Nick Barlow has been doing a sterling job in blogging the developments in Ukraine over at A Fistful of Euros.
Vaclav Havel has expressed his solidarity with the protestors:
Dear Citizens,
Allow me to greet you in these dramatic days when the destiny of your country is being decided for decades ahead. You have its future in your hands. All trustworthy organizations, both local and international, agree that your demands are just. That is why I wish you strength, perseverance, courage and good fortune with your decisions.
Telegraph reporter Julius Strauss was among the protestors.
By yesterday morning the temperature was still firmly below zero but a rare spirit of solidarity and optimism, redolent of the heady days of eastern Europe’s liberation in 1989, had taken hold.
Old ladies and middle-aged men brought piles of warm clothes to the protesters, many of whom spent the night on the streets or in tents on Khreshtatyk, Kiev’s main boulevard. Others brought bread, coffee, juice and sausages.
Lidya, a 76-year-old, was unpacking rolls and a large jar of pickled cucumbers she had brought for a group of students.
She said: “My pension is only 280 hrivna [£40] a month. But I support these people with all my heart.
”We should have got rid of the bandits that run this country in 1991, but we were fooled. Now we have had enough.” Yuri Gluchuk, the 48-year-old owner of a sausage factory, said: “I am a businessman and I brought 500 kilogrammes of sausages to feed these young people.
”The authorities are counting on the cold and the hunger dampening people’s spirits so we all have to give our support.”
Young and old had decked themselves out in orange scarves and plastic anoraks.
Slava Shklarov, a 22-year-old watch-dealer and a member of Pora!, an anti-government student movement, had travelled the night before from the western town of Rivne.
He said: “We’ll be here until Yushchenko is president. We can’t accept this. We need Europe. They are threatening to use tanks against us. But I’ll lie down in front of them if that is what it takes.”
