I have read in some places the notion of the violent protesters being (in part and in the beginning) paid by the government or other groups of people who are against them to cause violence where there was none and discredit the protesters in this way, justifying the police charges and escalation.
Not a new idea at all, but heard it in a couple of places already, and would be interesting to hear the opinions from people who are closer to it.
It's hard to say if part of protesters were paid by government. Opposition at the beginning said that all who came to Bankova Street on 1st December were paid. Probably that's true, but not even most of them. More likely there were several people who had to provoke fight, nothing more. And even that wasn't necessary in my opinion, fights would start without them. So yes, probably some part of protesters were paid by government, but that's not common and there are no proofs that even some of them were.
More common and much scarier is that government hires groups of gopniks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopnik to terrorize population. In Kiev they beat windows, single passers and do their best to make people more unhappy about these protests by causing more damage. Lately they went from this to burning cars. Though there are no 100% proofs that these guys(they commonly called
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titushky lately) were hired by government it certainly looks like they were + once they were used by police as lure to capture group of protesters who were hunting for titushky.
However in eastern regions it's much worse. Here titushky openly attack protesters, sometimes some funny accidents happen, like when in Donetsk they made mistake and attacked group of government's supporters instead.
But somewhere(my city included) it is even worse. Here they attacked and brutally beat protesters shoulder to shoulder with police, chasing them on city streets for long time. And it cannot be lie, several people I know personally were there, one even got to hospital.
to be honest - it was also show of current leader's power
I'd say it is likely to be the main reason for that. This perfectly worked in my city where they know people and could anticipate reaction, though even here it will likely backfire on next elections.
But as for other ukrainians... Our mighty leader can watch what's happening in western Ukraine and in center of Kiev and enjoy how powerful he is.
nobody needed the story from 2004-5 so better to end it before its got started...
Also quite doubtful statement. Though Yushchenko proved to be complete disappointment, it doesn't mean that Yanukovich is the best president we can hope for, I wouldn't even say that he is better. They are both terrible in different ways.
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