Riot Police Storm Opposition Office In Kiev Amid Massive Protests; Yanukovych Holding Talks

[Purveyor]

Source: Associated Press

Heavily armed riot troops broke into the offices of a top Ukrainian opposition party office in Kiev and seized its servers Monday, the party said, as anti-government protests crippled the capital for yet another day.

Elsewhere police dismantled or blocked off several small protest tent camps that near key national government buildings in the city.

Tensions also rose as a double cordon of helmeted, shield-holding police deployed in the street near Kiev's city administration building, which demonstrators had occupied and turned into a makeshift command post and dormitory.

--CLIP
Protesters are angered not only by the thwarting of their desire to become closer to the West and spin out of Russia's orbit, but by police violence against the demonstrators. Club-swinging police have twice broken up protest rallies.

Read more: http://www.newser.com/article/daaj2ch00/riot-police-storm-opposition-office-in-kiev-amid-massive-protests-yanukovych-holding-talks.html

[JimboBillyBubbaBob]

1. I hold with my previous reply,

the future of Ukraine is with the EU and not as a province within Putinstan.

[dipsydoodle]

2. There was a report elsewhere in the news on this subject.

It was claimed to be the security services, not riot troops, and the security services denied it anyway. Could just be a sympathy ploy.

[levp]

6. If your OWS encampment...

...is broken down by NYPD or JTTF or FBI - does it really matter in the end? Your stuff is still just as destroyed, and you're in the Central Booking the same way.

EDIT: Meanwhile, the temperature in Kiev is 17.6 F (-8 C).
"About 10 thousand people are at Maydan Nezhalezhnosti now."
www.unian.info/news/610598-more-than-10-thousand-people-are-at-maydan-nezhalezhnosti.html

[dipsydoodle]

7. I posted the weather elsewhere earlier.

Will be -7c daytime tomorrow. No sign of the Femen girls joining them yet.

[levp]

10. No sign?

They are brave, not stupid.

[dipsydoodle]

11. They are however a Ukrainian based franchise.

.

[Igel]

8. Keeping the unian link.

Like Maidan during Orange Rev. times. TMI, actually (I'm looking at the Ukr page, and realizing my Ukr needs work ... argh). Almost minute-by-minute posts.

It actually does matter if it's the NYPD or FBI. Esp. if it's a nationwide protest, as this one is. More resources, harder to escape prosecution, harder to escape scrutiny--and the FBI can pressure the NYPD in ways the NYPD could never use against the FBI.

[levp]

9. If you read Ukrainian:

www.unian.ua/news/610685-u-mvs-poyasnili-prichinu-provedennya-obshuku-na-turivskiy.html

tl;dr: Ministry of Internal Affairs says they conducted a search based on a previous commercial fraud complaint at the address Turivska St., 19-B. Computer equipment and documents "relevant to investigation" were confiscated. The only problem is that the "Fatherland" party headquarters (that was stormed and destroyed by them) has the address of Turivska St., 13. Oops!

What I meant by "doesn't matter" is that the difference between "Berkut" police and Ministry of Internal Affairs troops can't really be a "sympathy ploy" - either is bad enough.

[adavid]

3. Well, there are....

two spheres of influence. The Western one that seems to always want to bomb everyone.
Then there are the Russian/Chinese/South American countries that are standing up to them.

[Kelvin Mace]

4. Russia tried to assassinate

the Ukranian opposition leader in 2004, as I recall.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Revolution

The West has its problems, but neither China nor Russia have clean hands.

[levp]

5. Remember:

An enemy of your enemy is not always your friend.
Don't throw Ukrainians under the proverbial (and, potentially, literal) bus.

[geek tragedy]

12. Oy. Yeah, those sweet Russian and Chinese governments

are just standing up to western aggression.

It's like someone OCR'd a 1963 copy of pravda.

[iamthebandfanman]

13. the opposition is just as corrupt

if not more than the sitting government... that's whats funny to me about all of this..

personally, I wasn't impressed by a bunch of right wing nationalists tearing down the statue of Lenin us Kiev...
seeing as lenin has little to do with the fascist state Russia has become..

if you ask me, no leftist involved in this battle...
just moderates and corporatists against conservatives and nationalists :p