Ukranian Unrest

[Gen_Glory]

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/ukraine-facing-civil-war-lviv-declares-independence-yanukovich-rule-1437092
Well armadillo....

[Pentagathus]

Yeah, all of the armadillos.

[Gen_Glory]

shame that there is seemingly little we can do to help, any euro/western intervention would cause confrontation with russia and i doubt any euro/western leaders would even want to intervene

[comrade_general]

No one will do anything during the Olympics.

[Jubal]

It's simply too close to Russia for the US or UK to get remotely involved, and the other EU states would probably be too worried about Russia as well.

[Pentagathus]

Yeah I'm wondering what will happen if this does break into a civil war, could be pretty damn bad. Well it already is bad, but not syria levels of bad.

[Pentagathus]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26280710 Latest bbc news.
This has got really portugaling bad. I've seen videos of police gunning down protesters and unknown snipers (probably police or thugs paid by the government) shooting any poor alpaca not in a police uniform. At least one north eastern city has temporarily declared independence and the current government's MPs are apparently resigning in droves.

[Jubal]

I guess the question really is whether Yanukovych can keep control of the army if he can't keep control of his party...

[Pentagathus]

I'm pretty sure its a no, otherwise he probably would have called them in already. From what I've heard it seems he's very unpopular with the army, and generally relies on the police instead. 67 police were captured by protesters, if he trusted the army I think he would have sent them to recapture them, instead he (officially) authorised use of live ammunition by police, but it seems like some of them have already been using live ammunition for a while.
Edit:
Also I'm guessing that the reason so many of the protesters are relatively well armed/armored (for protesters that is, not when compared to their assailants) is that a lot of them are former armed forces. Thats just a guess though.

[Gen_Glory]

Well at least the EU is issuing sanctions against MPs.... Almost as futile as when the UK refused to play Zimbabwe at cricket

[Gen_Glory]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Jubal]

The Union debate tonight was on the motion "This house regrets the Arab Spring."

Defeated 168-59, which I was quite pleased about; a Kievan discussing it afterwards was noting the important similarities.

[Will]

The Union debate tonight was on the motion "This house regrets the Arab Spring."

Defeated 168-59, which I was quite pleased about; a Kievan discussing it afterwards was noting the important similarities.

All revolution/rising up types have a similar scent to them. Venezuela is looking to possibly get in on the violence as well.

Anyone think there is going to come a time when civil wars just don't happen because there is democracy in place? Depressingly sounds to me like a no, but maybe!

[Jubal]

Split to new topic

And back comes Tymoshenko. She's an extremely powerful speaker, even without knowing the language it was quite compelling to listen to. I kind of hope we don't just swing back to a Tymo presidency though or anything as she's still quite divisive and mistrusted by many - I feel like it might be good for Ukraine to balance more towards parliament in future. Though I don't agree with him on most regular political issues, I suspect that constitutionally Klitschko has the right idea and is a clever operator.

[Pentagathus]

Aye, and considering she was (admittedly pretty much illegally) jailed for a dodgy oil deal she may not be the best candidate for fighting corruption within Ukraine.