After Two Months, Ukraine Protests Radicalize as Impatience Grows
Two months since the first protests erupted in Ukraine over the government's rejection of an EU pact, the protest movement has radicalized as impatience grows with the inability of opposition leaders to bring about change.
Demonstrators are still occupying Independence Square in central Kiev, known locally as the Maidan and the center of the 2004 Orange Revolution, where a vast tent city has sprouted up.
However, over the last days the focus has switched to Grushevsky Street five minutes walk away, where radical protesters have been engaging in pitched battles with the security forces.
The main opposition leaders appear unable to control the situation and for the first time found themselves heckled and whistled by a mass protest in Independence Square on Sunday afternoon.
A hard core of protesters then provoked bloody clashes with police who responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and stun grenades. Hundreds were injured and 50 activists arrested.
In a change from the last weeks of the protest, the hard core fighting the security forces do not appear linked to any political party, even the ultra-nationalist group Svoboda (Freedom).
They have been linked to a little known group called "Right Sector" which has organised its actions on the Internet.
The protesters have been particularly outraged by parliament's adoption last week of new anti-protest laws, which make most forms of public protest illegal and ban the wearing of helmets and driving in a convoy of more than five cars.
'The people were provoked'
"The main motivation of people is discontent with the actions of the authorities," said political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko, director of the Penta research center in Kiev.
"People were provoked in such a way, so they remain in the square and go to rallies," said Fesenko.
"There is fatigue, but people still have enough protest energy. The Maidan will stay until either it is finally broken up or its requirements met," said Fesenko.
The protesters have not lost their determination, despite temperatures of minus 10 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit), demanding opposition leaders to act properly to undermine Yanukovych.
But frustration has grown with opposition leaders Vitali Klitschko, Arseniy Yatsenyuk and Oleg Tyagnybok, who disappointed many supporters by their indecisiveness and lack of a clear plan of action.
Tyagnybok, whose fiery rhetoric roused a huge response during the protests' early weeks, has all but vanished from sight over the last days. Klitschko and Yatsenyuk have blamed the government for the clashes but notably stop short of supporting the use of violence against security forces.
"The laws that have been adopted violate my rights and the constitution," says 35-year-old Olexandr Emelyanov of the Kirovograd region in central Ukraine, warming himself in the tent camp near a metal barrel with a fire amid temperatures of around minus 10 degrees Celsius.
The protests started on the evening of November 21 after authorities' decision to halt preparations to sign an Association Agreement with the EU.
They developed into a broader movement to oust Yanukovych, whom the opposition accuses of corruption, surrounding himself with cronies known as the "Family" and being behind the jailing of former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
The protesters on the Maidan are not only from Kiev -- most arrived from the pro-European western and central regions of Ukraine, setting up tents with attached posters declaring the names of their cities.
They strengthened their camp with three-meter (10-foot) high improvised barricades after an unsuccessful assault by police in mid-December, and several thousand people spend each night in tents in the area on the Maidan.
"Our tent can accommodate up to 25 people," says Yaroslav Putilin, 46, came from neighboring Kiev Cherkassy region.
As an odd-jobber, he, like many others, comes to live in the area for four or five days, after which his group is relieved by another one from the same region.
