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基輔爆發血腥衝突
警方暴力驅趕示威者13人死亡
, 12:02
在近一個月的和平抗議之後，周二晚間，隨着防暴警察開始驅趕聚集在獨立廣場各處路障後的抗議者，烏克蘭首都基輔市中心發生了嚴重的暴力事件，多人死傷。
Ukraine Leader Strains to Keep Grip as Crisis Grows Deeper
Conflict Widens in Ukraine
Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
KIEV,
Ukraine — Ukraine spiraled deeper into crisis on Wednesday as the
government of President Viktor F. Yanukovych and several thousand grimly
determined protesters — along with their supporters in Russia and
Europe — prepared for an extended confrontation over the fate of this
fractured country of 46 million.
As
measures of the turmoil, the authorities announced a nationwide
“antiterrorist operation” to keep guns and power from “extremist groups”
and cashiered the country’s top general, then turned around late in the
day and declared that a “truce” had been reached with political leaders
of the opposition.
But
it was clear that, with their bloody offensive to take back the center
of Kiev stalled by a ring of fire — and even the deployment of
paratroopers to help protect military bases — the Ukrainian authorities
were concerned about maintaining control, particularly in the western
part of the country.
“In
many regions of the country, municipal buildings, offices of the
Interior Ministry, state security and the prosecutor general, army units
and arms depots are being seized,” Oleksandr Yakimenko, the head of the
state security service, the SBU, said in a televised statement.
Video|2:08
Genya Savilov/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Clashes Continue in Ukraine
Antigovernment protests in Kiev continued overnight and into the early hours of Wednesday.
The Defense Ministry later added a further beat to a drumroll of ominous warnings a day after the capital, Kiev, erupted in a frenzy of fire and fighting
that left at least 25 people dead, including nine police officers. The
Health Ministry said 241 had been wounded, but Ukrainian news reports
put the number at more than 1,000.
“Military
servants of the armed forces of Ukraine might be used in antiterrorist
operations on the territory of Ukraine,” the Defense Ministry said,
raising the prospect that Mr. Yanukovych could call on the armed forces
to try to restore order — and keep himself in office.
That
statement brought a quick response from President Obama and other
Western leaders, who sought to defuse the crisis even as their
differences with Russia hardened in an escalating East-West struggle
redolent of the Cold War.
It
was not clear how the military could be legally deployed for what would
be a domestic policing mission unless the authorities first declared a
state of emergency, a step that Mr. Yanukovych has previously shied away
from and for which the military has shown no enthusiasm. That was why
the firing of the pro-European chief of the Ukrainian general staff,
Volodymyr Zaman, set off alarms in the West.
Also
raising concerns was the fact that American officials have sought to
contact senior Ukrainian military officials by phone and “nobody is
picking up,” a senior State Department official said. The United States
has been warning against the imposition of a state of emergency “for
months and months,” the official said.
1,000 FEET
Ukrainian House
European
Square
KHRESHCHATYK
Hotel
Trade Unions Building,
PARTIALLY SET ON FIRE
Areas taken by the police on Tuesday
Independence
Square
Dynamo
Stadium
Barricades set on fire
Ukraina
Hotel
Parliament
UKRAINE GOVERNMENT HOUSE
DOWNTOWN KIEV
City Hall
REtaken by
protesters
Areas barricaded by protesters
GOVERNING PARTY'S BUILDING SET ON FIRE
Together, the moves suggest that Mr. Yanukovych, whose resignation many protesters see as a necessary precondition for calm,
will press on with a high-risk strategy rooted in his view — zealously
encouraged by the Kremlin — that Ukraine confronts not a popular
uprising but a foreign-backed putsch by extremists.
Throughout
the day on Wednesday, thousands of Kiev residents braved riot police
and roaming bands of pro-government “sportsmen” to visit the besieged
protest encampment in Independence Square, now a harrowing vista of
charred buildings and smoldering debris.
The
residents brought supplies to the young men in masks and helmets who,
for the authorities, are now the only true face of the country’s
political tumult.
With
the subway system shut down, they walked, carrying bags of groceries,
tires and scrap wood for the protesters’ protective ring of fire, and
jerricans of gasoline. Two middle-aged women walked nonchalantly down a
central street of Kiev toward Independence Square, known as Maidan,
pushing a shopping cart rattling with ready-made firebombs in wine
bottles.
The
protesters are a hodgepodge of groups, some radical enough to alarm
some European diplomats, who have been arguing for weeks over whether to
impose sanctions on Ukrainian leaders, many of whom have assets outside
the country. But few, if any, share Mr. Yanukovych’s — and also
Russia’s — view that the government is simply a victim. “Yanukovych
claims to be the victim of the radicals of the Maidan, and that he did
not want such violence. We accept that the opposition made a mistake,”
said Poland’s foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, who is traveling to
Kiev to see the Ukrainian president on Thursday morning, along with the
with French and German foreign ministers. But, added Mr. Sikorski, who
will also meet Mr. Yanukovych’s opponents in an effort to mediate a
political settlement, the “president’s credibility with everyone is now
zero.”
The
distrust was evident Wednesday night, when a statement was posted on
the president’s website declaring that he had agreed to a truce with the
main opposition leaders and was ready to start negotiations “with the
aim of ending bloodshed and stabilizing the situation in the state in
the interests of social peace.” There was no immediate comment from the
opposition, and scant signs that riot police officers or protesters in
Kiev were pulling back, though a fleet of empty buses arrived overnight
at a staging area near the square for a possible withdrawal or
redeployment of at least some of the government’s antiriot force.
In
a televised address to the nation early Wednesday, as battles raged
between protesters and columns of riot police, Mr. Yanukovych said
opposition leaders had “crossed the limits when they called people to
arms” and demanded that they “disassociate themselves from the radical
forces that provoke bloodshed.”
The
protest movement certainly contains extremist elements but, at least in
Kiev and many other cities, particularly in the western regions, it has
a wide base of public support and will not end with the arrest of
“extremists.” After talks with Mr. Yanukovych late Tuesday as violence
spun out of control, the opposition leader Arseniy Yatsenyiuk complained
that the president had only a single offer: “that we surrender.” He
declined.
As
the mayhem that gripped Kiev on Tuesday gave way to relative calm, the
authorities on Wednesday reinforced squads of riot police, bringing in
hundreds of fresh officers to support those who had fought through the
night. They massed at a roundabout at the end of Khreschatyk Street, the
main artery leading to Independence Square. A dozen military-style dump
trucks, armored cars and other vehicles waited nearby. By late evening,
however, there was no sign of a new push to sweep away the thousands of
protesters still singing and chanting around a stage in Independence
Square.
The
turnout, although modest compared with the hundreds of thousands who
thronged into the protest zone during the movement’s peaceful phase,
illustrated a key ingredient to the remarkable resilience of a movement
here, and in other cities, that comprises both a dedicated and often
radical core and a broad base of people simply fed up with a government
they see as corrupt and brutal.
Map: Satellite Images of the Protests in Kiev
Lyudmilla
Sedchuk, a soft-spoken pensioner, said she did not like violence but
wholeheartedly supported young men hurling stones and firebombs at
police officers. “They are excellent people, these brave lads,” she
said, “The extremists are the ones standing on the other side,” she
added, glowering at a line of riot police officers.
Adding
to the Ukrainian leadership’s alarm Wednesday were a string of reports
from the west of the country, a longstanding bastion of antigovernment
sentiment, that the offices of governors, prosecutors, the police and
the state security service had been stormed by protesters and, in
several cases, set on fire.
In
Lviv, a city near the border with Poland, what had been a peaceful
blockade of a sprawling compound housing barracks and the Interior
Ministry’s western command turned early Wednesday into the seizure of a
major military installation.
Andriy
Porodko, 29, a businessman who had commanded the earlier blockade, said
the “soldiers all surrendered” without a fight and had allowed
protesters to take control of the compound, including an armory full of
weapons. Ihor Pochinok, the editor in chief of a Lviv newspaper,
Ekspres, said the city was bubbling with fury at the assault Tuesday on
Independence Square but “was functioning normally, except for state
authorities.”
Protesters,
he said, had also stormed the offices of the regional governor, a
Yanukovych appointee, resuming an occupation that had ended just three
days earlier, and raided the local headquarters of the state prosecutor,
the state security service and several district police stations. Around
140 guns were seized from a police armory.
Beyond
Lviv, antigovernment activists besieged or seized police stations and
administrative buildings in Uzhgorod, Lutsk, Khmelnitsky and Poltava.
In
Lutsk, northwestern Ukraine, protesters attacked the regional police
department, which responded with stun grenades and other fire. The
building was then set on fire by protesters throwing gasoline bombs.
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