TO MANY Ukrainians, the calculations of President Viktor Yanukovych might seem baffling. Having triggered a mass protest movement by turning his back on an association agreement between Ukraine and the European Union, the president looked like he might outlast the protesters after accepting a massive bailout from Russian President Vladimir Putin. Yet now Mr. Yanukovych has managed to revive and intensify the rebellion against him by ramming a series of measures through parliament aimed at outlawing opposition demonstrations. Tens of thousands gathered in the center of Kiev on Sunday, and clashes with police left hundreds injured. Perhaps Mr. Yanukovych has no sense for Ukrainian politics, despite more than a decade of leading one of its major parties. Or perhaps he is following not his own playbook but that of Mr. Putin. The repressive new restrictions, which criminalize such activity as wearing helmets and setting up tents in public spaces, look a lot like the strategy the Russian ruler used to crush mass demonstrations against his regime in 2011 and 2012. Mr. Yanukovych even adopted the regulation Russia imposed on nongovernment groups that receive foreign funding — a product of Mr. Putin’s paranoid conviction that pro-democracy movements in his country and elsewhere are the result of Western government plots.
Read the rest of the editorial: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-west-must-break-ukraine-free-from-mr-putins-grasp/2014/01/21/400a30aa-82c8-11e3-bbe5-6a2a3141e3a9_story.html
No comments:
Post a Comment