This situation is really frightening to me. I so hope that the Ukraine can get out from underneath her oppressors (yes I mean Yanukovitch and Putin) without descending any further into chaos.
Ukraine isn't under oppression from Yanukovitch and Russia. Current president of Ukraine won last elections being in opposition, after revolution of 2004 showed that nothing changed. But as last government could do any good, current is also considered bad (by people). The core problem is Ukraine consists of two parts - East and West. Both parts are about the same size and population. West part gravitates to west and east part gravitates to Russia. That's understandable, east part has many ties with Russia, because it's almost the same people (same history till 1350-1400 CE) with hundreds years living near. There's families divided by border, they often go to visit each other, there's economical ties etc. Of course Russia wants to see Ukraine as a friend. Imagine Canada would decide to go into union with China and shut down it's border for USA. That's kinda similar.
Anyway, Ukraine stays being two-headed and I don't know how all that will end, but I hope they will find good solution.
You know, that kind of stuff does not happen at all when people are not under oppression.
No population want to go over the police and fight. No big group of people want to kill their neighbours just beause they are in uniforms, neither want to die fighting them. Whatever place and culture they have.
I'm a bit uninformed; is there any recent precedent for a revolt like this succeeding? Honestly I'm a little skeptical that a revolution of this sort could ultimately defeat a vastly better-funded power without overwhelming popular support.
Consider this - Yushchenko let the people decide. Do you really think Yanukovych will do the same in next elections? Will Yanukovych just let the people vote him out of the office?
He has no chance to win again in honest elections, and he already faked the elections before orange revolution. He was in prison twice for theft, he is a criminal. How do you think people can trust him to do the right thing? His family become very rich very quickly. He jailed opposition candidate. He changed constitution to make it harder to protest.
The EU partnership thing was just the last straw. People don't want to be stuck with Yanukovych forever, and now is last chance to get rid of him.
This situation is really frightening to me. I so hope that the Ukraine can get out from underneath her oppressors (yes I mean Yanukovitch and Putin) without descending any further into chaos.