Free Republic

Two people – a self-defense member and a Ukrainian soldier – were killed after snipers opened fire from a partially inhabited building near a military research center in Simferopol. One sniper was reportedly detained, another is on the run. As RT producer Lida Vasilevskaya arrived at the scene, the perimeter of the Ukrainian military topography and navigation center was already surrounded by men in camouflage and the situation was "calm." The local Interior Ministry said in a press release that shooting came from a house under construction opposite the center and targeted Crimean self-defense units as well the military center...

That’s because Russia has a strong interest in nominally retaining Crimea as part of Ukraine. From the disintegration of the Soviet Union onward, Crimea, with its traditionally separatist leanings, was always a destabilizing factor. It served as a direct avenue of Russian pressure on Ukraine, and also guaranteed almost a million “pro-Russian” votes in Ukrainian elections, ensuring the dominance of the pro-Russian eastern half of the country over the nationalist western half. If the Ukrainian nationalists had been smarter and more farsighted, they themselves would have advocated a renunciation of claims to Crimea in order to remove this needle in...

ZURICH, Feb 27 (Reuters) - The Swiss government said it will order banks to freeze any funds in Swiss banks found to be linked to ousted President Viktor Yanukovich. "The federal council decided yesterday to freeze any Yanukovich funds found in Switzerland," government spokesman Andre Simonazzi said in an emailed statement.

Mr Medvedev, quoted by Russian news agencies, suggested that Western countries that accepted Ukraine's new authorities were mistaken. "Strictly speaking, there is no-one for us to communicate with there today," he said. "The legitimacy of a whole number of organs of power that function there raises great doubts. "Some of our foreign, Western partners think otherwise. This is some kind of aberration of perception when people call legitimate what is essentially the result of an armed mutiny." He added: "We do not understand what is going on there. There is a real threat to our interests and to the lives...

Every revolution has moments where the hinge of history seems to swing wide and everything is different and the old regime is delegitimized. In Ukraine’s revolution, the moment that’s likely to be immortalized is when protestors charged police barricades in Kiev’s Independence Square (“Maidan”) last Thursday, reportedly capturing a number of police troops, only to have dozens of protesters then gunned down by snipers. Even a face-saving compromise brokered the next day by Western diplomats couldn’t save President Viktor Yanukovych. His security forces withdrew their support, leaving him unguarded. At 2 a.m. last Saturday, helicopters ferried him and his stooges...

Richard Engel of NBC, reporting from Maidan Square in Kiev, described what he witnessed as the Feb. 19 truce collapsed. Police began to back away from their positions in the square, said Engel. And the protesters attacked. Gunfire was exchanged and the death toll, believed to be in the dozens, is not known. In short, the reality in Kiev is more complex than the black-and-white cartoon of Vladimir Putin vs. the freedom fighters drawn by our resident Russophobic elite. Perspective is in order. First, though portrayed as a tyrannical thug, Viktor Yanukovych won the presidency of Ukraine in 2010 in...

Lithuania on Tuesday confirmed signs of torture on a prominent Ukrainian anti-government activist and urged an independent probe into the crime which could breach a related United Nations convention. "Dmytro Bulatov...has clear signs of long term torture and cruel treatment on his body," a Lithuanian foreign ministry said in a statement. Bulatov, who alleges he was "crucified" and tortured for days by unknown assailants in his homeland, is one of three injured Ukrainian protesters receiving free medical care in Lithuania. (...) The leader of the "Automaidan" movement, he organised motorcade protests outside President Viktor Yanukovych's sprawling country estate near Kiev...

The current Ukrainian revolution is a revolution of dignity and values. The Ukrainian people are tired of living in a lawless, corrupt society under an oppressive regime that pretends to be democratic. Today they have had enough: they want change and they are showing that they are willing to die for their beliefs. Ukrainians who went to the streets to defend their rights and freedoms did not come to fight. Standing peacefully on the frozen Miydan for two months, they hoped that their government would hear them. It did not happen, and they revolted against their entire political system, which...

If dictatorship prevails in Ukraine, the country will become a prison for its citizens and the new North Korea for international community – warns Jurij Andruchowycz

Now the Maidan Nezalezhnosti [Independence Square] is not just the central square of the Ukrainian capital city. In less than three weeks it has become a phenomenon. In today’s conversations, the Maidan is used not only with the preposition at, but also with during. This short period of time has compressed so many events, emotions, and human fates that any well-to-do European country could hardly experience them in a decade. The Maidan has overturned our lives and souls and made us re-frame our personal role in this country’s destiny. And many of us have just become aware of this role.These...

“Maidan” – An Internet Hub of Civil Resistance of Ukraine How it started “Maidan” was started on Internet on Dec 20th 2000 as a reaction to government's efforts to block information distribution about the political opposition activities and to spread the misinformation about the civil protest actions, caused by the disappearance of the journalist Georgiy Gongadze. The site “Maidan” has been initially created by Georgiy Gongadze's friends, journalists, programmers and the activists of "tents protest action" that had been held at central maidan ("the Square" in Ukrainian) of Ukrainian's capital city Kyiv. “Maidan” was an official information site of "Ukraine...