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Honestly memracom, you come across as someone who has never seen it, or worse still, never known it or even tried. What's more shocking is your comment is on the top.

> Nothing good comes from the kind of violence that these idiots in Kyiv have started.

Pick any revolution and you'll know how any good came out of it. This is the last resort and this is the only way.

You know why this is the only way? Because the dictators or the tyrants didn't grab the power as a result of some misunderstanding. It was well planned for years and then executed with precision. Later, once they had it, they made sure, for decades, that the power stays with them and it goes further and further from the people. Now, I have no love for communism, I consider this best for romantic intellectualism on paper but the worst policy in real life. It's not even about that. It's not even anarchy. It's like fighting for your life, you hit with what you got, and what you can.

So no, dialogue is not going to work. They know they are corrupt, they know they are tyrants, they know they are evil. What are you gonna negotiate with them? All they want is to remain in power (unchecked) and that is exactly what you don't want. Where does that leave you?

Isn't the president democratically elected though? heh

> Do you want to spread this message in your countries? This summer when there is an Occupy or 99% demonstration in your country, do you want young men in helmets and mass carrying baseball bats and molotov cocktails to take charge of it? Will you carry a pistol with you at the demonstration to shoot police officers?

Depends: Will the police by the time the next big Occupy protests start already have shot people without reason? Tortured others to make them give up? Well, then I may consider these things if I still have the bravery to be part of such a protest.

> Will the police by the time the next big Occupy protests start already have shot people without reason?

They do that in Canada. I've lived here for 3 years and there have been several incidents in the press. Ukraine has no monopoly on this.

What's your point? That it's okay if police in Canada do it, too?

This attitude is a big problem at best and purposefully dangerous at worst. In most systematic oppressive situations the smaller voice gets very few moments to speak. All issues are complex and worse yet opaque, but videos serve as smoke, and when your eye follows the smoke sometimes you find fire and sometimes you dont. So now people can peruse their own facts and share this video to others who might jump in the fray.

That's the answer to the comment about "this post does not gratify intellectual curiosity!", thank you.

Don't get this video as it is, look for additional facts about Ukrainian protests, make your opinion - that is a noble goal of the video, though it should be stressed more for HN.

Propaganda: "Information, esp. of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view". I mean, come on, a beautiful emotional girl, edited video, music, disturbing images. If this is not a text book example I don't know what is.

Propaganda, by nature does not show objective facts and depend on "useful idiots". There are countless examples, parent mention Nazi Germany which had its own propaganda ministerium. In recent history, during the first Gulf war, we could read how Iraqi soldiers pulled infants from incubators in Kuwait City, turned out to be false, but was part of legitimise the war. In the second Gulf war, do you remember secretary Powell's united nations WMD speech?

When peaceful protests are made impossible, violent revolutions are inevitable. When you put thousands or tens of thousands of people in a protest, depending on how outraged they are against the government, it might erupt into a violent revolution. It's on the government to not let things get that far, but not when the revolution is already knocking at their doors, but way before that. When they abuse the power, and pass laws banning protests, what do you think is going to happen? Because this is what the Ukranian government did.

I think you simply don't understand the situation. You won't understand what it means to have no hope against changing your government, even when the government continues to abuse you, while you do what to change things somehow, and you can't wait decades for it to happen, because the government's abuses are too much too bear.

Americans only pretend they want to change things, by liking stuff on Facebook, and then they just accept the situation and live with with, because they are too lazy to even go to a protest anymore.

Until Americans learn how to do a protest like what happened with the Arab Spring, and is happening in other countries, I think you need to stop teaching others about how to protest against their governments, deal?

Very sad you have to compare the Ukrainian situation to the Occupy movements. The Occupy movements had no clear or single aim, virtually no public support and where mostly non-violent.

Even the measures taken against them where mostly in accordance with civil rights, even making unusual allowances for destroying other people's property. The actual violent incidences are nothing compared to the Ukrainian situation.

No sign of any civil rights there...

Thank you for this comment. Those people occupying the square in Kyiv are incapable of any form of compromise. They refused to leave government buildings that they occupied, their leaders refused government posts they were offered, and for example recently one of the judges that sentenced protestors to house arrest was shot on the street to death. Why won't they peacefully wait for the next elections which will be in just a year? After all the current president is democratically elected and nobody disputes this.

Weren't they peacefully protesting until they were forcefully disbanded by the police?

To my best knowledge and I'm vividly interested in the topic they were not. They were armed from the start. A common type of weapon was a baseball bat with nails. For instance, one of the three oposition leaders, Mr Klitschko (also known for being a world-class heavy-weight boxer), was attacked with a fire extinguisher after he announced a temporary 'cease-fire' to the people on the square. This demonstrates that the protesters, or at least some if not most of them, are not resonable and by no means peaceful.

Imagine this type of peaceful protest in any western capital and those protesters would be now peaceful in jail.

That's not correct. There were two months of peaceful protest before the Hrushevskogo violence by radicals with bats, there were several raids by police to dismantle Maidan at night when most of people are at home - those efforts were answered peacefully with endurance.

Is blocking government buildings for two months paralysing top offices a peaceful protest? This could not last forever. Again changing the government the usual style is more effective than this.

They refused because we know worth of our government promises: they can promise everything and then silently beat and murder activists, change their mind and decisions unpredictably (Europe learned that recently). There's a real lack of trust in regime and it's based on facts and experience. Next elections are going to be a bloody mess of graft, manipulations and violence we have no legal means to cope with. Offered posts were sham to distract people and bribe for opposition leaders to shut up. Yanukovych seems to be incapable of a compromise with people without force. The only thing that forced him to offer those posts was reaction of the world (sanctions, political measures, threats to freeze his "family" accounts in Western banks) to the violence at Hrushevskogo (even not the violence itself, though any patriot would refuse its post after his country is teared apart by his actions, but it is well known that Yanukovych is not а patriot by any means).

And look what this refusal led to. Wouldn't it make sense to democratically ellect a new president if you don't like this one? At least fewer people would die. And also, you had a president from the opposition and he did absolutely nothing to approach the west. Or maybe it is the case that too many ordinary people of Ukraine don't want to be part of Europe but feel more at home with Russia.

I hope that the rhetoric employed in your comment was deliberate and meant to be ironic...