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The armbands theory has about as much credibility as the theory that FSB are behind Beslan and the Moscow apartment bombings to bolster support for Putin and discredit the Caucasian rebels. Neither of those routes are very sensible to go down at this stage for all sorts of reasons, I would recommend keeping to hard facts or things will get very messy.

Even less credibility, since no one outside this thread talks about it.

In more relevant news, parliament might also discuss changes to the constitution tomorrow. Negotiations continue into the night, now with Yanukovych, the FMs of Poland and Germany and later also opposition leaders.

Protests on Maidan remain calm, though protesters don't seem too happy about negotiations with Yanukovych.

There are rumors that the president of parliament has left the country with his family. Also rumors that big businessmen are leaving Kiev for Donetsk, maybe also the general prosecutor.

Same warning for me.

Same here.

So, majority in the parliament voted  that police must cease fire and  internal forces\army should return to their bases immediately. Parliament has no right to order troops around like that but  times like that you must break some rules to normalize the situation. After all that's not a decision of random people but actually elected representatives, including 34 members of the ruling party

Apparently they also called it the end of the anti-terror operation and prohibited the use of live ammo.
Hope this will end the bloodshed.

Negotiations are still ongoing in the background and will probably still take a while. EU sanctions are only going into effect later, so as to not disturb the negotiations.

As to the barely-visible-footwear-conspiracy: Does that mean I pay almost 18 bucks a month for publicly funded TV, just so that they can send a correspondent to Kiev to lie to my face?

I'm just watching a special report on German TV. Their correspondent in Kiev said, they had heard rumors that the guys with the yellow stripes are a special force called Omega units, who are directly responsible to the president and have been seen near the presidential seat.
As I understand it the yellow stripes cover up the normal unit tags. Correspondents have filmed these guys and seen them with the police force, but what exactly they are is not verified.

The correspondents have seen both police and rebels shooting at each other, which again underlines that there is no more need for cover-ups.

Transcarpathian events:
Svoboda calls Party of Regions and communist reps to step down or they will feel the righteous justice of Ukrainians.
Not sure if they got scared or it's just a coincidence but most of the reps have left the Party of Regions.
The council has declared the region independent of Yanukovich, as a bonus the police there has sworn loyalty to the people.

Similar things are reported from Poltava and Chernivtsi. At least in the western part of the country police seems to defect on a larger scale.

Just saw the footage of the governor of Volyn on TV. They called it lynch justice there, which I guess shows that the coverage isn't one-sided.

Speaking of provocateurs, there still are armed rebels searching the Hotel Ukraine (where the journalists are) for a sniper. Seems pretty chaotic.

According to Polish Prime Minister Tusk, Yanukovych agreed to the Foreign Ministers to have elections later this year. The EU has agreed on sanctions, negotiations continue. Let's hope there will be some kind of agreement.

Escuse me, but this is not funny.
This shoes case suddenly turns all "police randomly shooting everybody" thing into "provocateurs attack both police and protesters". If the second variant gets officially confirmed, there will be still chance to end all peacefully.
Too bad UkrainianRanger left the thread and is probably on the way to Kiev to avenge his friends without even trying to figure out the actual murderers.

No, it doesn't, and no UR is not on the way to Kiev, he's just not posting because he's too emotionally involved.
As said earlier, conspiracy theories are really pointless in this situation. Also please don't start resorting to personal attacks, that's also pointless.

By the way, gentlemen, I now adress to those of you who live outside the former Soviet Union. I want to ask if you have Maidan reports in your mass media (radio, TV, newspapers) or you get it via internet only. Because in Russia journalists say that a lot of europeans and americans keep calling Euromaidan a peaceful protest because they simply do not know what is actually going on right now.

It's in all mass media here (Germany). It's also very clear that it is not at all peaceful anymore and hasn't been in a while.

Quote from: Bouchart on February 20, 2014, 02:04:49 pm

Quote from: Beast Tamer on February 20, 2014, 02:00:21 pm

Sorry for my ignorance but I'm not very aware events in Ukraine. What are the sides and what are their stances, grievances, reasons for acting out, etc.?

Basically, the Ukraine can end up as either a German puppet state or a Russian one.

* LordSlowpoke equips STICK

the eu is not a german puppet state _yet so take your notions of not being a democratic union of pure love and put them alongside the reptilians and putin's marvelous gas gnomes

I fully agree with LordSlowpoke, it's come that far  .

Medwedew said something similar earlier, that Russia needed a dialogue partner who's in control of his country. While one could read that as an appeal to crack down on the protests, it could also mean that Russia considers dropping support for Yanukovych.

I don't know what unit they belong to, but I've seen several similar pictures.
Like these:
https://twitter.com/TukvaSociopat/status/436448809221386241
https://twitter.com/EastOfBrussels/status/436528818090938368
https://twitter.com/euromaidan/status/436548962942599168

The opposition claims they are from the government.

There's also this video. The german site that posted it explicitely stated that while they suspected them to be police, the authenticity of the video was not confirmed.

Would you say the same for people glorifying Finland's fighting during WW2? They fought with the Nazis too.

At least you have to be careful who you're glorifying. Many groups allied with the Nazis against the Soviets. Some of them committed crimes against civilian populations too, this is more the case with UPA than with Finland. They all were used however and would have been discarded quickly in case of a Nazi victory, so at least they should be aware of that and not glorify the Nazis themselves.