Board Thread:Off Topic/@comment-4879311-20140221002454/@comment-3112181-20140221012057

Yanukovych has met with the opposition leaders, and a deal will be worked out soon enough. The main purpose behind Euromaidan (that's what this incident is called) isn't so much that the opposition leans toward the EU, that's just a minor reason. Really it has to do with Yanukovych's corrupt administration. Ukraine has, in the past decade or so, violated some of the greatest human rights, such as an almost non-existant court system, controversial torture and execution methods, heavily censored media, and a disturbing rise in human trafficking. The government in Kiev overlooks these issues and, in addition, refuses to seek economic aid from the EU when it is desperately needed. Instead, they constantly rely on Russia, who is facing financial turmoil itself. All of these problems have accumulated under Yanukovych's presidency, and he fails to do anything about it, even after a public referundum was passed to amend the Ukrainian constitution to fix these issues. Simply put, the Ukrainian people wish to oust Yanukovych, impeach him, and elect a new leader representing the most popular opposition party, Maidan People's Union. A free trade agreement with the EU would be a nice added bonus for them, though.

Also, how would the US tie into this? Yes, it's true that Yanukovych and his administration are very reliant on Russia, which is dangerous considering Ukraine's growing Russophobia, but there's no possible way this could result in a second Cold War. The US has nothing to do with this. The clashes that have occurred in Kiev, whilst they are brutal, are far from escalating into an official civil war, and if America didn't intercede in Syria for this purpose there's no chance of them doing it for Ukraine. Truth is of all the ex-Soviet nations, Ukraine is probably the most anti-Soviet (except for the Baltics, of course) and this is obvious from the peoples' bitter resentment of the Russian Bloc. Any American is probably in favour of establishing a Ukranian government that denies Russian influence, but there's no way they'd go to using force to achieve this. Yanukovych is bad, but he is no Assad.