Unrest Spreads to More Cities in Ukraine
KIEV, Ukraine — With President Viktor F. Yanukovych and antigovernment demonstrators at an impasse here in the Ukrainian capital, civil unrest spread across the country on Friday as protesters laid siege to government buildings in at least nine other cities — occupying some and thronging outside others.
The widening turmoil, in the central Ukrainian cities of Khmelnytsky, Zhytomyr and Cherkasy, as well as in the western strongholds of Lviv, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lutsk, Rivne and Chernivtsi, showed that the authorities, including the elite Berkut riot police and Interior Ministry troops, were outnumbered and at risk of being spread too thin.
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Officials say there are 3,000 to 4,000 specially trained Berkut officers, and another 8,000 to 9,000 Interior Ministry troops deployed across the country. Throughout the now two-month uprising, there have often been many more protesters than that on the streets of Kiev. And some officers, particularly in the West, are believed to side with the opposition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/25/world/middleeast/ukraine-protests.html