NEW YORK TIMES: …At dawn on the morning of Thursday, Feb. 20, a bedraggled pro-European protest movement controlled just a few hundred square yards, at best, of scorched and soot-smeared pavement in central Kiev. They had gathered there the previous November, enraged that Mr. Yanukovych, under heavy pressure from Moscow, had abruptly turned away from a long-planned trade deal with the European Union.
Their fortunes dimmed further on Thursday morning when a hail of gunfirecut down scores of protesters as they pushed to break out of their shrinking encampment and expand their reach into the heavily guarded government district.
By Thursday evening, however, the shock created by that bloodshed, the worst in the Ukrainian capital since World War II, had prompted a mass defection by the president’s allies in Parliament and prodded Mr. Yanukovych to join negotiations with a trio of opposition politicians… (more)
