ukraine or at least the country's capital kiev has descended into chaos protests have turned extremely violent and the social order is on the verge of collapse to what degree do protesters in kiev represent the ukrainian people what do these protesters believe in and what do they really want is ukraine on the path to nowhere.

i would rather as questions to people in positions of power instead of speaking on their behalf and that's why you can find my show larry king now right here on our t.v. question more. hello

and welcome to crossfire all things are considered i'm peter lavelle ukraine or at least the country's capital care has descended into chaos protests have turned extremely violent and the social order is on the verge of collapse to what degree do protesters in kiev represent the ukrainian people what do these protesters believe in and what do they really want also there are accusations of outside meddling is ukraine on the path to nowhere. to cross talk of ants in ukraine i'm joined by my guest alexander maturity and london he is a legal writer and an analyst in moscow we have mark sloboda he is a senior lecturer and we searched or at moscow state university and in washington we cross to anders auslan he is a senior fellow at the peterson institute for international economics all right gentlemen 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 will 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 molotov 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 anderson 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 has 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 anders well. first of all it's interesting to check who started using violence and it's of course the police that have used a balance 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 vias probably. the mosque organized by the regime beating on the riot police and getting no resistance so both of these locations were of the regime then on the tenth of december that we had another attempt by the riot police to break out and demonstrate which were peaceful and then finally on the sixteenth of january the

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 what i mean by unity. unit whole 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 if this is a kid who have endured by police who have been going to the police i would guess vet visits the city to spare called. a ok all right but we haven't

address 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 character is a. and going out in the streets of kiev 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 anders 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 then 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 protests 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 this 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 and 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 short cuts taken that is again because on the day in question and before the parliamentary opposition tried 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 use 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 the 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. forward 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 to base a truck anybody who saw the pictures could see that there 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 then this is probably what it's getting down to alexandra no that's not i don't i. don't it's me 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 my gaston london right now alexandra 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 the government is going to let go of the eight let's negotiate and they'd like to return with ultimatums go ahead. well indeed so i mean i think this is an important point there isn't the election the presidential election is a year away now while 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 young a code 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 hash 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 and divided 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 anders who are obviously sympathetic to the opposition should be pointing this out to that they should say look what you have got to do for a gentleman i'm sorry we're going to have to go to a short break and after about short break we'll continue our discussion on the events unfolding in ukraine stay with r.t. . leave the euro.

zone. i've got a quote for you. that's pretty tough. stay with sob story. but if this guy like you would smear that guy stead of working for the people most issues the mainstream media are working for each other right right vision five. they did rather. well come into the future when you did so we fix the roads focus on new technology

. on this month's show no posses complete without school shootings. and we learn about the next in kill suv revolution this is the potential to save lives. nosy update. we've got the future covered. please. welcome back to cross talk where all things are considered i'm peter lavelle to remind you we're discussing the events playing out in ukraine.

anders i'd like to 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 and not 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. that in november of last year in november of last year brussels was courting mr eunuch overage ok and they wanted him there and they want 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 and he still have a parliamentary elections. that have a variance to what is and how did the advance in kiev today come on over the last few days also to 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 tried and 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 their 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 unocal which where they don't seem to like to mention any of the groups that mark just mentioned well this is this is exactly. the lation 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 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 yes mr glitch go i have been searching and frankly their whole open incitements to violence misty had sent you 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 truce each other to observe a truce so i think 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. things go to how i was going to let me go instantly jump in anderson washington jump in please. yeah if people. simply 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 julia team i think in it creates an on political grounds and he has made an amendment to the tax code back to just signed into law in november so there. cleats court can be deprived of his stride to stand in the next presidential election fame people people as we know so far have been killed to be have all been obviously killed by the security. forces so the violence comes

overwhelmingly from. our ears 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 but 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 of the european union demands that ukraine ban adopt a. practical use of a demand ok market 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 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 you had 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 course 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 are necessary 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 turned to revile and and let's be absolutely clear about 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. see you next time and remember crosstabs. leave the euro. zone.

wealthy british style is not. the time to write for. markets why not. come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's cancer for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars a report on our. site that i think corporation kind of can. do and the bank it's all

been all about money and i think that's really it for politicians right the last. week right. here just to what is it a guy. that. was a new alert animation scripts scare me a little bit. there is breaking news tonight and we are continuing to follow the breaking news. alexander's family cry tears of joy at great things other than their. regard at a court of war on the ground alive there's a story made for a movie is playing out in real life.

be invidious like a bit on the alice sat so i figure you martine a serious health crisis unfolded in west virginia that left three hundred residents seeking medical attention and over three hundred thousand on able to drink their tap water so it all went down after the company freedom industries admitted that a storage tank of the chemical for metho hexane methanol leaked into the water supply of charleston first of all great job putting in corrosive chemicals in a seventy plus year old storage tank just a mere mile and a half upstream from the city's main water supply guys but that's not it now we're finding out after all was said and done that there was a second chemical that was mixing of a toxic compound that no one knew about.