19 February 2014 — RT

Corpses on the streets, burning police trucks and military-clad rioters beating law enforcement officers to death with clubs. This collection of visuals proves the words ‘peaceful protests’ are inapplicable to Kiev.

Dressed in camouflage and toting firearms, the radicals have high-jacked peaceful protests in the Ukrainian capital. They represent the far-right wing of the Ukrainian opposition and have a leadership of their own. These young people, the majority of which have come to the Ukrainian capital from western regions of the country, follow the ultra-right ideology of nationalistic organizations such as Fatherland, UNA-UNSO and the Right Sector.

The radicals, who praise Ukrainian nationalists that collaborated with Nazi Germany during WWII, pay no allegiance to the opposition leaders generally recognized by the western powers, namely: Vitaly Klitschko, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, or even leader of the nationalist ‘Freedom’ party, Oleg Tyagnibok.

The agenda of the ultras has nothing to do with peaceable demonstrations, and the way they treat their opponents is anything but peaceful.

According to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, security forces operating in Kiev are armed solely with non-lethal weapons, whereas most victims of the clashes in Ukraine have died of gunshots, presumably killed by radicals.

Reportedly nine law enforcement officers were killed, five of them from gunfire.

Overall, 75 police officers received gunshot wounds, despite wearing armor and helmets.

The young ultra-nationalists are said to dissolve polystyrene in gasoline to make their Molotov cocktails. This burns like napalm when they throw them at police lines, and the resulting spectacle is law enforcement officers writhing on the ground, desperately trying to put out the flames.

After the first news circulated about police officers being shot dead in Kiev, it became clear that the Ukrainian neo-Nazis are armed not just with sticks, stones and Molotov cocktails.

Western diplomats who visited the radicals’ camp several times in downtown Kiev insist these militants represent no threat to the constitutional system of Ukraine.

In the light of recent developments in Kiev, where dozens have already died and hospitals are overflowing with wounded citizens and police officers, the true intentions of the warring opposition groups are hard to gauge.

Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovich and opposition leaders have so far been unable to reach an agreement to end the violence. The opposition leaders are refusing to condemn the bloodshed, but are calling on their adherents to refrain from radical actions.

Yet in a phone talk with President Viktor Yanukovich last night US Vice-President Joe Biden expressed “grave concern” at the surge of violence in the Ukrainian capital.

Biden urged Yanukovich to pull back law enforcement confronting rioters, and reiterated “the urgency of immediate dialogue with opposition leaders” and the need to “address protesters’ legitimate grievances.”

But even if any agreement between the Ukrainian opposition and the government is reached, the official leaders of the opposition are extremely unlikely to persuade the insurgent nationalists to lay down arms, stop mutiny and return to the poverty-stricken western regions of Ukraine.

In any given condition, the call of the opposition leaders backed by US Vice-President Joe Biden to withdraw security forces from the Ukrainian capital might only mean putting the city into the hands of the radicals.

And that might become the beginning of a true civil war in Ukraine.