from Hacker News

Protests in Ukraine

by nmbdesign on 12/1/13, 2:07 PM with 46 comments

• by friendly_chap on 12/1/13, 3:17 PM

  We have these kind of riots in Hungary (pretty close to Ukraine) as well. They are not really revolutions, but they are a good indicator that the people are extremely fed up with current government policies, which may lead to a revolution.

  Exciting times to live in, hopefully the people will be able to get rid of the corrupt ruling class.

  EDIT:

  Just to give you bit of context on corruption... in the UK where I currently live, politicians are going into prisons for faking a couple of thousands of pounds as expense and profiting from that... A couple of thousands...

  Compared to that, a couple of years ago, a guy called Bajnai Gordon was the prime minister in Hungary, who is well known by everyone for his act of destroying the whole agricultural economy of eastern Hungary. He did stole all the money from one of the largest companies at the time. Multiple farmers committed suicide, etc.

  Years after that, he became a prime minister. Truly mind blowing. Those people are evil, and have cheeks, they deserve to spend the rest of their lives in prisons.

  If you are interested about (the politically correct version of) the story, search for "Hajdu-Bet" here:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Bajnai

• by gkoz on 12/1/13, 3:17 PM

  There are no riots. It's sad that this word is used to label what's happening here. No one is burning cars, smashing up stores etc.

• by yeppers8 on 12/1/13, 3:32 PM

  The capitol is more on the west side of the country which has more people that are pro-west, and most people there didn't want the more Russian influenced leader Yanukovych become president in the first place. Now he's doing things to make people pretty upset (not signing the EU agreement). I'm guessing a good deal of the eastern (more pro-Russian) side of the country still supports him though.

  The person that is live streaming said this is on street Bankova, I think this is it: https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!data=!1m8!1m3!1d3!2d30....

• by rodrigocoelho on 12/1/13, 3:14 PM

  Someone who speaks the language or is there could please give us some context?

• by ghostdiver on 12/1/13, 3:45 PM

  This country is pretty much fucked up, criminal as a president, lack of resources, poor people and also European Union bureaucrats are not really interested in Ukraine in its current state. Half of citizines do not speak ukraininan language, they identify themselves as Russians. The other part is only waiting for a moment to gtfo there.

• by kovalkos on 12/1/13, 3:54 PM

  This is my rough understanding of what's going on:

  Ukraine wants to increase cooperation with Europe, and possibly join EU. This would undermine it's relationship with Russia.

  The previous Ukranian president, Viktor Yushchenko, usually sided with the West, and current president, Viktor Yanukovych, wants to preserve friendship with Russia.

  Russia obviously doesn't want to lose allies, so it threatened to stop trading, and impose strict sanctions on Ukraine if they agreed to partnership with Europe.

  Some Ukrainians dislike Yanukovych for siding with Russia instead of Europe, thus causing protests.

  If you have more knowledge about this situation, feel free to correct me if I err.

• by huhtenberg on 12/1/13, 4:00 PM

  A mass protest is not a revolution.

• by Nux on 12/1/13, 3:52 PM

  I'm hopeful Eastern Europe will regrow the spine half a century of so called communism destroyed.

• by skryshtafovych on 12/3/13, 9:58 PM

  Please share with everyone and help Ukrainians get rid of this Russian rule