"This is already a revolution"

What is happening in the Ukrainian capital resembles a coup d'etat

One of the leaders of the opposition, the former Minister of the Interior, Yuri Lutsenko, announced today at a rally on the Square of Nezalevniy in Kyiv: "This is no longer a rally, this is a revolution!". What is happening in the Ukrainian capital really looks like a revolution: 700 thousand people in the city center require the resignation of the president, government and parliament, and the most active of them have already stormed the building of the Kyiv City Hall and the House of Trade Unions, and now they are preparing the capture of Bankova

At 12 o’clock in the center of Kyiv, about 20 thousand people gathered in Shevchenko Park. When they moved from the place of gathering for the Maidan, which in the morning was blocked by hundreds of special forces, their number grew to 700 thousand people. The protesters without support from the police dismantled the fence established by the authorities and "returned the Maidan."

Following the mass violent actions began. The protesters broke the windows in the buildings of the city hall, Kievgorsel, the houses of trade unions. They managed to even capture the city hall building. Deputies from the ultra -right of the Nationalist Party "Freedom" announced that from now on the opposition headquarters would be here.

Similarly, the house of trade unions was taken by storming. The meaning of its capture was definitely: now on seven floors of the administrative building are equipped with the headquarters of the opposition and an ambulance hospital, at which the protesters will be treated from among the manifestants. Also, the work of the main Kyiv "screen" is regulated from here: a huge television panel, on which they usually demonstrate advertising. The opposition wants to broadcast his appeals to citizens.

Several hundred protesters moved to Bankovaya Street, where the administration of the Ukrainian president is located. She is guarded by several hundred employees of Berkut. People in masks and gas masks began to tear paving slabs and throw law enforcement officers with it. Smoke bombs and noise grenades flew into the crowd from the police. The first attack on the AP did not ask: only a few dozen people were wanting to attack the Golden Eagle. The rest of the protesters began to call them provocateurs. And when the opposition leaders - the head of the company Roshen Petro Poroshenko and the leader of the Freedom party, Oleg Tyagnyk - the attack - the attack - the attack subsided completely. Poroshenko climbed onto the hood of the snow removal tractor, which the protesters were going to attack the Berkut, and urged everyone to remain calm. But this was enough for a short while: after 30 minutes the protesters resumed the assault.

Currently, the opposition urges manifestants to remain calm, not to succumb to provocations and begin to mount a tent town. Her demands have not changed since yesterday: to resign the government, to put the impeachment procedure, and before that, to dissolve the Verkhovna Rada and declare the beginning of extraordinary parliamentary elections.

In general, the impression is stored that the 700 thousandth crowd that gathered in the center of Kyiv has no one, ready to take responsibility, a leader. The leaders of the three opposition parties - Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Vitaly Klitschko and Oleg Tyagnibok - promise to announce an action plan for the next day a little later.

The protesters are now conditionally divided into two camps: some call for power seizing power, while others emphasize: this will give the authorities only the legal right to disperse the rally, nothing more.

The tension on the Square Maidan is now colossal. People are waiting for the power reaction of the authorities - especially since on the eve of the Ministry of Internal Affairs declared readiness to use force in case of violence on the area of ​​violence.

There are rumors on the Maidan that during the dispersal of the tent town in the center of the capital on November 30, one girl died, who got from Berkut that night. Officially, the authorities do not recognize this, but the protesters sacredly believe that this is true.

It seems that this evening, despite the absence of a single leader and a single strategy, the opposition will be ready to storm the building of the presidential administration and announce a change of power.

Along the way, the masses of government representatives began in Kyiv. The head of the presidential administration, Sergei Levochkin, and the head of the Kyiv police, Valery Koryak, filed. The faction of the Party of Regions in Parliament has already left three deputies. Manifestants hope that a significant part of the deputies from the authorities will renounce Yanukovych, and this will be the "beginning of the end" of his presidential term.

Photo: Reuters/Vasily Fedosenko