Last night (19/2/14) Ukraine's President Yankovych met with opposition MP's including Vitaly Kiltschko and Arseniy Yatsenyuk. The outcome of that meeting was the agreement of a truce to allow negotiations to re-start. As a result a police operation to clear Independence Square was postponed.
Sadly that truce lasted all of around nine hours. At around dawn people within Independence Square - most likely members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UIA) - attacked police lines with rocks, petrol and live fire. Initially the police responded to this by pulling back from Independence Square in order to defuse the situation and maintain the truce. Unfortunately the paramilitaries took this as a sign of weakness and advanced out of the square. This forced the police to respond in order to stop the violence spreading throughout the city. There are now running battles throughout the roughly 100 metre around surrounding Independence Square as the police try to contain the violence.
Despite initial rumours that this latest spasm of violence had forced them to cancel later today European Union (EU) Foreign Ministers will meet in Ukraine. I think one of the main items on their agenda should be whether to proscribe groups such as the UIA as terrorist groups because it is quite clear that Ukraine's political opposition have no influence the groups responsible for the violence and meaningful negotiations simply cannot take place under those circumstances.
12:15 on 20/2/14 (UK date).
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