EuroMaidan Revolution
George Weigel: Bloodlands
Ukrainian riot policemen detain a protester following clashes in central Kiev on January 22, 2014. Five activists were killed and 300 wounded in the Ukrainian capital Kiev in a day of intense clashes with security forces, the medical centre of the protest movement said. AFP PHOTO/ ANATOLII BOIKO
State-sanctioned homicide is no stranger to Ukraine: In the Holodomor, the Ukrainian terror famine of 1932–33, as many as 8 million Ukrainians were deliberately starved to death in a genocide planned and executed by the Soviet leadership in Moscow and enforced by Stalin’s satraps in Ukraine. In that sense, death-by-sniper-bullet is cleaner. But it is no less murder, and no less state-sanctioned murder, when the bullets are fired by internal security forces and police at the behest of the democratically elected (but certainly no longer “democratic”) government of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.
