The concessions were revealed Friday; but, hours later, television footage showed huge fireballs lighting up the night sky in central Kyiv. Witnesses said angry protesters entrenched behind huge barricades threw firebombs and rocks at police, who responded with tear gas.
The fighting had stopped at midweek, with a truce called after at least three protesters battling police died -- two of them by gunfire.
Ongoing talks between the president and opposition leaders were expected to have stretched through the weekend, but it was not clear early Saturday what impact the new rioting would have on the talks.
Opposition leaders are demanding the resignation of the government of Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, early presidential elections and the lifting of recently-imposed restrictions on protests.
Anti-government forces were also occupying at least six regional capitals Friday, after storming government facilities across a wide swath of western Ukraine.
Witnesses say the protest movement appears to have been infiltrated in recent weeks by members of a violent far-right militant group known as Right Sector, a loose alliance of nationalist organizations. The presence of the group adds a volatile element to the standoff that analysts say both the government and the mainstream opposition are struggling to contend with.
The crisis was spawned by the president's November 21 decision to back out of a trade agreement with the European Union in favor of closer economic ties with Russia. That decision resulted in a multi-billion-dollar bailout from Moscow that analysts say staved off near-certain bankruptcy for the impoverished country.
Immediately after rejecting the EU deal, pro-European protesters angered by the turn toward Moscow took to the streets of Kyiv and have maintained a presence there ever since.
http://www.voanews.com/content/ukraines-concessions-fail-to-sway-opposition-protesters-new-fighting-erupts/1837434.html
24/1/14
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Ukraine: la contestation se poursuit malgré les promesses du président....
ReplyDeleteChangement de ton, ce vendredi à Kiev. Le président Ianoukovitch a annoncé qu'il comptait revenir sur les lois liberticides entrées en vigueur il y a une semaine. Il a aussi expliqué qu'il comptait remanier son gouvernement mardi. Mais cette annonce n'a pas découragé les Ukrainiens à manifester sur les barricades.
L'annonce n'a pas fait décoller la cote de popularité du président ukrainien chez les manifestants. Les manifestants soulignent d'ailleurs que ce revirement intervient le même jour que la nomination d'Andreï Kluyev à la tête de l'administration présidentielle. Un homme détesté par la rue. On lui reproche d'être à l'origine de la répression sur Maidan il y a deux mois à peine.
Bref, dans le centre de Kiev, les manifestants ne croient plus aux promesses de Viktor Ianoukovitch. Cette nuit encore, ils se sont retrouvés face à la police, à faire brûler des pneus sur des barricades.
La contestation prend de plus en plus d'ampleur dans le pays: les opposants au régime occupent à présent une douzaine de préfectures de provinces.
RTBF
http://www.rtbf.be/info/monde/detail_ukraine-la-contestation-se-poursuit-malgre-les-promesses-du-president?id=8184421
25/1/14
Protesters, police in standoff in Kiev after sporadic clashes....
DeleteKIEV: Protesters and Ukrainian police were on Saturday still locked in a tense standoff in Kiev after a night of sporadic clashes that erupted despite a truce and offer of concessions by President Viktor Yanukovych.
The epicentre of the two month-long crisis -- Ukraine's worst since 1991 -- was relatively calm early Saturday but hundreds of protesters were still at the scene with the security forces on the other side of their lines.
The opposition and authorities also accused each other of provoking further unrest after a body of a policeman was found in southern Kiev and a court jailed over a dozen protesters for two months.
Overnight, demonstrators had hurled Molotov cocktails at police who responded with stun grenades and rubber bullets, AFP correspondents said.
The exchanges on Grushevsky Street in Kiev lacked the ferocious intensity of those earlier in the week but will raise concerns about the sustainability of the truce brokered by opposition leader and world champion Vitali Klitschko in place since early Thursday.
The clashes had killed five activists earlier in the week, according to protesters. The authorities have confirmed two shooting deaths but insisted police were not involved.
Protesters set fire to the barricade of tyres at their frontline and kept it going throughout the night while banging on a makeshift war drum of metal sheets as the noxious smoke made them almost invisible to the police.
Toward the morning, however, they allowed the fires to die down and used them mainly to warm themselves amid temperatures of minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus 4 Fahrenheit).
The interior ministry meanwhile said a body of a police officer was found in southern Kiev, though without linking it to the protesters or clashes which have mostly engulfed the city centre.
The ministry further accused the opposition camp's security of "attacking three police officers" near the Independence Square protest hub, injuring one of them with a knife and holding the other two captive.
The opposition denied responsibility for the attack or the killing ON Saturday and asked the police "not to provoke the situation by spreading false and dangerous news".
"The resistance headquarters categorically denies this and considers this a conscious provocation done in order to stoke police outrage against the protesters," said a statement posted on the website of the Batkyvschina (Fatherland) party early Saturday........................http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/protesters-police-in/967688.html
25/1/14
Ukraine-News-Blog: Opposition fordert Hilfe der EU...
DeleteUkrainische Oppositionelle melden: Nach dem Landwirtschaftsministerium ist auch das Energieministerium in ihrer Hand.................http://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2014-01/ukraine-kiew-news-blog-samstag
25/1/14
Serbian scenario unfolding in Ukraine?...
ReplyDeleteAs riots resumed in central Kiev, Ukrainian affairs analyst Nebojsa Malic told RT that protesters are using extortion tactics to get the government to undemocratically hand power over to them.
RT: President Yanukovich said he will reshuffle the government and make other concessions. Why have the protesters started hurling Molotov cocktails again, and not waited for these concessions to take place?
Nebojsa Malic: What has been going on in Ukraine since November reminds me of nothing more than a Serbian scenario, which started out in September and October of 2000 with the early presidential elections for then Yugoslavia. The goal of the protesters who were trained and financed by the US government was to overthrow the government of president Milosevic. And they succeeded because police and the military and the government were already so taken over by these subversive groups that they refused to put up any resistance. I don’t know if that is exactly what is happening in Kiev, but it is the same playbook. The protesters camp out in the square and demand completely unreasonable, undemocratic demands, such as the immediate resignation of the government and turning over the power to the so-called popular opposition that hasn’t even been tested in elections and has a very small minority of support of the parties that have. And all of a sudden they are the democrats and the government is anti-democratic because John McCain says so.
RT: We are seeing some extreme measures from the protesters. They are throwing Molotov cocktails, throwing stones in an attempt to show force. Why are they doing this now, without waiting for the concessions to take effect?
NM: [Protesters] are trying to force the issue. This is a typical extortion tactic. The whole point is to force the government to react, to force Berkut and other police forces to confront the protesters and then scream “bloody murder, oh my god, they are killing us, they are oppressing us, please help, foreign intervention” and so on. It is a very basic tactic from the rebellion playbook, as was articulated in Serbia 15 years ago and is being implemented throughout the world in Georgia and elsewhere and in Ukraine in 2004 of all things. The protesters are trying to make a point that they are the ones that decide what gets done and who initiates the violence.
RT: We have seen government buildings taken over in different parts of the country. How much further do you think these riots will spread, and what would it take to end them?
NM: This could turn into another Syrian scenario. Syria also started as allegedly spontaneous protests against the government and ended up being a full-scale civil war. There are definitely forces in the western part of Ukraine that have always been hostile to the majority of the population in the country, even allied with the Germans during WWII. And it is not an accident that these opposition movements have the most support in that part of the country. The Crimeans already said they will not stand idly by and look at their future being stolen by these Westerners.
Then eastern Ukraine, where all the economic and industrial activity is located, is staunchly pro-Russian and intolerant of this sort of thing. So this could get very ugly, very quickly if the opposition and their Western backers push this.
http://rt.com/op-edge/ukraine-serbian-scenario-protest-177/
25/1/14