As another Ukrainian, even living in eastern Ukraine where people usually support Yanukovich, I cannot agree with Dark Blade.
Situation here is very complicated and there is no way to say which side is right or wrong. More likely they are both wrong, which is also not completely true.
First of all, in my opinion, full responsibility on what's happening in our country lies on government and president. All these protests, peaceful at the beginning, started not because Yanukovich didn't sign up association agreement, but because he and his government for several years were talking and promising how they will sign it up and that they are working on it, but at the very last moment he told something like “For some reason I will not sign it up”. So people saw that he doesn't really care about what he promise and that was main reason why people started protesting.
It lasted for a bit longer than week, then on 29th November Yanukovich didn't sign up agreement during Eastern Partnership Summit and in the same night berkut
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkut_(Ukraine) attacked protesters
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NktaoqIg9uE It was first violence, there were no molotov's cocktails before that, no policemen beatings and no administrative buildings capturing. All shit happening in Ukraine these two last months started that night.
After that massive protests started. Around 1 million people joined protests next day. Most went to Independence Square
http://forum.melee.org/general-off-topic/meanwhile-in-ukraine/msg911634/#msg911634 ,
but some radical retards decided to fight police on Bankova Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OrQGRAtZmk In the evening police attacked, outcome you can see in first post.
Later there were lot of provocations from both sides but it was more or less ok. Until enacting anti-protests laws, which was done in a very strange way by raising hands, that were immediately counted. Shortly after that molotov's cocktails and all that shit you can see on tv appeared.
About protesters: at the beginning most of them were peaceful with some radicals I mentioned before who started to fight police from the first day. However with every day and with every stupid ruler's decision more and more are ready for violence confrontation. Despite many Yanukovich's followers opinion, not all of them are right-wing radicals and not all radicals are neochocolate chip cookie, not even most, though some of them certainly are.
Basically most of protesters are good people, but there are also lot of aggressive retards who are using this as opportunity to do what they like.
About laws: it's not the laws themselves which caused escalation of conflict. It is the way they were passed, situation in which they were passed, and the way laws in Ukraine are usually used and abused(not sure if it's different in other countries).
It took much more time to write this wall of text than I expected, so I won't write my opinion on situation in regions today, which is subject for another long post. Just main thing I wanted to say: protests in Ukraine today has nothing to do with EU union anymore. It's more about Yanukovich himself(these are not first stupid decisions he made, just first that led to such consequences), the way he reacted to protests and the way he is ruling the country in general(which is also subject for another post).
Unlike Dark Blade, I am scared of death and I am scared of civil war, which is unlikely but still possible in current situation.
IMO best solution in this situation would be Yanukovich's resignation and new president elections, but it wouldn't solve the main problem in Ukraine – there is no leader who could be accepted both by eastern and western Ukraine. And if such leader won't appear – I'm afraid Ukraine will split up sooner or later, hopefully without huge bloodshed.
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