Ukraine Activists Lament 'Betrayal' Of Kiev's Maidan As War Rages In The East

[Purveyor]

Source: Guardian UK

Agencies
theguardian.com, Thursday 7 August 2014 10.57 EDT


Maidan protesters set tyres on fire in reponse to attempts to remove them from Independence Square. Photograph: Stas Kozlyuk/Demotix/Corbis


Thick smoke from burning tyres once again billowed into the blue sky over Kiev's Independence Square on Thursday as a group of demonstrators still living in the protest camp scuffled with authorities trying to clear the area.

Dozens of demonstrators threw stones and started fires as they halted a short-lived push by municipal workers backed by interior ministry troops to dismantle barricades around the entrance to the central square with bulldozers.

The fate of the symbolic site, the centre of months of bloody protests that led to the toppling in February of President Viktor Yanukovych, is a hotly debated topic in the country.

"They came from two sides and tried to clear away the tents and everything," said protester Andriy, clutching an iron bar. "They want us gone, but we are not ready to leave yet."

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/07/ukraine-activists-lament-betrayal-kiev-maidan

[Igel]

1. At this point I think a lot of people are wondering why, exactly, they're still there.

The mass movement that was behind them has dropped away because what most wanted they sort of got or are waiting to see if it happens.

That leaves a motley assortment, many of which are PravSek and Svoboda types (which is not identical to "fascist," not the way we usually use the word or the way the Russians use it) but all of which have sort of an outsized view of their importance. They make pronouncements about how things will go and what they will and will not permit. Without a mass movement behind them, the result is just bad PR for everybody.

The Maidan isn't what it was. Nor, probably, what it will be.

[MisterP]

2. sorry folks, only Washington is able to certify whether or not your revolution's betrayed

if your revolution shows signs of getting out of hand by doing things like feeding the hungry or treating the sick, please call us immediately and we'll send some local bandits to call out local clinicians and agronomists and gun them down in front of the whole village: heck, we even have firsthand experience shooting down aircraft full of civilians! don't delay!

[karynnj]

3. So do you think Obama is the same as Reagan? It is not the early 1980s -- nt

In fact, Obama's SoS did more than anyone in Congress later that decade to expose the illegal aid to the Contras -- and paid a price for doing so.

[cosmicone]

4. Quick... let's dispatch Victoria Nuland with more cookies! n/t