Dave, I suppose your're central ukrainian ?
No, I come from from the South-West of Ukraine which is mostly considered as eastern Ukraine (makes no sense, I know).
Thank you Dave, wanted to make post about differences between eastern and western urkainians for long time, but didn't have enough time and was afraid to misrepresent it due to emotions.
Indeed these differences are one of the main problem Ukraine has because no matter who will come to power, nearly half population will hate him.
Also, you forgot to mention the fourth opposition leader - Poroshenko, obviously smart guy who become more popular with every day. I'm just interested to hear your opinion about him.
Yeah, he is obviously a smart guy and he has my sympathy, but I doubt that they will let him get the power. (Info for everyone: it's a known Ukrainian rich businessman who owns one of the biggest candy production brands in the world - Roshen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roshen )
That was also the case in our former army, probably in many armies, even in Ukranian. I was never an officer, thank God, otherwise I also may think police has a right to shoot at protesters. Dave, kudos for the post, except for the last four sentences. If you shoot at your people as a police officer or officer of the army (which is even worse imo), except when defending your own or somebody else life, you deserve to be tried and convicted as a criminal.
It's the same for all European armies I think. Yanukovich can't use army unless he announces a civil war. What I wanted to say about shooting at protesters is that they only had to shoot and use forces once they had direct threat to their lives (in cases when protesters used guns themselves and threw Molotov Cocktails), Berkut instead used guns and forces against those who didn't even have melee weapons. Trust me, shooting in real life only makes you value a human life more. I've read some Russian websites and the majority of people were like "Kill this Maydan protesters, just use guns and kill them all, they're nаzi terrorists", those are just Russian stupid kids who played Battlefield and never knew the real situation in Ukraine. Last four sentences are the cruel reality, I want it or I don't - I'll be mobilized in case of civil war, anyway being an officer means that you mostly give orders over shooting yourself. And of course I won't shoot my own people besides those who try to kill me, even if I get an order to do so - I can always refuse to follow the criminal order.
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