violent clashes engulfed central kiev as ukrainian police stared down barricades on the chase rioters on a day of anti-government protests three people have died. the crisis is being fueled by nationalists and radicals came to take the opportunity to push for revolution that. also this hour syria's government and opposition sit face to face for the first time since the start of the conflict but this start a long anticipated peace talks in switzerland have exposed a pattern is very different views on the future.

international news and comments live from moscow you want to national with me. very well welcome to the program. several people have died as a government prize has seen the ukrainian capital grow into a full skin second day with a whole new level of violence police have told down barricades blocking central kiev and chase down rises and they were telling protesters has been equally as forceful as he said it's a question of scale is that for us right now high that exchange earlier you told us that kiev looks like a war zone also happening on the streets right now it still is looking glass like war zone here is the essential kiev construct right now we can't even see the police line which is literally probably seventy meters from where i'm standing right now at my vantage point because of all the blacks or the rioters i want a lot of tires set them on fire and out of all. over the last more.

we hear flyback or even talk time also of course on the sea of course else fly towards the police this has been pretty much the scene of the last seventy two hours it's hasn't changed the slightest of this this time since morning since about eight o'clock in the morning the police have made several attempts to push the rioters from the governmental brought up from the bottom shops the street here and for the most recent one we have sort of a little more than an hour ago there were several of them and it was like a tug of war situation where the police rushed the protesters dismantled their barricades push them off the square in a matter of minutes maybe five minutes later the protesters the riot just big charging back at the police throwing rocks throwing different kind of steel clubs and bars at them and force the police to with top just literally ten minutes after that the police did that they can i would i should also mention that there wasn't

so much violence coming from the police side as it was coming from the protests this that basically what the police did there just pushed the protests those pop. off the square the protesters were willingly retreating from from this particular place here not willing to oppose any resistance until they came back and use all these rocks and molotov probably they have a stash of those somewhere on the corner here. and they just. still can't. afford another portion of those projects back to police now the situation is getting even more intense considering information that several people several rioters some already been killed by presumably by the police that's what they saying although that's not confirmation the only thing we do know is that the medics that they died from what seems to be bullet wounds but it's really unclear whether those were live rounds or more rubber bullets or anything of this kind are

we but we do don't know though when we actually saw it with our own eyes one dead already carried across the street and another one was confirmed earlier in the morning as well as an armenian citizen who was killed with a with a gun shot with it with a wound to his neck although as again some clear what kind of one that was now you get what you can see now is basically a pretty calm scene compared to what i saw a little more than an hour ago when the first wave of police attacks started i filed this report just for you to see how dramatic and how a war zone like it was here in central kiev have a look at that. so this is yet another attempt by the police to push the protest this off the governmental quarter they've just started moving as we can see they're covering themselves with huell the protesters the rioters are running back but they're still throwing rocks at the police it is very violent here we see that flash bangs are being exploded. from

time to time although the police are not resorting to any kind of special. i mean so far they haven't even use class bangs or non-lethal non-lethal stuff from as far as we could see over here. they've been waiting basically for hours for several hours before attempting another another go at the protesters we also heard earlier from the prime minister of ukraine who said that old those writing in the central kiev are considered to be terrorists. and we also heard from the some of the officials from behind the barricades from the police lines who've been saying that. they will use force if needed and this is the case as we can see right now from our vantage point. the pair of the police are now in full in full swing to get the protesters who are still clearing rocks and and

move the pills that that. we can see this literally maybe several hundred policemen. and. there will soon as we can hear banging their shields to give a proper psychological effect so that the protesters make the most head but now we can see there are no protesters remaining at the scene of the riots which has been the scene on the right for the past four days already. so here we are we're just meters literally five meters from the scene of the accident. thats it. the protesters have been pushed off from the governmental quarter several police lines and you can see one police line the other police line they're now

securing the perimeter no major violence as we could see no. major violence from the police in fact i would say no violence from the police at all. that you saw that you saw now this was the first wave of a police state that hour ago we also saw a couple of those later on scuffles did happen to protest the police that you know are some of the. really love the election but generally we can say that there were no special being targeted and said we've got to get out just as we are expecting situation i think that's a cry for us today is a major horrific day of the national unity of the opposition called on hundreds of

thousands of st we don't know how this is going to go to pretty much a monkey with a great situation it may explode any moment of course we hear him and we have a great friend to support you we're monitoring the situation as it travels. and exceed their steps to live from kiev aleksei thank you very much indeed for that so be careful there and we have to apologize for the quality sound of from kiev right now but let's now get more on the situation in a ukraine with mark he's a senior international relations lecturer and research station of us he's here with me in the. welcome very nice to talk to you again so we are getting reports that the u.s. is revoking visas oh well they call violence towards protesters but it was violent because what we're seeing right now that the riot police moving in and trying to take in to take apart barricades that. we are seeing

a range of five bombs or rocks that are coming from the side of the rioters other protesters who is one in that well obviously the vast majority of the violence is coming from the rioters themselves and i think we're all guilty of using the framing narrative of calling these people protesters i'm guilty of it myself if this was happening in london or in new york or in madrid these would be called by the press the governments there riots violent riots by extremists and ultra nationalists and that's what it is we have hundreds of of injuries. police at this point several of them critically we have reports that the ultra nationalists within the protest camps themselves have been attacking other protesters of more leftist feminist gay rights and labor rights organizations have been beating them within the camps themselves driving them out so the violence here is is coming from

the protesters the rioters themselves and what's interesting about the us calling for sanctions is that in the u.s. in the last few years in the course of the occupy wall street protests there were thirty two deaths and thousands of injuries in turkey in the past year there have been eleven deaths and thousands of injuries in greece and the anti neoliberal austerity measure protests there there were five deaths and thousands of injuries in thailand right now a western supported dictatorship there there have been nine deaths and thousands of injuries in the ukraine we have seen three deaths at least one of which we know was caused when a ultranationalists throwing fire bombs fell off his apartment she can hear that sound believable so can we say it's a point of no return that i don't i don't think that this is

a point of no return these deaths only one of them which has been confirmed by name so far have been due to the protesters actions themselves their own violence. again the number of people participating in this is a few thousand is relatively small it looks really bad on the screens we use the journalism the refer to this is a war zone and i'm a military veteran of six years in the u.s. armed forces and anyone who knows has been in a war zone themselves this is does not look at all like a war zone this looks like the london riots two year. as you go this looks like the anti new liberal protests in spain in madrid the occupy wall street protests in the us the main difference being in those the rioters were armed with spiked. chain weapons knives cocktails like we're seeing here so to call this violence on

the side of the police in the ukrainian government is it absurd hypocrisy and an absolute cynicism that is right mark just a second because we have. is here with us in the studio irina e.u. you and you hung witnessed some of the writing of recent weeks in kiev and mark says that these protests are relatively not that big right but the general mood in the country people won't say that happy about that they could know what situation the country what's going on well we've talked extensively when the riots just started about the fact that me that it's not just the people who are out there on this so-called euro my done have been brought there mostly from western ukraine they're the ones who are thinking that ukraine should be with europe they're saying that ukraine is you are it's european country and it should take it isn't so you

take a step away from russia that's what a kind of started with now it's mostly against the government but you also have to understand the fact that this is the western ukraine that has that opinion people in the east are a lot more russia friendly they do not want to get away from russia they do not want to step away from russia they're much more closer to moscow then they are say to warsaw also i think it's important to underline the fact that just when i was in kiev all you had to do was walk about a kilometer away from the my down from the state from the independence square and you would be in a normal city where people go shopping people go to their gyms people go have a great time go to school go. work there were only upset over the over the protests because you have to be seven it's the major leagues he had his main thoroughfare that was blocked by the protests and still is by the way so you cannot imagine the traffic jams that have been occurring because of that part of blockage essentially and that is the reason why there was all this talk about the society for the

protesters to get away from the independence square in order to clear up the traffic show and say that you have relatives in kiev as well as the ukraine but the way hearing from the u.s. and the e.u. that is so angry with the ukrainian authorities because of their crackdown on the rioters on the protesters but as we understand that local people basically they are angry with at present because hate to mild probably and he come basically. make or to return to the streets of kiev yet a significant portion of them want law and order restored to the streets that's not to say that there are no supporters of these protests there are indeed all true nationalist groups themselves within. but i would say at this point they are a minority we just recently saw a series of by elections that occurred during the course of the beginning of the protests in ukraine three of them were in kiev and then we saw an independent.

candidates that allied themselves with the government against. opposition candidates and in all of those races in kiev the opposition lost. so it definitely doesn't give you an idea that there's a huge level of groundswell of support in kiev in fact we can see this clearly as the protests numbers rise on the weekends in during the week when again the buses in convoys come in from the west and their numbers here are bolstered so these people are not representative of the greatest. jordy of the ukrainian people even the ones that originally supported the idea of the half of the country that supported the idea of the ukraine signing the e.u. association agreement are willing to hear the president now listen to his economic reasons that basically would have been economic suicide pact for the country they

are far more reasonable and we've seen the polling numbers in a covert his own numbers are going up and support for the protests have been going down right exactly about talking about the opposition just mention it slightly we're saying our national is that ultranationalists a new analysis i will note and even plot so we are hearing about some nationalist a time on local curious people for example and anti semitic rhetoric as well. can we believe can we expect that these people can come into power and care in ukraine no i don't think that anyone except for themselves seriously believes that these people can come into power now what we see both the calculation that is being made by the us and the e.u. and by the more mainstream opposition leaders such as clips go and yet in new york they are hoping to ride the wave of this nationalist sentiment and the violence

they are hoping that at some point the police. the party of regions officials the oligarchy in the country will be scared by everything that they're seeing here and will brain cranks and that somehow a second color revolution will happen in the ukraine and these supposedly liberals will be able to ride in and seize control of the government. over the heads of these nationalists which are the majority the core of the protests and certainly all of the violent protests out there in kiev right now tell us more about the opposition who are the faces of this opposition are they united to the have a united. or do they want basic no no not at all in fact they aren't even able to articulate what they want other than they want the current government to resign they don't have a unified economic vision they don't have a unified geo political vision of the country certainly this for both a party and these a right sector ultranationalists they have no desire to join the

e.u. they refer to the e.u. as a death trap of nations. they want to see an independent nationalist ukraine so there's a big split. in terms of identity economics politics between all of the leaders which is why we haven't seen in opposition a single leader emerge that can dominate presidential elections and began a covert ok let's let's now pause a here because we have our correspondent peter all of us who's working in kiev right now and of course he's closely following the bands as the and for that let's get the latest from him peter ok any see right now that. well right now i'm here on my done square we heard earlier on from my colleague alexey had assured us over near to the did number stadium where by where police and

rioters if they have clashed viciously all throughout this day with police try to clear them off of the barricades what we're now seeing here is some of those people who were told to not right it's coming this way towards my son though just behind me you can see there's a a large crowd growing of people listening to speeches from the stage but actually just over to my right we're seeing people building and reinforcing barricades that are being pushed so we've also seen many people coming from neither did i miss de gea decked out in it helmets masks carrying rudimentary weapons and shields some of them as they get away from the weather police of clear that out from the. those barricades the house there are a lot of those how we're right here now and we're seeing a large number of people gradually coming here to lie does were made on squared say it's a holiday here in ukraine it's a public holiday so nobody's at work people are free to come here in the the organizers all these these demonstrations who are calling on people from all over

ukraine to come here to to kids that it's already seems that they they have done that in their in their thousands now in terms of those clashes with the police that we were at least earlier on there was truly some of the. worst scenes i've seen anywhere around the world really ugly scenes as those demonstrators rioters threw a lot of cocktails bits of stones bits of. pavement slabs at the police as the police tried to move them away from those barricades now after one of those melodies we did see and the as they separated there was some protesters that were lying prone some that had been taken away by the police and also some police that were that had been injured in those clashes with rioters though it was a very very intense moment as they went in the first time to move the old off those barricades those a few loud explosions and then a huge sea of people started running away and we captured that moment when this was

happening now listen to what i saw all the time right now. what we've seen is a series of explosions going off or believe police are trying to clear out the square as you can see a lot of people we're going to be moving this way a son it comes the cover can move to the left here yes shoot crowds of people as they're going to try to get away from those barricades that were were up there can i please moving in with actually police the moving in there very very. they're pushing back very forcefully here. hopefully we're going to be going to be fine where we are police have moved everybody off those barricades moved everybody away . whether it was almost our case yet we're going to have to get inside now we're going to. we're going to get inside to get all the way of what's going on this is that. the police have decided that they are they getting rid of and they're clearing out everything that was at those barricades this had been the position of

such a a standoff between right as and the police said. obviously the police deciding this that it was time to to put an end to the often see into clear people out we saw a huge wave of people huge huge wave of people fleeing from those barricades and as police try to to disperse oh that's it. oh that is that is. to say a policeman no hitting a somebody who's on the floor right there repeatedly beating that person so yes the police have now cleared out all the way some explosions you can see that we've got to come inside to the hotel which is nearby where those barricades were. in order to to get away from from what was going on. there are some wounded demonstrators some people who'd been beaten as the police have now completely cleared all of that area away this all happened very very quickly it all happened

in a space of just a few minutes we heard a few loud explosions i believe they were. they were noisy grenades that were flash bang grenades and then charge by the police which is completely clear now that whole area of demonstrate his place have been in a standoff for the last the last few days but all that they still seem that it's set to continue for a while yet will be trying to get back out there soon as it's it's safe for us to do so to see what's going on. where they were located. yes it's used to seeing demonstrators trying to move back into the territory that they were just expelled by the by the riot police. while we are in a period of relative calm for what we're seeing for the rest of today right now but if you look over my shoulder this is a barricade that we're all keeping an eye on while you're hearing my report there was a loud cheer went up a few things so we'll be keeping an eye what's going on there to see if there's

more flashpoints around the city of kiev. show peace here on the line in kiev peter thank you very much and serene a weird to see your way all this gear in kiev but for a moment thank you and alexander chris an expert on international law joins us now live mr chris well. listen days have been the most violent since the beginning of the protests there have been several deaths things and kidnappings who's leaving the chaos. well there's no question who's leading the what drove the chaos what started the violence. on sunday was a group of protesters who attempted so far as i can see to have to storm the police lines that were defending the parliament building but who is ultimately responsible for the violence the answer i have to say is the opposition leadership who initiated what i can only call

a revolutionary strategy two months ago when they set up camp in my down square and essentially have been demanding ever since of the president the prime minister the government the parliament resigned that the be early elections that the be a transitional government created essentially around them and though they have been refusing to negotiate in any serious way with the government about any of that and they've been making very very inflammatory statements and demands and instructing the work of the parliament now if you do these sort of things i'm afraid it creates the kind of violent situation which we saw we've seen over the last few days so who is responsible for all this ultimately opposition leadership mystically each girl misty gets in you. it looks like authorities are running out of patients there what might they do now. well if i may say the authorities have shown

extraordinary patience in this matter i mean you heard some of the other commentators. discussing this. which is also replete with the russian foreign minister said the other day there is absolutely no conceivable way that this sort of situation would have been allowed to happen in any other european city or in any or in any god in the united states the authorities would have clamped down and clear the streets long ago what has happened is as the protests have become extremely violent over the last few days we've seen finally. mr unicode himself in a statement he made the prime minister the head of the security council finally talking in a more affirm way and saying that the government has a responsibility to maintain order which he does so i think we are seeing a hardening of the government's position but he should be very clear the government

has acted with great restraint in this matter it's the protesters are encouraged in this by the opposition leaders who have not and who have precipitated the situation and just an example one opposition leader mr said yesterday ukraine's president counseled me saying do you think do believe today's clashes could have been avoided if the in aqaba she agreed to talk. well the answer if i may say so is that what mr mystically h.b.o. is demanding is actually x is actually extraordinary what he's saying is he will only talk with those representatives of the government namely the president himself that he wishes to know misty in a covert has a cat is the president of the country he has all sorts of other things to do he has delegated a very important man the head of his national security council to negotiate on his

behalf it's not for the mystically go or for the opposition leaders to say that that's wrong or that they're just not going to negotiate with him this is been white the way through this whole crisis right from the beginning the opposition leaders have approaching will an extraordinary sense of entitlement insisting at all times that things be done the way they want them to be done now that is not the way to achieve compromise or to negotiate. looking at the situation as it is from your point of view now do your thing while can you actually rule out a civil war they knew crane. i don't think we're looking into as a civil war situation in the ukraine or the fundamental problem the opposition has is that they embarked on a revolutionary strategy revolutions only succeed when there are two when two things happen firstly the government must have no support in the country and

secondly the armed forces of the country must be you know must their loyalty to the government must be in question none of those conditions it seems to me in the ukraine prevail the government does retain a considerable amount of support in the country especially in the eastern and southern regions which are industrialised we've seen that in the ukraine in kiev itself only a minority a very small minority of people are involved in all of this why. the security forces are clearly normal to the government and are carrying out its orders so i don't think this is a civil war situation i think this is an attempted revolution which is failing and failing disastrously which is increasing polarization in the country which may create more problems in the future but an immediate risk of civil war i don't think so. alexander makris an expert on international law saying.