he is a legal writer and an analyst in moscow we have mark sloboda he is a senior lecturer and researcher at moscow state university and in washington we cross to anders auslan he is a senior fellow at the peterson institute for international economics or a gentleman crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i very much encourage it mark if i can go to you first here and looking at some of the dreadful pictures over the last few days coming out of care it looks like an attempted coup of some sort and i don't understand why people are calling them protesters they were they look more like rioters. well i think that can be exactly what has been characterized as happening in the ukraine in kiev for the last week i have family in laws in kiev and they're afraid to leave their houses right now because of what is happening it should be said that this is limited to the downtown section of the city and what we have are several thousand ultra nationalist. rioters because we can call them raw it's hers we can call them terrorists we can

call them insurgents at this point but one thing is sure is not this has nothing to do with democratic protest these people are attacking police with chain weapons mala top of cocktails. bombs pyrotechnics there have been stabbings of police they have been building trebuchets and using both scenarios and morningstar as we see an absolute medievalism level of violence coming from these people. several thousand people that are being cheered on and facilitated by the slightly larger crowds on the my done. are. right now engaged on the street which is right up the street from them i don and there is no question anymore that this is a democratic protest even the mainstream opposition leaders have made clear for months now of what they call

a revolution against the democratically elected government ok all right that's a good characterization enders and i go to you in washington how do you see what's going on here because of a number of news sources i don't care where you go i mean this looks a lot more than just you know sitting down and protesting the government this is gotten quite out of control there are a number of deaths now and we see the governments asking to sit down for talks but all they get is ultimatums from a very small group of people that are using violence and it's quite obvious go ahead anderson well. first of all it's interesting to check who started using violence and it's of course the police that have used violence on a massive scale it started on the thirtieth of november when hundreds of demonstrators who were resting on my dance square were attacked by by riot police then on the first of december we saw or via sprog cutters the masks organized by the regime beating on the riot police and getting no

resistance so both of these locations were the regime then on the tenth of december we had another attempt by the riot police to break out and demonstrate insurance which were peaceful and then finally on the sixteenth of january a democratic order is to abolish when. the president on the court which pushed through against all the parliamentary procedures. and laws put in like a law. all democratic procedures in the ukraine so obviously this is a coup and people have been killed well i mean. are you going to continue to be a uniter told which was elected president of ukraine you would agree with than why don't we just wait for another election to overturn i mean let people go to the ballot box where they have to burn buildings in three hundred police have been

injured as well but does it mean that violence on the side of the state is is should be overlooked ok alexander i mean it seems that this is a kid who have endured by police who have been going to the police i would guess vet visit the city to spare called the. kate all right but we haven't aired as we have a third get in the program we have a third guest star the program we go to alexander in london how do you see the. and going out in the streets of care of right now we're well. i would describe it very straightforwardly as a riot and an extremely violent riots and one i'm afraid which has been run by the protesters i think what must understand is that my done square does not belong to the protesters it is a public space they have been occupying that public space now for granted two months for happy and anything that would be acceptable in any european city what

happened on the thirtieth of november which is supposedly the triggering thing is that they initially said they would go and then they refused to go and of the police as they are entitled to do attempted to disperse them on the first of december we had an extraordinary burst of violence with attacks on public buildings an attempt to storm a police line using a tractor extraordinary violence on that day and we've had more and more violence since then with statues toppled all sorts of things like that and i think we've got to remember that when people talk about the police trying to storm the square the story being at the moment is being done by the protesters or shall we not call them protest as anymore because i think this is long gone beyond the point of being a peaceful protest let's call them what they are which is rioters and that isn't that what the situation is now can i also do very briefly with what happened in the

parliament last week none of us is an expert on ukrainian parliamentary procedure the laws that were passed on that day are perfectly standard laws they're very similar to the kind of laws that have exist in most european countries if you riot in britain the sentence for that is ten years the maximum sentence for that is ten years you need commission six clear days before you hold a protest the police are entitle to put restrictions on their protest. if they fear that there is a danger to public order they can ban it these are normal laws the reason procedures may have been curtailed and i'm not an expert on parliamentary procedure in the ukraine but if if there were shortcuts taken that is again because on the day in question and before the parliamentary or position trying to obstruct the work of the parliament they locked up the speaker in his office the block use

of the electronic system and i think it is very dangerous when we hear what happened in parliament to excuse and justify what has been going on in the streets and in the square since then ok market you can tell it tell us about some of the groups that are in my darn right now because some people look at them as protesters word nationalist is used more like alter nationalists is probably what they are and even others have called them neo nazis who are these people. yes i'd like to address something that. and with all due respect to his academic credentials and standing has been repeating in the pages of the key of post tonight on this program he has suggested without any substantiation and quite frankly somewhat ill informed and. without any grounding that all of the

violence that has been perpetrated against the police which we can all watch nightly live streaming and video from the beginning has been perpetrated by the government themselves that they have driven tractors into their own lines that they are tossing molotov cocktails and stabbing themselves with knives this is. quite frankly absurd even the most western experts to c.b.c. can i interrupt here because this is a straight forward i have on december first it's very clear you can't lead or cranes gab. it was the minister of interior vet brought in base a truck anybody who saw the pictures could see that there but otherwise. riot police were just standing to get it beaten beaten but we haven't gone to the democratic elections. which still have a parliamentary elections in october two thousand and twelve so this parliament has

on their list and yes i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm just our european union and other governments gave that election a clean bill of health ok this is probably what it's getting down to alexandra. we don't know if it's you know you have a right to be repaired when you don't have a right to your own facts ok alexander if i can go to you this is what it's all about and i'm going to talk to you to my guest in london right now alexander this is what it's all about here. why why can't these p. if this is such a broad movement why can't people there say we don't like this government we're going to punish you in the next election cycle and throw the bums out why not that because a government with the government is really going to see eight what's the go sheet and they'd like return with ultimatums go ahead well indeed so i think it is an important point there is the election the presidential election is a year away now what the parliamentary opposite what the opposition ought to be

doing logically is they should be agreeing on a single candidate to put up against mr yanukovych which in that election now there are lots of things you can criticize mr yanukovych for his economic policies were not very successful he made a complete hand of the association agreement negotiations whether he should have signed it or not is another matter but the way in which he pulled out of it was disastrous. the trouble is and this is what i think is happening here is that a lot of the scenes we're seeing in kiev today. are happening because the opposition itself is very fragmented into value added and cannot agree on a proper political and electoral strategy and because they cannot agree on these things they are and cannot control some of their own supporters and are egging some of some of their others we are seeing a certain drift towards violence now and i think people like and who are obviously

sympathetic to the opposition should be pointing this out to the they should say look what you have got to do already gentlemen i'm sorry we're going to have to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on the events unfolding in ukraine stay with r.t. . leave the things you want. if it was a. very hard to take a plunge again here is a place that never had sex with her make their. lives

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a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines to name two kinds of reports. welcome back to cross talk where all things considered i'm peter lavelle to remind you we're discussing the events playing out in ukraine. anderson i go back to you in washington we've seen plenty of pictures coming out of care over the last few days there's a lot of use of violence and i would say on all sides what do you think about the people in the opposition and it's been said earlier in the program that you're more sympathetic to them i mean why are they using force are you sympathetic to that

well. the main opposition leaders have all told their. supporters very strongly north to use force we do not know exactly who the people who are using force are we do know. it is have used a massive number of so-called. provocateurs i would like to focus on the. democratic credentials in fact was brought up it's true president journal called which was elected. with a slight majority three and a half percent people ran off in february two thousand and ten but it got to spend fifty percent of the vote but he stole the parliamentary elections in october two thousand and ten and even so his party only got thirty percent of. the i don't i don't understand i don't understand why you're bringing this up i

don't understand why you bring this up because you know before you enter into it in november of last year in november of last year brussels was courting mr eunuch overage ok they wanted him there they wanted to talk to him then but now they don't want to do that so don't you find that kind of an odd situation that he was legitimate when he was going to sign that agreement and he's illegitimate now because he didn't sign the agreement go ahead he was illegitimate because he was elected president of ukraine he stole of a parliamentary elections we all know what is that how did you go over the events to what is and how did the advance in kiev today come on over the last few days all the good people said we don't like the parliamentary elections we mark tell me something about these groups that are very very good at all this and here and you know that is not isn't a group who are there. ok the b.b.c.

and the nation magazine in the united states both solidly democratic left magazines have both done pieces on exactly who these ultra nationalist rioters are who have been intimately involved in the violence in the ukraine from the beginning to the catastrophic escalation we have seen today they are a loose coalition of ultra nationalist groups known now as the right sector they include openly anti-semitic and arean groups such as white hammer the patriots of the ukraine una a u.n.'s so and the trident group these are openly groups that on the main field of the mind on have as the nation has reported been attacking leftist feminist gay rights and labor activists and driving them

off of them i don and a great deal of the violence perpetrated against the protesters maybe by them now no one seriously suggests that these all true nationalist racist groups or. somehow paid agents of the government. and it is quite obvious that even the mainstream opposition leaders. klitschko yet soon york and the openly neo nazi leader of swoboda china bach have completely lost control of the of the crowds both of the naturalists and of the regular if we were to call them peaceful protesters who have openly backed the the rioters are chanting death to the enemies. during their main meetings and have. facilitated the violence by providing logistics and basically operating in classic. insurgency style as

a community with which the rioters can retreat back into and escape responses for their violence from the police alexander but at the same time we have capitals in europe and then we have the united states condemning you know colbert but they don't seem to like to mention any of the groups that mark just mentioned well this is this is exactly. the situation go ahead alexander go ahead. yes they would think wouldn't there they are supporting in kiev exactly what they would not tolerate in any way if it was happening in their own capitals or their own cities i mean and rightly so i should say i mean one should not it can look like riots of violence disorder in one's own cities and i have to say i find this constant theme about revoking police provocateurs being responsible for this

violence really very very extraordinary and i have also been reading some of the things that people like mr you can mystically have been searching and frankly their whole open incitement to violence misty it's a new a few days ago it was actually saying that because the government won't concede every demand that the opposition makes people are entitled to turn to violence which is quite straightforwardly a call to violence mystically which go to yesterday all right it was it this morning went around and actually told the people that the street where all the demonstrations all the violence has been happening to the truth each other did you know observe a truce so there's no question at all and that the opposition are involved in this violence and to deny that they are it is absurd and if i may say so it's not helpful in the long run to the opposition themselves what they need to do is to

start acting in a political way two months ago mr klitschko looked as if he was likely to win the presidential election in two thousand and fifteen with every day that passes though that prospect is slipping away and again part of the problem is that the opposition themselves are so extraordinarily divided amongst each other that the reason they lost the parliamentary elections which continually talks about is not because they were rigged it's because they all stood against each other and failed to unite against the government and that is living or things go to how i was in a let me go into italy. been anders in washington jump in please. yeah if people. seem to say things that are not true one after the other but the fundamental problem here is very young and has introduced a pretty authoritarian rule here is part of main. opposition leader.

in it creates an on purely political grounds and he has made an amendment to the tax code vetted just signed into law in november so there. it clear core can be deprived of history to stand in the next presidential election same people five people less windows so far have been killed to be have all been obviously killed by the security. forces so the violence comes overwhelmingly from. if you don't or if this is the kind of regime that you believe that unocal which is is creating in ukraine why in the last thirty six hours has brussels said if you want to sign the agreement with this we're still open to working with you president unocal which if you signed the agreement how do you square the two it's very easy because the european union demands that

ukraine bend adopt a. clear and practical use they demand ok mark why do you think europe we know that that's right the e.u. always demands everybody to do things ok that's why ukraine didn't sign the agreement well it's going to go back to the origins here for us tomorrow go back to the origins. to the origins well i think some of the origins to a what is going on must be attributed to the in what is a been a flagrant violation of the ukraine's sovereignty this parade of european and united states parliamentarians senators who have been openly. standing side by side with the neo nazi leader oleg china bach on the stage of the my don while revolution against this democratically elected government that the e.u. was perfectly willing to do business with calling for revolution against it and holding

meetings with them in occupied government buildings that have been stormed by these rioters and the results for the ukrainian people are quite obvious because in the most recent research in branding polling ever as a respected independent polling group cited by both the opposition and the government in december at the end of december once this has already been going on for more than a month fifty percent of the ukrainian people have taken a stance against the protesters on the so-called euro my don while forty five percent of them support them forty seven percent of the ukrainian people think that the the economic deals that president yet a covert signed with president putin of russia will be beneficial for the ukraine well only twenty seven percent of the ukrainian population feels they will be negative as for the euro might done forty three percent of the ukrainian population feels that it will have negative results while only thirty one percent feel that it

will have positive results for the ukraine and yet of which is poll numbers have recently jumped from twenty percent up to twenty nine point eight percent in a potential electoral match up mark mark we're almost running out of time here alexander i'd like to go to you how would you assess the european union's approach to ukraine over the last year. utterly dreadful what they have done is that they tried to force an association agreement on the ukraine which was economically disastrous they france sectional problems between the various parts of the ukraine they've created more problems between themselves and russia which are completely unnecessary and now as we see they're colluding effectively that's the only way one describe it with people on the streets in the ukraine who have terms to revile and and let's be absolutely clear for pup this this is not good for the future of the

ukraine it is creating immense polaroids ation there where whereas what the ukraine needs is some degree of consolidation now the way to do that. i wish we had more time but we've run out of time many thanks to my guests in london moscow and in washington and i want to thank our viewers for watching us here at r.t.c. the next time and remember prosperous. we've only one. wealthy british style wholesome.

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ukraine is in rest with crowds laying siege to official buildings in over a dozen regions this despite the president's pledge to revoke controversial anti protest laws and reshuffle the government. in kiev police arresting all the gang believed to be behind violent riots in the capital we look at the radical elements in the midst of the chaos seeking to escalate the situation. syria's warring factions agree for the first time to hold face to face to self to separate meetings with the united nations mediator at the geneva two peace conference. and a force bomb goes off bringing the day's death toll to at least six with dozens more injured ahead and.