Timothy Snyder: A way out for Ukraine?

 Would anyone anywhere in the world be willing to take a truncheon in the head for the sake of a trade agreement with the United States?

This is the question we Americans might be asking ourselves these last few days, as we watch young Ukrainians being beaten in Kiev for protesting their own government’s decision not to enter an association agreement with the European Union. The accord, which was to be signed on November 29, offered Ukraine access to the world’s largest market. But more importantly, it seemed to hold out to Ukraine’s youth and middle classes a symbolic assurance that a future of normal, civilized, European life awaited. When that promise was not kept, thousands of Ukrainians took to the streets of their capital. After some of them were assaulted by riot police on November 30, hundreds of thousands more have gone into the streets, in Kiev and around the country.