EuroMaidan Revolution
George Weigel: Grim news from Ukraine
An pro-European activist speaks with riot-policement blocking access to the Verkhovna Rada parliament in Kiev on January 21, 2014. After a night of violence, a temporary truce appeared to be in place with the protesters no longer launching the Molotov cocktails and stones that had marked their action since the clashes erupted on the night of January 19. AFP PHOTO/ SERGEI SUPINSKY
Last Thursday, in response to new and draconianlaws that abridged their civil liberties, several Ukrainian democracy activists tweeted and texted that they now “lived in a dictatorship.” Some Western observers may have been tempted to think that this was an overreaction, given what seemed, then, to be the continued vitality of the EuroMaidan movement for civic renewal. The brutal turn of events in Ukraine since then should have made matters clear: Ukraine is, at the moment, athugocracy in which President Viktor Yanukovych and his associates are using the veneer of legality to crush dissent and reinforce their stranglehold on power.
