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He can't get them out of the Maidan

Well, it was too good to be true, the Yanukovych government did sent the riot police back into the Maidan overnight, but two bad things happened to them. The first is that even where the police pressed hardest, the crowd did not give way. The Berkut were simply not strong enough to get the crowd to move. The second was that the police themselves are now obviously divided. The most loyal forces of the government are wavering in the face of the spectacular size and determination of the crowds.

 Meanwhile Yanukovych is getting desperate- the attempt to extort €20 billion out of the EU in exchange for signing the association pact is a frankly rather pathetic piece of blackmail and will privately laughed out of court in Brussels. It demonstrates how far away Yanukovych still is -or ever was- from engaging with either the European Union or the thousands still in the square. His obvious duplicity has weakened him still further.

 The condemnation of last night's police action from the United States will have put a chill into the minds of the oligarchs backing Yanukovych- as the Magnitsky List did to Putin's oligarchs. The pressure on the regime has now gone up another notch. 

 He can't get the crowd out of the square- he has very few cards left to play.   
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