Protests and violence in Ukraine - Comments by Ukrainian CEU Community

Like most of the CEU students, the editorial team of The CEU Weekly has been closely following the events in Ukraine including the formations of EuroMaidans throughout the country as well as the continuing violence against protesters. Hence, this section of The CEU Weekly is intended to provide a platform to CEU’s Ukrainian students and alumni who might be witnessing events at home from Budapest or who are again living and working in Ukraine. We sent out three general questions, found below, via our social media and received seven different sets of answers that you can read on the following pages. While some of the questions already seem dated, for example former Prime Minister Azarov has left office already three weeks ago, we hope that this provides our readers with some interesting insights from within the CEU community. We would like to thank Nataliya Borys, Ostap Didenko, Pawel Goralski, Iaroslav Miller, Khrystyna Rybachok, Oksana Siruk and Olha Pushchak for their contributions. The thoughts and opinions expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect the views of The CEU Weekly editorial team.

Questions:

1. Please, provide us with some insight on what is happening in Ukraine right now either from the perspective of a CEU alumni inside the country or of a CEU student currently living in Budapest.

2. What was your reaction to the recent resigning from office by Ukrainian prime minister Azarov? How do you see this affecting the outcome of the protests?

3. How can CEU students get more informed about/ follow the events in Ukraine (in English)?

Olha Pushchak,

History Alumna '13

1. Surely the situation is too complicated to describe in one paragraph. Basically, Ukraine is struggling for people’s rights and dignities and standing against the ruling gang, police and army which chose to support the gang instead of protecting people. There are many victims, injured and missing people already, but people claim that their “spirit” is not defeated…

Olha Pushchak (on the right)

             Currently I am in Lviv (Western region of Ukraine) and from this perspective I can say that people are reform-minded and ready to stand “to the end”. The majority supports “maidan” (literally - “a square”, a word used to name all the protesters who gather on the main square in Kyiv as one unity). People often go to Kyiv or help in other ways. Those who cannot go to Kyiv show their solidarity by blockading army garrisons in Lviv and protecting the House of Administration (which was led by a person from president’s team). Others are sending winter clothes, food supplies and money. Sometimes I help at the collection point and often witness this support. For instance, a few times when unpacking clothes donated to Kyiv, I found chocolates and sweets hidden inside. This little act shows how much people are united. I think a huge change happened in humans’ minds and system of values. 

2. Oh, Azarov….he is more famous as “Azirov” (this nickname was given to him by the people, as he constantly twists words when he speaks in Ukrainian). I was happy to hear the news about his resignation. But I do not think that it is a victory for the protesters; it all depends on how the new government is formed. As long as it will have to work alongside with the murderous majority in the parliament headed by Viktor Yanukovych, there will not be any positive change. We need more substantial changes.

3. For those who would like to follow the news from Ukraine I’d suggest checking posts on “The Washington post” and BBC. Their correspondents and analytics often contribute solid researches. Also I can recommend the web-site of “Ukrainian Truth” which includes a translated version of the most important news. Here’s the link: http://en.pravda.com.ua/. The press-center of my former University also created a platform especially for the news about the current situation http://maidan.ucu.edu.ua/en/.

Iaroslav Miller,

Economics

Iaroslav Miller (on the right)

1. The situation is complicated and in order to understand what is happening now at least a brief background is needed. The peaceful protests started in late November, 2013, when the Ukrainian government decided to deny the Association Agreement with the EU. People were already extremely disappointed by the policies and situation in the country such as enormous corruption, tax office racketeering, and lack of property rights protection. Many firms were made to either shut down or surrender to government cronies. There is a lack of fairness in courts, where kids and relatives of the rich and the powerful could easily walk away, freed, after killing people. Also, there's a lack of prospects for graduates: your career depends not on qualification but on your family connections or loyalty to the ruling party. Ukrainians were lacking both a strong middle class and strong civil society. Hence, they were willing to tolerate this calmly with the hope that closer ties with the EU would bring a gradual change to this. It is important to notice that although the president was elected democratically in 2010 he rapidly used his influence and supposedly bribes and threats to force the Constitutional Court of Ukraine into making changes to the constitution and turn Ukraine from a parliamentary-presidential into a presidentially-parliamentary state with enormous power in one hand. This was completely an undemocratic and unconstitutional a move, because only parliament can make change in the constitution in Ukraine. However, the lack of Civil Society gave the president this opportunity. Over the whole 2012-2013 period the government was showing their dedication towards closer ties with the EU, however, in the last moment when it became evident that the EU would not give money in order to bribe government and cronies, the government suddenly "realized" that the agreement is harmful for the economy and decided to reject it. It was the last drop when many people felt that they have been fooled for many years and now their destinies and future had been traded at a bazaar. Many people and in particular students went to the city center, Maidan, to show their position. Nevertheless, the government not only neglected the peaceful protests but even gave the order to disperse them. Having observed the photos and videos of dozens of badly injured by riot police, even more people went to Maidan in December. The sentiment changed. People demanded not only a EU deal but also the resignation of the president and the government. During December, 2013, while the government was pretending that it was willing to have negotiations with the political opposition, empowered by protestors to be an intermediary in negotiations, a lot of protestors and journalists were kidnapped, beaten badly or even killed. Of course, there is no solid evidence. But, the logical trace leads to the criminal minions of the president. Every time when the president announced consecutive meeting with the opposition some protestors were beaten or threatened next day. Therefore, more and more people started to feel that just peaceful protests through the gathering of millions of Ukrainians in many cities throughout Ukraine could simply not deliver the message to the president. In addition, the political opposition proved to be weak both because it could not convince the ruling party members to vote against the bloody government and because people felt that the opposition does not seek to change the system but only wants to switch the seats with the government.
Then, after the Christmas break on the 16th of January a parliamentary majority voted for the so called "Dictatorial Law". According to which, people were forbidden to protest, wear helmets, express their dissatisfaction with the government, post "unhappy" news in the internet, and the number of riot police and its arsenal were increased and so on. Moreover, it was voted not by using the electronic voting system but by raising hands in the parliament. Even the speaker admitted that he was not counting votes he just summed up the number of MPs in ruling party and its satellites in general. Meanwhile, many of these people were not even present in the building at that moment. This was the moment when many people realized that peaceful protests were not effective and during two month they not only lost dignity but freedom too. So the riot started. The violent riot with police clashes is only present in Kyiv at one particular street close to Maidan. However, in many Western regions people occupied the local municipalities in protest to the latest developments. In addition, in the West and South where people traditionally are even more passive and where there is a lot of brainwashing, people started to protest and made the attempts to occupy the municipalities too. In response, the government hired sportsmen and gangsters to fight back the protestors and support riot police. Football hooligans from different regions declared that they not only disrespect the behavior of such sportsmen but will protect the protestors from them. Of course, there are some people that support the president but it is mainly due to the fact that they are being mal-educated and brainwashed.

2. This is bullshit. The prime minister of Ukraine has no significant political power formally. He has even less power, informally. He decides noting. Azarov was just a figure used by the president to distract people from his own deals and the deals of those people who actually have political power. With this resignation, the president has someone to blame and people have someone to hate. Since the end of 2012 there were talks that the prime minister would be changed for Arbuzov (current vice prime minister and a close friend of the son of the president). Hence, the president was only waiting for a favorable moment to use its gambit. Apparently, this moment came when half of the country is rioting and there are 5 people killed by riot police. This is not even a compromise. They just think that Ukrainian people are ignorant idiots.
Nevertheless, people are not fools and they won't buy it. Hence, this will not change the major demands: snap presidential and parliamentary elections and change of constitution to make it parliamentary presidential again. 3. This is a news-website that translates news into English:
http://en.pravda.com.ua/. I would say the easiest way is to ask fellow Ukrainians about the latest events.

P.S.: There should be separate question about Russia's role who apparently wants to use its agent to divide Ukraine as it did with Georgia in 2008.

Ostap Didenko,

History

Ostap Didenko

I don't like to analyze a “big” political situation through the prism of media alone. I would never use articles reflecting on a political situation in the newspapers I study for my thesis as a source for understanding the situation itself. I follow this principle in my everyday life as well. Therefore, in describing the situation in contemporary Ukraine I will not reproduce any of the media discourses available, which so many individuals are now eager to do. My observations are based mostly on online video translations from Hrushevskaya street, Bankovaya street and Maydan Nezalezhnosti square, detailed accounts of the events published by various internet media portals, oral evidence provided by my journalist friends who observed the clashes at Hrushevskaya street with their own eyes and a person who is a member of one of the radical groups who actively engaged in the violent actions. These, I think, are the most unbiased sources available to me. Of course, these sources do not have any evidence on "big politics" which is done by ministers, presidents and various impersonal macro-forces, but I believe that correct understanding of this "big politics" cannot anyway be achieved through reading of the popular media alone. The accounts of the events, the online media translations and the direct observations of my friends force me to focus on the ground level of the events. Some media call these events at the ground level a “people’s revolution” others “disturbances committed by criminals”. I don’t care. I am interested in understanding the mechanics of the behavior of both the crowd and the police and in the ways these mechanics is interpreted by pro-Western media. Namely, I want to understand how the clashes between the crowd and the police look like, what is the content of the alleged clashes. Of course, I am going to uncover the ways in which the pro-Western media manipulates the evidence, but it does not mean that I am either not sympathetic with pro-Western media or I do not sympathize with the people who sincerely believe in the “revolution”. Pro-Western media is simply the media I usually follow; I cannot criticize pro-Russian media simply because I cannot criticize something I do not know. Here, at the ground level, one can see that something strange and unreasonable is happening and the media interprets these strange events in even more strange manner. One of the most vivid examples of this is the so-called Bankovaya storm which took place on December 1. The media represented it as a people’s attempt to storm Administration of the President. However, was it really a storm? At videos posted on YouTube one can see the following. The police blocked Bankovaya street in order to save the Administration from the alleged storm. A big crowd of people gathered in front of the police. Most participants of the crowd were peaceful. From time to time though quite often some participants of the crowd (very little number of people, from 10 to 30) stepped forth and attacked the policemen with stones, clubs and even a metal chain. The policemen did not respond. These attacks were not systematic and did not look like organized attempts to break up thick policemen formation in order to storm the Administration. To break up the policemen formation is not an easy task. It requires a special knowledge, tactics, equipment and trained executors. All of these were absent at Bankovaya street. The violent participants of the crowd simply beat the policemen unmercifully without making any real attempts to break up the formation. The policemen attacked during the daytime wore light armor and did not have shields. These attacks could cause severe wounds. In the evening the policemen got an order to disperse the crowd. The crowd started to disperse even before the policemen reach it. Therefore, it was not necessarily for the policemen to attack the people. However, now it was the policemen who beat the participants of the crowd unmercifully while the latter surrendered. It seems that a lot of peaceful protesters were injured. Thus, what are the clashes at Bankovaya street? – First a few violent activists from the crowd beat peaceful policemen and then the attacking policemen beat peaceful protesters.  The real clashes were absent. By the real clashes I understand the situation when one side attack, another side block and attack in response and it goes like that until one of the sides is defeated. Here it was always one way violence.  Thus, one can see that there was neither the storm attempt nor the clashes at Bankovaya street. People simply committed a lot of unreasonable violence under the pretext of either the storm or the order from the higher-ups. However, the pro-Western media continues to use words “storm” and “clashes” to describe these events.

Although structurally the situation at Hrusevskogo Street is almost the same, an addition of a few new elements and an intensification of some of the previous elements raised its absurdity dramatically. Here the media reported of the clashes and storm attempts as well. However, here like in the previous case neither the storm nor the clashes took place:  the crowd stood in front of the policemen formation and beat the latter with different staff without trying to break up the policemen formation. From time to time the policemen went in counterattacks beating peaceful protesters and dispersing the crowd. The behavior of the police became a bit more active. The policemen regularly threw flash grenades into the crowd and shot at the crowd with rubber bullets. The instruments by which the violence was committed and the heaviness of wounds changed as well. The instruments became more diverse and dangerous; the wounds became more serious, few of them even led to death. The crowd started to use not only stones and clubs, but also Molotov cocktails and fireworks. However, the usage of the new war equipment did not really make the situation different. 99% of the Molotov cocktails thrown at the policemen simply did not reach the latter. The fireworks did not bring any changes either. Neither the flesh-grenades nor the rubber bullets dispersed the crowd. So, what is the purpose for using the Molotov cocktails if they do not break up the policemen formation? What is the purpose for using the flesh-grenades and rubber bullets if they do not disperse the crowd? The crowd pretends to storm without actually storming while the police pretend to disperse the crowd without actually dispersing… The only outcome of all of this is a lot of noise, injuries, fire and destruction. What became different at Hrusevskogo street are pictures taken by journalists’ photo cameras. They show us lots of fire and smoke, exploding flesh-grenades, burned buses and burning policemen, protesters throwing the cocktails and policemen shooting at the protesters. The media use these pictures as evidence that the situation in Ukraine is really hot and dangerous, that there is a real confrontation between the people (who are allegedly extremely dissatisfied with the government) and the police which can lead to a bloody outcome.

 All of this forces me to suppose that a real purpose behind the protests which took place at Hrushevskogo Street was not the storm of any of the state administrations as it had been initially declared. I guess that the real purpose was a creation of a certain media image. One may guess that at least at a surface level this media image would be not favorable for the government and the president depicting them as bloody tyrants who fight against their own people. However, the government by ordering the police to use the flesh-grenades and the rubber bullets contributed to the creation of this unfavorable media image as well. Without using this equipment the situation would appear less dramatic and hot. It looks like that the both sides are interested in the escalation of the conflict. Be it as it may, what really makes me anxious is an enormous escalation of unreasonable and at the same time poorly legitimized violence and hatred from the part of both the violent protesters and the policemen. Certain violent individuals who would like to bring pain and suffering to other individuals but could not do so because of various reasons in a peace time got a great chance to unbridle their dirty passions under the pretext of either the storm, revolution, protest or whatever or the order from the higher-ups. None of the protesters attacking the policemen would confess that he does so because he simply likes it. None of the policemen attacking peaceful protesters would make similar confessions. The former legitimize their malignance through the appellation to war against the regime, while there is no actually such a war. The latter do so through the appellation to the orders of the higher-ups to disperse the crowd, while implementation of the order does not require the beating of peaceful protesters that severely. And the media instead of pointing at the pointlessness of the violence committed by the both sides, instead of shaming the persons who could not control their passions, continues to support the image of the events which contributes to the continuous reproduction of deaths, injuries, hatred and destruction. The media does not emphasize that a stone thrown at a policemen hit not at the regime but at the concrete individual; that a protester beaten with a baton is not a criminal, but a concrete person. The degree of dehumanization is enormous. Violence is a dangerous political tool. If one thinks that he cannot avoid it, one should use it extremely cautiously and with understanding of the degree of responsibility he takes. In the case of the conflicts which took part at Kyiv this kind of consciousness could not be observed. It is dangerous because it creates a precedent.

Khrystyna Rybachok,

Political Science

. 

Khrystyna Rybachok

1. Unexpectedly for Ukrainian government, it turned out that people in Ukraine were ready to defend their right of being part of European community. The news about protests coming from home were certainly good news for me because it meant that people believed they could change something in their country. Naïve belief or not, but Euromaidan (what we call the demonstrations and civil unrest) has not dissolved since November 2013. The next unexpected move came from the side of government when late in the night of 30^th November peaceful demonstrators were brutally beaten by the police forces. This step was perceived as totally unreasonable and it caused mobilization of close to a million people in Independence Square, and shifted the demands from EU association issues to more radical ones of government resignation.

Political and economic crisis in Ukraine were perpetual since Yanukovych became president but only in late 2013 due to mass protests did it became visible world-wide. Since 2010 configuration of powers in Ukraine seemed to evermore resemble the Russian and Central Asian “pyramid” or “vertical systems”. The constitution was changed in order to fit the president’s appetites meaning extending his political power.

The principal difference between these other cases and Ukraine, is the inability of the Ukrainian regime to totally suppress civil rights and in particular media freedom. Therefore, independent journalists thoroughly reported the ongoing process in Maidan. Consequently, journalists became the subject to repressions from the government. Activists were repressed as well and six of them were killed in Kyiv. A lot of protesters were beaten in the streets, kidnapped, tortured, accused of falsified crimes, and even kidnapped in the hospitals by the police.

The protests might lead to somewhat similar results as the Orange revolution’s ones, with Constitutional reform limiting current presidential powers. On the other hand, cooperation with government could equal the “political death” of oppositional leaders. Several rounds of negotiations that happened so far between the opposition and president did not lead to considerable results.

2. The resignation of the PM was not a surprise for me. During the negotiations with president Yanukovych, prior to cabinet’s resignation, some opposition leaders were offered to form a new cabinet in coalition with the pro-presidential party, which they immediately rejected. On the other hand, because of the secret agreements between Yanukovych and Russian president and the huge credit of $15 billion, now it is probably up to Mr. Putin to recommend or decide who would be the next prime-minister of Ukraine. This should have been one of the topics for the two presidents to discuss during the Sochi Olympic opening. In the case that a person loyal to Putin gains the post of prime minister, that might lead to further escalation of the conflict. The intrigue after the president’s return from Sochi Olympics is whether he will compromise with the opposition or try to appoint the new cabinet from people loyal to his regime. 

3. The most respectful Ukrainian media outlets in English.

www.kyivpost.com 

www.day.kiev.ua/en

http://en.interfax.com.ua/

www.ukrweekly.com/

www.unian.net/eng

Nataliya Borys, History

Pawel Goralski, Political Science Alumnus '12

Oksana Siruk, Legal Studies

Oksana Siruk

1. Oksana: I am a Ukrainian CEU student currently living in Budapest. I have been involved in the revolution issues from the very beginning - when the protests were only about the Association Agreement with the EU in November 2013. Indeed, protests appeared as a reaction to the decision of the government not to proceed with the proposed European integration. However as a result it developed into the revolution caused by both economic crisis and deep corruption in the country. I think, two crucial dates should be pointed out: 30 November 2013, when the police - using force – dispersed a peaceful student protest that actually was about to die out itself; and 16 January 2014, when the government adopted a new law limiting human rights and undermining the whole idea of the democracy we have been fighting for, for such a long time. Even though after fighting and even several deaths this law was abolished, the protests are still ongoing, because the main demands have not been fulfilled yet.  Mainly protesters want to enforce the version of the Constitution of 2004 (in 2010 corrupted pro-Yanukovich Constitutional Court of Ukraine declared the Amendments of 2004 to the Constitution unconstitutional and enforced version of 1996 that basically strengthened Yanukovich’s power). These changes would then provide an opportunity to overturn Yanukovich’s regime and conduct new elections.

1. Pawel: As a member of East-West Mutual Understanding Association in Poland and CEU Polsci Alumni from the very beginning the situation in Ukraine attracted my attention. Moreover most of my closest friends in Budapest and in Poland are Ukrainians so I have the honor of being able to debate with them about ongoing problems. In the last few months I visited Ukraine a couple of times to be part of the “revolutionary debates” with representatives of local NGOs (e.g. Lvov, Crimea and Dnepropetrovsk) with the aim of searching for an objective perspective, far from what our European media try to sell us.  In addition to what probably has been already nicely articulated by my peers, I would like to emphasize two issues: firstly the “revolution” is defined mostly by economic factors, which has been underrated by many scholars, politicians and journalists. A possible explanation of a neglected economic factor is the power of politics in the Ukrainian scenario, which totally eclipses all other factors. Secondly, there is no constructive consensus about future leadership and a remedy plan for political-social and economic crisis. By consensus I mean an internal one between, de facto, three actors: so called “nation of Maidan”, political opposition and the government, as well as external consensus between three regional powers involved in the crisis: Russia, UE and to a lesser extent, the US.  

The “revolution” started as a protest against not-signing the Association Agreement, but turned into unexpected and aggressive frustration and demonstrations of resistance towards Ukrainian establishment per se. Let me put in this way, Association Agreement was a catalyst;, from the very start a cause from which erupted  national unhappiness, anarchism and lack of trust in public institutions. The 2013/2014 “revolution” is not the fruit of the last one-or-two years worsening economic situation, nor was the previous Orange Revolution. Social reluctance to government and lack of trust in political parties has been constantly evolving for the last two decades starting from 1991 when Ukraine, de iure, gained its independence from the Soviet Union.

Nowadays Ukraine is the country with one of the lowest GDP per capita and level of income, highly unsatisfactory Human Development Index, extremely high Gini Index (measuring income distribution), practically collapsed state’s pension system and very baldy ranked Corruption Perceptions Index in comparison with any other country in Europe.  From this perspective I do express my solidarism with Ukrainians and understand their frustration. To the long lists of economic factors we could add also lack of job perspectives for young, educated people and in the last month terrible condition of foreign currencies reserves and exchange rate of hryvna.

Although in mass media we are used to only political discussions and the fight for closely non-defined freedom of the Ukrainian nation (freedom from who? Oligarchs? Russia? Soviet-past?), I would strongly encourage all of you to go to Ukraine for couple of days and freely discuss with Ukrainians what is their biggest problem. I am quite convinced that the people from the Ukrainian NGOs that I had the pleasure to interact with were pretty representative. As their biggest pain they always indicated the regime itself with all these economic negatives abovementioned.

As long as economic factors are not changed, the situation is not going to get stable. At the moment, Russia is the only financial guarantee and source of all financial support. It gives at least some hope to save the country from going into bankruptcy very soon.

Nataliya Borys

1.Nataliya: As an Ukrainian student, I was involved in the revolutionary issue from the beginning; organizing the manifestations in Budapest and supporting my friends in Ukraine. Social networks became a very important part of my daily contribution to the events in Ukraine: I translate and comment articles, quarrel and debate with friends and people on Facebook, harass them with my questions and mail and provide the CEU community with information about Ukraine. Oksana and Pawel described quite well the current situation in Ukraine, from my point of view, it is the harsh social and economic crisis in Ukraine, which pushed people to protest. The corruption, legal and political system reforms and European values were the first Ukrainian topics on the protestors’ agenda. Faced with the problem of Yanukovich’s refusal to resign, the repressions, as well as European indifference, the demands of the protests changed to internal Ukrainian reforms: the resignation of the President and the Parliament, as well as legal reform in order to change the Constitution. It is very hard to evaluate the demands of protestors, as they perpetually adjust according the government’s riposte, and there is no coherent opposition leadership and their demands.

2. Oksana: I consider the resignation of Azarov as evidence of a despairing Yanukovich, but nothing more. That was just an attempt to calm down the protests by showing that the President is actually doing something, but he does not. For instance, now the person who replaces Azarov is also a person from the Yanukovich’s party, so there is actually no real change, apart from change of the name on the list. However, protesters did not buy that and the protests keep going with the demand of constitutional change and end of the Yanukovich’s regime.

2. Pawel: To be honest, we should not be naïve to believe that stepping down of Azarov is any remedy for the current problem.  The resignation of Azarov was dictated by the pressure from opposition-pleasing crowds of Maidan by weakening an allegedly “pro-Russian government”. We should not however forget that the “revolution” is not meant to be a crusade against Russian nation - so closely tied historically with Ukrainians. The current “revolution” is an attempt to alter the foundations of Ukrainian oligarchic regime regardless the names of its prime minister or president. It is definitely not about hating each other, rather about the roots of social division into rich and poor, the difference between those who want change and those who can resign from creating it in exchange This is also, to some extent, a clash of two concepts of national identity:  Ukrainian-speaking represented in the West and Russian-speaking represented in the South and East of the country. 

Pawel Goralski

Nevertheless, I am of the opinion inhabitants of Sevastopol, Dniepropetrovsk or Donieck are probably to the same level tired of the oligarchic regime and inefficiency of executive and legislative power in Ukraine as inhabitants of Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk or Rovne.  The problem here is that the former perceive Ukrainian nationalists from the West coming into power as bigger threat than the current government. 

This mental-social stalemate resembles a bit the current situation in Bosnia, where Serbs, Croats are as tired of corrupted and abused local or central power as Bosnians themselves. Paradoxically, Serbs as well as Croats are more afraid of Bosnian rise of power than corrupted and ineffective federal system itself.  Until Ukrainians do not start trusting and understanding each other there is no perspective to end the crisis permanently.

Additionally, age plays a key role. Ukrainians educated, already after the Soviet Union was dissolved, mostly in Ukrainian language (and even newer generation more frequently receiving education in Europe or US), tend to have principally different understandings of Ukraine’s geopolitical choices. While young people more often travel to other countries and exchange their views with their foreign peers, older generation tends to freeze in “glorious time” of sovietismus. 

The “age” argument would explain somehow evromaidans organized spontaneously in the East and West of Ukraine. Noteworthy is that ten years ago during the Orange Revolution, there was no success in transplanting West-Ukrainian “mentality” onto East-Ukrainian soil. What one observes today, spontaneous protests in the Russian speaking part are mainly organized by the most frustrated and disappointed part of society – the Ukrainian youth.  This is something I fully understand.

2. Nataliya: I both agree with Pawel and Oksana, that the resigning from office by Ukrainian prime minister Azarov doesn’t solve the current problem in Ukraine. It was a political action to calm down the protests, Azarov became Yanukovich’s scapegoat. The former prime-minister was very unpopular person in Ukraine, his words and actions were described and mocked on social networks and whole Facebook groups such as “Azarov- bimba”(bomb) have been created. I believe that in some way, the population was satisfied that they could achieve some results, but the main demands are the President and Parliament’s resignation.

3. Oksana: First of all, such major sources as New York Times, BBC, and Washington Post are a must.

I found also a nice list of the different sources of information about Maidan in English: Newspapers, magazines

KyivPost http://www.kyivpost.com/

The Ukrainian Week

http://ukrainianweek.com/

The Day

http://www.day.kiev.ua/en

Ukrainska Pravda

http://en.pravda.com.ua/

3. Pawel: My Ukrainian comrades and friends, I do believe, already familiarized our CEU community with all necessary internal Ukrainian links to follow the main events of Maidan. What I would like to focus on is a missing puzzle to objectively evaluate the situation.  In European Union one can distinguish two key players formulating its external - eastern politics. On one hand, not surprisingly, this is Germany as the biggest netto payer to EU budget and on the other it is Poland – due to its geographical, cultural, linguistic and historical proximity with Ukraine is considered at the moment one of the most influential advocates of Ukraine in EU. From the sites not only depicting main events, but evaluating, discussing and analyzing them from various angle, I would recommend brilliant German broadcaster Deutsche Welle  http://www.dw.de/top-stories/world/s-1429 and Polish Internet expert portal Geopolitics http://geopolityka.net/category/english-section/ or The Centre for Eastern Studies in Warsaw http://www.osw.waw.pl/en (all of them available in English).

Last, but not least, we should not forget to confront the information we gather inside EU with the message sent by the, so far most influential external political power in Ukraine, I mean Russian Federation. From Russian most competent sources I would recommend Russian Institute for Strategic Studies http://www.riss.ru/analitika (unfortunately mostly in Russian) and the journal Foreign Affairs http://en.interaffairs.ru/ (in English). Naturally there is no magic mathematical formula to get to the 100 % objective outlook. Nevertheless, once having read Ukrainian internal comments multiplied by Polish-German point of view and subtracting Russian sources we will be able to see something resembling the final picture from the scattered puzzles. CEU students good luck with striving to understand the complexity of Ukrainian “revolution”!

3. Nataliya: Oksana and Pawel described quite well the sources of information about Maidan in English. However I find the major sources such as New York Times, BBC and Washington Post are quite late giving the latest information, and to my mind, are not always accurate in their analysis. Facebook is the quickest way to get the information, but the information comes first in Ukrainian. However, a lot of people translate it or at least put some comments in English in order to inform the English-speaking community. A lot of my friends follow events in Ukraine, and often ask me “translate please”. Some sites and Facebook groups in English have been dedicated to last events in Ukraine, for instance https://www.facebook.com/EnglishMaidan. I use a lot of Russian-speaking sites, such as www.svoboda.org , which publishes the most interesting articles in English. Some of them are sometimes in English such as the blog of one influential Russian blogger Varlamov, for instance his article “The other side of Maidan” http://zyalt.livejournal.com/985632.html