The war to come in Kiev, Ukraine (video)

Editors, Wisdom Quarterly; BBC.co.uk; FEMEN.org; Los Angeles Times  UPDATED

There have been sporadic clashes through the day, as BBC's Duncan Crawford reports.

Putin says it's time for a police state in Kiev, and Ukraine president says sir, yes, sir!

 

Protesters momentarily get the upper hand.

Paramilitary police clashed with anti-government protesters in the center of Kiev on Feb. 18. State-sanctioned violence has left at least 100 citizens dead. Police snipers shot at protesters heads to bring them down with single wounds to the head; phalanxes of police have been firing shotguns into crowds; undercover police have been executing citizens; and military-armed police are firing deadly cannon-like rubber munitions at stone-throwing protesters near Ukraine's parliament.

Mind your own business, America!

Police also attacked civilians with smoke bombs and water cannons after protesters hurled paving stones as they sought to get closer to the heavily-fortified parliament building. Reports state that protesters have captured 64 police agents. See extensive coverage at KyivPost.com, but be forewarned it is sympathetic to murderous police and government shot callers.
 

FEMEN activist/topless protester for Kiev

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has fired the head of the armed forces, Col. Gen. Volodymyr Zamana, according to the president's website.

  Reports

The move comes after the most intense violence in [former Soviet state] Ukraine's three-month crisis turned the capital of Kiev into a battle zone against civilians.

Ukraine is "going West," joining European Economic Union over Russia (femen.org)

 

Earlier the state security service announced it was launching a nationwide "anti-terrorist" [terrorist = protester] campaign, to deal with a growing "extremist threat."

 

F you, dictator Putin (femen.org/en)

There was a suggestion the armed forces could be deployed for the first time [to help the paramilitary police kill more civilian civil rights protesters]. Col. Gen. Zamana has been replaced by the commander of Ukraine's Navy, Admiral Yuriy Ilyin, by presidential decree, President Yanukovych's website said. [One military man for another, that ought to lead to peace and calm.] More + VIDEO

• Live news (BBC) - Pictures - Crisis explained - Timeline

Ukrainian protest fires burn in capital of Kiev after police kill protesters (BBC)

 

This war began long ago

You don't talk like that, young lady!

(FEMEN.org) KIEV, Ukraine - "Ukraine is not Alina." FEMEN has long protested Russian Dictator Putin's intervention in the affairs of the Ukraine. FEMEN fought against electoral fraud during the elections to the Duma. In 2012 at polling station where operatives were "stealing for Putin!" FEMEN activists tried to take the voice of Putin during Russian presidential voting. "Putin is the Apocalypse"! In 2013 in Germany FEMEN said, "F*ck you, Putin!" As for Kiev at the Russian Embassy, it's "Forward Russia. More

Pussy Riot beaten and whipped in Sochi
August Brown (AP/latimes.com, Feb. 19, 2014)

Pussy Riot in Sochi in balacavas (latimes.com)

Mere days after police detained them in Sochi, Russia, Nadya Tolokonnikova, Masha Alyokhina, and other members of Pussy Riot were attacked by whip-wielding Cossacks in Sochi today, according to reports.
 

According to The Guardian (UK) and other outlets, members of the punk feminist activist group had assembled in their iconic bright balaclavas [knitted face scarves] in an area about 20 miles from the site of the Winter Olympics.
 

Senator McCain meddling for US

As they prepared to play a new song, "Putin Will Teach You to Love the Motherland," they were surrounded by plainclothes security officers.

There were also surrounded by uniformed Cossacks with whips, who were enlisted as an informal security force during the Sochi Games.
 
Cossacks, an equestrian-focused rural Russian culture,  have re-emerged as a symbol of conservative and militaristic values during Putin's presidency [a.k.a. dictatorship]. More

Deadliest Day in Ukraine Protests
Victoria Butenko and Carol J. Williams (latimes.com, Feb. 18, 2014)

Hundreds of thousands of protesters in streets

KIEV, Ukraine - At least nine people were killed yesterday [Feb. 17th] in the deadliest day of the 3-month-old Ukrainian political crisis.

[Paramilitary police attacked] demonstrators and later stormed their encampment at Kiev's Independence Square, the Maidan, local and international media reported.

Live television coverage carried by the Russia-24 news channel and nine live-streaming video cameras at the protest site and relayed by Ukrainian opposition broadcasters showed fiery explosions illuminating the grimy tent city in the capital after demonstrators ignored a [threat] from police to clear the square.

Ukrainians see their president as "traitor"

[WHY? It seems Russian Dictator or Presisenty Putin has ordered Ukraine's President. Yanukovich to severely crack down on Ukrainian demonstrators -- with military weaponry, forces, snipers, and plain clothes assassins -- to stop drawing attention to the plight of Ukraine and away from nearby Sochi, where Russia is trying to host a glorious Winter Olympics.]

Clouds of smoke from fires and tear gas could be seen wafting over the chaotic scene, eerily backlit with an orange glow from the multitude of blasts, burning sandbags, and smoldering debris.

Protest action in Moscow (Denis Bochkarev)

[Paramilitary police] forces began moving against the protesters' camp with water cannons and stun grenades after giving them 15 minutes' warning to leave.

But thousands of protesters remained in the square despite the caustic gas engulfing the nerve center of the uprising against President Viktor Yanukovich. More

Full coverage
(Los Angeles Times)

At least two dead as Ukraine protests rage: The crowd, many wearing helmets and brandishing homemade shields and wooden sticks, responded with a roar.

  
Ukraine uprising erupts in killings, arson, raids
He also accused two top U.S. diplomats -- Victoria Nuland, who oversees European affairs at the State Department... before Tuesday's violent eruption.

Ukrainians see worrisome nationalistic elements among protesters
...oppose the revolution spreading like wildfire across the country," he said. "We can take any ministry, any court, any agency in Kiev today, and no one can prevent us."

Ukraine president offers prime minister post to opposition leader
...year driver from the town of Obukhov near Kiev, said as [he] set fire to a piece of cloth in the neck of a beer bottle that was flung toward the police a second later. 

Ukraine protesters reject deal with president
...ground floor of the Agriculture Ministry next to Independence Square [Maidan] and captured the building, the UNIAN information agency reported. 

Ukraine demonstrators clash with riot police
...I decided not to go to Grushevsky [Street] because by our presence we can only aggravate the provocation which is taking place there now."
Why is John McCain meddling in Ukraine?