Talks aimed at solving the political crisis in Ukraine foundered as the opposition refused to take part without President Viktor Yanukovych and antigovernment protesters flung Molotov cocktails at police from behind fresh barricades in the center of Kyiv.
The clashes, sparked by sweeping new legislation that severely restricts protests, have raised the stakes in the two-month confrontation over whether this former Soviet republic will move closer to the European Union, as the protesters demand, or to Russia, which handed President Viktor Yanukovych a multibillion-dollar bailout in December to patch up Ukraine’s recession-hit finances.
