where ukraine protesting?

Gabriel Gatehouse spent Thursday with protesters and witnessed the clashes up close

The bloodshed in Kiev on 20 February was the worst so far. The health ministry said 77 people had been killed in 48 hours, with nearly 600 wounded.
Video showed police snipers firing live rounds at a group of protesters carrying makeshift shields.
The sudden deterioration began on 18 February - and took many people by surprise. Both sides blamed each other, but who threw the first stone or fired the first shot is still not clear.
The government and opposition had agreed a deal - an amnesty for arrested protesters, if demonstrators vacated captured government buildings.
The opposition had also agreed - with negotiators for the president's ruling Party of the Regions - that parliament would discuss changing the constitution to reduce the president's powers. But then the speaker of parliament refused to allow that on the agenda. As news got out, angry protesters marched on parliament.

why is ukraine protesting

Ukraine is in turmoil after its bloodiest week in decades. Days of deadly clashes between anti-government protesters and police have culminated in parliament voting to oust President Viktor Yanukovych.

Although he has denounced the act as a coup d'etat, the capital Kiev and his presidential administration are out of his hands.

For three months, anti-government protesters were involved in a stand-off with the authorities that oscillated between calm and violence. On 18 February, the violence escalated dramatically, with policemen being shot, and riot police moving in to clear the peaceful protest camp on Independence Square.

The stakes for Ukraine and its 45 million people are enormous, with the country's fate now part of a wider strategic battle between the West and Russia.

Ukraine Tension Rose Vs NATO Actions with Russian troops

Tensions rose in Ukraine’s eastern regions today as gunmen seized police stations in two cities, prompting the government in Kiev to pledge a tough response.

About 20 armed people in camouflage gear occupied the police station of Slovyansk, about 650 kilometers (400 miles) east of the capital, seizing weapons and taking hostages, the Interior Ministry said today. The police station in nearby Krasny Liman was also seized, the Interfax news service said. Ukraine dispatched special-forces troops to deal with the situation, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, said on his Facebook Inc. account.

In an echo of protests in Crimea that preceded Russia’s annexation of the Black Sea Peninsula, pro-Russia protests have rattled Ukraine’s industrial heartland. Government buildings were seized in the cities of Donetsk, Kharkiv and Luhansk, near the border across which NATO said about 40,000 Russian troops are massing in combat readiness.

Involvement of Russian to make Tensions rose in Ukraine’s

The involvement of Russian-inspired separatists in the unrest, seizure of government buildings and brutal violence seen on the streets of Donetsk, Kharkiv and Lugansk is evidence of the Kremlin’s attempt to repeat the Crimean scenario, but this time in Eastern Ukraine.

European leaders repeatedly warned Russia that any further steps to escalate the crisis in Ukraine would be met with a further level of sanctions. In recent days, precisely such steps have been taken by the Kremlin. They are part of Vladimir Putin’s plan to dismantle and destroy Ukraine as a sovereign European state.

 
of his article was filled with half-truths or outright misinformation concerning events in Ukraine.

Russia is piling up its military capacities in the region bordering Ukraine, threatening a war. Russian agents of the FSB (the former KGB) are undertaking further steps to organise separatist provocations. Their aim is to destabilise south-eastern Ukraine. Self-proclaimed puppet authorities are created who then call upon Russian troops to protect a few hundred separatists – who are mainly citizens of Russia, deliberately brought to Ukraine by the Russian secret services in order to destabilise it.

The “lessons” outlined in the ambassador’s piece are nothing but interference in the internal affairs of Ukraine. But in truth, only the Ukrainian people have the right to decide on the form of government to choose, on the language to speak, on the military-political stance to take. And these issues will be resolved in the national constitution.

NATO & Russian military buildup near & Attack  Ukraine

MONS, Belgium (Reuters) - NATO presented satellite photographs on Thursday it said showed Russian deployments of 40,000 troops near the Ukrainian frontier along with tanks, armored vehicles, artillery and aircraft ready for action.

"This is a force that is very capable, at high readiness, and, as we have illustrated through the imagery, is close to routes and lines of communication," British Brigadier Gary Deakin said at a briefing at NATO military headquarters at Mons in southern Belgium.

"It has the resources to be able to move quickly into Ukraine if it was ordered to do so," he said.

If Russian political leaders took a decision to send forces into Ukraine, the first Russian forces could be on the move within 12 hours.

NATO has spotted Russian forces at more than 100 different sites close to the Ukraine border, he said.

The Western alliance showed the pictures supplied by commercial satellite imagery firm DigitalGlobe to bolster its warnings of a Russian military buildup that could threaten Ukraine.

A Russian official, quoted by a state-run news agency, said the photographs were from August last year. Russia has denied massing forces near the border and accuses NATO of fomenting concern to rally support for the alliance.

NATO foreign ministers asked military planners last week to draw up a range of options for bolstering NATO forces in central and eastern European allies nervous about Russian intentions after its occupation and annexation of Ukraine's Crimea.


Those options have now been delivered to NATO headquarters and NATO ambassadors are expected to take decisions based on them "within a week to two weeks," Deakin said.

He ruled out the alliance sending forces to non-NATO member Ukraine, however.

"I wouldn't envisage us deploying troops in Ukraine, that's not in our thinking," he said.

The United States and other NATO members have already sent extra planes to reinforce eastern European allies.

A Pentagon spokesperson said the destroyer USS Donald Cook arrived in the Black Sea on Thursday for exercises. The U.S. vessel is expected to be working with ships from Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey.

Many of the sites in the satellite images appeared to be fields rather than established bases. The sites were located between about 20 km (12 miles) and 150 km of the Ukraine border, according to images that NATO said were taken between March 22 and April 2.

Russian troop numbers had remained at about the same level since then, Deakin said.

An official in the Russian military general staff said the NATO satellite photographs were taken in August 2013, state-run news agency RIA reported.

"These photographs that were distributed by NATO depict units of Russian forces of the Southern Military District which conducted various exercises last summer, some of them near the border with Ukraine," RIA quoted what it said was a high-level official in the Russian general staff as saying.

A NATO official responded that the images were from March and April this year and each image showed the date it was taken.

Several images dated March 26 and taken around the Russian town of Belgorod, 40 km from the Ukraine border, showed units of a motorized rifle regiment, Mil Mi-8 and Mi-24 helicopters, tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, supply and transport vehicles, according to NATO.

Other satellite pictures, dated March 27 and taken near Novocherkassk, showed units of a motorized rifle regiment, a "probable" anti-tank battalion and artillery.


More images, dated March 22 and taken near the port of Yeysk, just 20 km from Ukrainian airspace, showed four Su-33 fighter aircraft and an airborne early warning plane, while other pictures, dated April 2, showed Su-27, Su-30, Su-24 and MiG-31 warplanes at the formerly vacant Buturlinovka air base, 150 km from the Ukraine border, according to NATO.