraine, no internet, no mobile connection, the banks will be closed. It's official

I don't buy it.

The major share of support for the Ukrainian far right comes from those citizens who do not share far right views but urge for Ukraine's true independence. This means that it will only be possible to neutralize the far right after Ukraine gains national independence. The far right is being fueled by the constant threat to the Ukrainian statehood rather than the alleged growth of extreme right views in the Ukrainian society.

this seems plausible, imo

---
“Our European partners have done enough mediation,” Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said, calling events in Kiev “an attempted coup d’état”. He accused the West of failing to recognise “neo-Nazi, anti-Semite, extremist acts” by protesters.

I don't understand this talk about "true independence". Ukraine is already independent. They are not part of the EU and they are not part of the Russian Eurasian union.

The simple fact is, and it can't be repeated often enough, it should be the start and end of every discussion about the situation in Ukraine: president and parliament are democratically elected, they can elect the new president in 2015 and then if they wish they can take all the independence that they think they don't yet have. The way I see it so far Yanukovych hasn't done anything that any other EU president wouldn't have been obliged to do in his place, from his pov he and his government are democratically elected and a militant minority is attempting a coup d'etat.

I've just read an interview with Olena Bondarenko, some important person from Yanukovych's Party of Regions, she says that they're not even opposed to new elections right now, but the opposition wouldn't support this initiative, because the opposition party leaders haven't enough public support and the right sector wouldn't respect election results if they lose - maybe true maybe not... Now I read that the EU-foreign ministers propose a compromise plan to make an interim government, a consitution reform, and then new presidential and parliament elections. I find it unlikely that Yanukovych will agree to the interim government and constitution reform, but I hope he will agree to new elections.