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 European Union leaders said they were urgently preparing targeted
sanctions against those responsible for a crackdown on protesters
who have been occupying central Kiev for almost three months since
Yanukovich spurned a far-reaching trade deal with the EU and
accepted a $15-billion Russian bailout.
The sprawling nation of 46 million people with an ailing economy and
endemic corruption has become the object of a geopolitical
tug-of-war between Moscow and the West. That was played out in
hand-to-hand fighting through the night, lit by blazing barricades
on Kiev's Independence Square, or Maidan.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman insisted the Kremlin
was sticking to a policy of not intervening in Ukraine, although his
point man has called for action to crush the protests. The Kremlin
said Putin and Yanukovich spoke by telephone overnight, calling the
events an attempted coup.
Moscow announced the resumption of stalled aid to Kiev on Monday
with a $2-million cash injection hours before the crackdown began.
After a night of petrol bombs and gunfire on Independence Square,
black smoke billowed from a burned out trade union building that
protest organizers had used as a headquarters.
Security forces occupied about a third of the square — the part
which lies closes to government offices and parliament — with
protesters pouring in to reinforce their defenses on the remainder
of a plaza they have dubbed "Euro-Maidan".
In a statement posted online in the early hours, Yanukovich said he
had refrained from using force since unrest began but was being
pressed by "advisers" to take a harder line.
"Without any mandate from the people, illegally and in breach of the
constitution of Ukraine, these politicians — if I may use that term — have resorted to pogroms, arson and murder to try to seize power,"
the president said.
He declared Thursday a day of mourning for the dead.
A senior opposition leader, world champion boxer-turned-politician
Vitaly Klitschko, walked out of a meeting with Yanukovich during the
night, saying he could not negotiate while blood was being spilt.
When fighting subsided at dawn, the square resembled a battle-zone,
the ground charred by Molotov cocktails. Helmeted young activists
used pickaxes, and elderly women used their bare hands, to prise up
paving to stock as ammunition.
The Health Ministry, updating the casualty toll, said 25 people had
been killed in the fighting in the capital, of which nine were
police officers. The police later said a 10th officer had died of
his wounds.
Both police and opposition representatives said many were killed by
gunshot and hundreds were injured. But the interior ministry said
that five of the dead policemen had died of identical wounds from
sniper fire to the head and neck.
Journalists saw some hardline protesters manning barricades armed
with rifles, including one with a telescopic sight.
EU WEIGHS SANCTIONS
EU foreign ministers called an emergency meeting on Ukraine for
Thursday and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said
the 28-nation bloc was set to impose sanctions against those blamed
for the bloodshed.
"We have ... made it clear that the EU will respond to any
deterioration on the ground," Barroso said in a statement. "We
therefore expect that targeted measures against those responsible
for violence and use of excessive force can be agreed by our member
states as a matter of urgency."
EU ambassadors were meeting in Brussels to consider steps including
travel bans to asset freezes. Neighboring Poland and former Soviet
republic Latvia called for emergency EU action against the Ukrainian
authorities.
The leaders of Germany and France, the EU's main powers, were
meeting in Paris and were expected to issue a joint statement on the
crisis later in the day.
French President Francois Hollande backed Poland's call for "quick
and targeted sanctions against those responsible". German Chancellor
Angela Merkel was "deeply saddened" by the escalation but a
spokeswoman said "we are not yet there" when asked whether the time
for EU sanctions had arrived.
Diplomats cautioned that any sanctions would be largely a political
gesture, noting that similar Western measures had failed to sway the
rulers of Belarus or Zimbabwe.
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Protected by a barrier of shields, police destroyed protesters'
tents and anti-government posters on the eastern side of the Kiev
square.
A ring of fire blazed on a burned-out giant video screen that had
relayed live pictures of opposition speakers, priests and singers
addressing the crowds and leading patriotic singing.
Vesti newspaper, one of whose journalists was killed overnight,
carried a simple black front page with the words in white Black
Tuesday.
Protesters, many of them masked and in battle fatigues, were pouring
onto the square from another direction and preparing to take on
police for a second straight day.
As priests intoned prayers from a stage on the part of the square
still held by protesters, young men in hard-hats were constructing
forearm and knee pads — protection against baton blows. Others were
pouring inflammable liquid into bottles — apparently to be used as
petrol bombs.
"They can come in their thousands but we will not give in. We simply
don't have anywhere to go. We will stay until victory and will hold
the Maidan until the end," said a 44-year-old from the western
region of Ternopil who gave only his first name of Volodymyr.
"We will stay until victory. We want our children to grow up in a
normal country where there are civilized laws not the laws of a
prison colony," said Vitaly, aged 36.
CALLS FOR RESTRAINT
Alarmed Western governments demanded restraint and dialogue. U.S.
Vice President Joe Biden called Yanukovich, urging him to pull back
government forces and exercise maximum restraint, the White House
said.
Yanukovich urged leaders of the opposition to dissociate themselves
from radicals amid signs that activists in the strongly pro-European
western part of the country were trying to take over from the
authorities.
Police said protesters had seized regional administration
headquarters in the cities of Ivano-Frankivsk and Lviv. Media said
protesters torched the main police station in the city of Ternopil.
Traffic entering Kiev was restricted and the underground railway
closed to prevent protesters getting reinforcements.
Nationwide demonstrations erupted in November after Yanukovich bowed
to Russian pressure and pulled out of a planned far-reaching
association agreement with the EU.
Western powers warned Yanukovich against trying to smash the
demonstrations, urging him to turn back to the European Union and
the prospect of an IMF-supported economic recovery, while Russia
accused them of meddling.
Ukraine has been rocked periodically by political turmoil since
independence from the Soviet Union more than 22 years ago, but it
has never experienced violence on this scale.
"We are now facing of one of the most dramatic episodes in Ukrainian
history," opposition leader Arseny Yatsenyuk said in a video message
after the talks with the president failed.
As the security forces moved forward, Klitschko reacted defiantly,
telling supporters on the square: "We will not leave here. This is
an island of freedom. We will defend it."
Monday's $2 billion payment was seen as a signal that Russia
believed Yanukovich had a plan to end the protests and had dropped
any idea of bringing opposition leaders into government.
(Additional reporting by Matt Robinson and Pavel Polityuk in Kiev,
Adrian Croft in Brussels; writing By Paul Taylor; editing by Alastair MacDonald)
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