Russia : It has been announced that Yanukovych would give a press conference on Friday. How did Yanukovych get to Russia?

The New Zealand Herald

Former Ukraine president turns up in Russia - in a 5-star hotel

10:31 AM Friday Feb 28, 2014

The Ukrainia hotel, where Viktor Yanukovych is said to be staying, is seen against the twilight Moscow sky. Photo / AP

Ukraine's fugitive president may be enjoying VIP treatment under Moscow's protection, said to have been spotted at an opulent five-star hotel and a Kremlin country retreat.

But beneath the surface, the embrace has been chilly: State-run TV has portrayed him as a coward who betrayed those who stood by him.

The conflicting messages indicate that while Russia still considers him the legitimate president of Ukraine, it is far from happy with his handling of Ukraine's crisis.

Yanukovych made his appeal for protection in a written statement released simultaneously by two Russian state news agencies: "I have to ask Russia to ensure my personal safety from extremists," he wrote. Shortly afterward, the same agencies quoted an unidentified government official as saying that the request had been "satisfied on the territory of Russia." The ITAR-Tass and RIA Novosti news agencies often are used by the government to issue official statements......
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How did Yanukovych get to Russia?
It is still far from clear. Ukraine issued an arrest warrant for him and border guards were instructed to stop him leaving. Most likely he was evacuated out of Kiev by helicopter at the weekend and taken to pro-Russia Crimea, where Russia has its Black Sea naval base in the city of Sevastopol. He could then have inconspicuously travelled by boat onto Russian territory proper.
"I think he came from Sevastopol on a vessel," said Konovalov.
From Russia's Black Sea coast he could have moved on anywhere in the country. Unconfirmed reports had sighted him at a Moscow hotel or an out-of-town health spa.
However Russian news agencies said late Thursday he will give a news conference Friday in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don which lies close to the Black Sea, making it unlikely that he has been to Moscow......

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Ousted Ukrainian leader Viktor Yanukovych reported to be in Russia

Deposed president who still claims to be leader to hold press conference in southern city of Rostov on Friday

• Shaun Walker in Kiev
• 
  
• theguardian.com, Thursday 27 February 2014 09.04 EST

The Russian government sanatorium where ousted Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych was reportedly staying on Wednesday night. Photograph: Yuri Kochetkov/EPA

Ukraine's ousted president, Viktor Yanukovych, has surfaced in Russia and is still claiming to be the legitimate ruler of his country, according to Russian media reports quoting top government sources.
"Given that President Yanukovych appealed to Russian authorities with a request to guarantee his personal safety, that request has been granted on Russian territory," a government source told Interfax.
An appeal to Ukrainian citizens from Yanukovych said: "My allies and I were being threatened with revenge and so I was forced to ask the Russian authorities to guarantee my personal safety from the actions of extremists."
Yanukovych said he continues to believe he is the legitimate president of Ukraine and wants to achieve a compromise that would enable Ukraine to exit the crisis. The deposed president called the current session of Ukraine's parliament – which among other things is electing a new government – "illegitimate".
"There is an orgy of extremism on the streets of many cities," wrote the president. "I am certain that in these conditions all the decisions taken [by the parliament] will be ineffective and not carried out.
"In this situation, I officially declare that I am determined to fight to the end for the implementation of important compromise agreements that will bring Ukraine out of the deep political crisis."
On Thursday evening it was announced that Yanukovych would give a press conference on Friday afternoon in the southern Russian city of Rostov on Don – contradicting earlier claims that he was in the Moscow region staying at a top government sanatorium that has previously hosted officials such as Leonid Brezhnev and Boris Yeltsin. No other details about the press conference were immediately available.

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NBC News

Ousted Viktor Yanukovych: I'm Ukraine's 'Legitimate Leader'

By Alexander Smith and Maria Stromova

MOSCOW - Ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych still sees himself as his country's legitimate head of state, according to a statement by him published by Russian news agencies on Thursday.

Yanukovych fled his residence near the Kiev on Saturday after months of deadly protests and a deal with his opposition giving many of his powers over to parliament.

NBC News was unable to confirm a report by Russian news organization RBK that Yanukovych had been spotted in Moscow. But in his statement published by Interfax and Itar Tass, the Kremlin-backed former leader said he has asked for protection from Russia "to ensure my personal security from extremists' actions."

Interfax quoted a source as saying Russia had granted this appeal. NBC News could not immediately verify that claim.

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Ukrainian Opposition Leader Freed From Prison as Ukraine’s Leader Flees the Capital; Elections Are Called

NBC News

.

SERGEY KOZLOV / EPA 14 minutes

Applause Erupts As Ukrainian Opposition Leader Freed From Prison

By Erik Ortiz and Maria Stromova

 

A chief political rival of embattled Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was freed Saturday from prison as the defiant leader struggled to hold on to power as protesters seized control of the presidential palace and the parliament voted to remove him from office.

Former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko waved to supporters from a car as she was driven out of the hospital in the northeastern city if Kharkiv, where she has been treated for a bad back while serving a seven-year sentence since 2011.

"Our country can from this day on see the sun, because dictatorship fell," Tymoshenko said.

Parliament members had voted to free her after Yanukovych fled the capital of Kiev a day after announcing a pact with opposition leaders. Yanukovych said he is traveling the country to seek advice and will “do everything to stop the bloodshed” that left at least 77 dead, hundreds injured and nearly collapsed the country into a civil war.

“I am not planning to leave the country,” he said in a video televised on local media. “I am not planning to resign. I am a legitimately elected president. I was given guarantees of safety by all the international mediators I worked with.”

Yanukovych claimed his car was shot at, but that he didn’t fear for his life, denouncing some of the opposition protesters as “bandits.”

“I will not sign anything with the bandits who are terrorizing the whole country and Ukrainian people. They are discrediting the country,” he said on UBR television.

Presidential Press Service / AFP - Getty Images

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych speaks to a local station in Kharkiv on Saturday.

In another strike against the president, the parliament Saturday freed Tymoshenko, who had been imprisoned on charges of abuse of office, which the West had questioned. They also endorsed Oleksandr Turchynov as the new speaker.

The apparent toppling of the pro-Russian looks likely to pull Ukraine away from Moscow’s orbit and closer to Europe.

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The New York Times

Ukraine’s Leader Flees the Capital; Elections Are Called

By ANDREW HIGGINS and ANDREW E. KRAMER   

FEB. 22, 2014

View slide show|13 Photos

Protesters Take Control of Presidential Palace

Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

KIEV, Ukraine — Abandoned by his own guards and reviled across the Ukrainian capital but still determined to recover his shredded authority, President Viktor F. Yanukovych fled Kiev on Saturday to denounce what he called a violent coup, as his official residence, his vast, colonnaded office complex and other once impregnable centers of power fell without a fight to throngs of joyous citizens stunned by their triumph.

While Mr. Yanukovych’s nemesis, former Prime Minister Yulia V. Tymoshenko, was released from a penitentiary hospital, Parliament found the president unable to fulfill his duties and exercised its constitutional powers to set an election for May 25 to select his replacement. But with both Mr. Yanukovych and his Russian patrons speaking of a “coup” carried out by “bandits” and “hooligans,” it was far from clear that the day’s lightning-quick events would be the last act in a struggle that has not just convulsed Ukraine but expanded into an East-West confrontation reminiscent of the Cold War.

President Viktor Yanukovych denounced a “coup” on TV. Presidential Press Service, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

At the presidential residence a short distance from the capital, protesters carrying clubs and some wearing masks were in control of the entryways Saturday morning and watched as thousands of citizens strolled through the grounds in wonder. “This commences a new life for Ukraine,” said Roman Dakus, a protester-turned-guard, who was wearing a ski helmet and carrying a length of pipe as he blocked a doorway at the compound. “This is only a start,” he added. “We need now to make a new structure and a new system, a foundation for our future, with rights for everybody, and we need to investigate who ordered the violence.”

With the riot police they battled for days having disappeared, the protesters claimed to be in charge of security for the city. There was no sign of looting, either in the city proper or in the presidential compound.

A pugnacious Mr. Yanukovych appeared on television Saturday afternoon, apparently from the eastern city of Kharkiv, near Ukraine’s eastern border with Russia, saying he had been forced to leave the capital because of a “coup,” and that he had not resigned, and had no plans to. He said indignantly that his car had been fired upon as he drove away.

“I don’t plan to leave the country. I don’t plan to resign,” he said, speaking in Russian rather than Ukrainian, the country’s official language. “I am a legitimately elected president.” He added: “What is happening today, mostly, it is vandalism, banditism and a coup d’état. This is my assessment and I am deeply convinced of this. I will remain on the territory of Ukraine.” He also complained of “traitors” among his own former supporters but he declined to name them.

Regional governors from eastern Ukraine met in Kharkiv and adopted a resolution resisting the authority of Parliament. They said that until matters were resolved, “we have decided to take responsibility for safeguarding the constitutional order, legality, citizens’ rights and their security on our territories.”

One of the few institutions still taking orders from the president was the official trilingual website of the Ukrainian presidency, which posted a transcript of his defiant television address. But, by evening, the text had appeared only in Ukrainian and Russian, suggesting that his English translator had perhaps jumped ship.

The former nerve center of Mr. Yanukovych’s power, the huge compound of the presidential administration, just a few hundred yards from Independence Square in Kiev, was empty Saturday aside from protesters who patrolled its courtyard and blocked off a nearby street to prevent residents swarming into the building. Ukrainian flags flying outside had all been lowered to half-mast, in honor of those killed by police officers and snipers on Thursday.

Mr. Yanukovych said in his television appearance that he would be traveling to the southeastern part of Ukraine to talk to his supporters — a plan that carried potentially ominous overtones, in that the southeast is the location of the Crimea, the historically Russian section of the country that is the site of a Russian naval base.

The president’s departure from Kiev, just a day after a peace deal with the opposition that he had hoped would keep him in office until at least December, capped three months of streets protests and a week of frenzied violence in the capital that left more than 75 protesters dead. It turned what began in November as a street protest driven by pro-Europe chants and nationalist songs into a momentous but still ill-defined revolution.

With nobody clearly in charge, other than the so far remarkably disciplined fighting squads, lieutenants of Ms. Tymoshenko moved to fill the power vacuum. With Oleksandr V. Turchynov, a former acting prime minister and close ally of Ms. Tymoshenko, presiding over the Parliament, her Fatherland party seemed to be in charge, at least temporarily.

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Dozens of Ukrainian Police Defect and Vow To Protect The People ; Ukraine President Backs Down, Signs Peace Pact with Protesters

NBC News

DAVID MDZINARISHVILI / Reuters
Police officers from Lviv, Ukraine, appear on a stage after joining protesters in Kiev's Independence Square on Friday.

Dozens of Ukrainian Police Defect, Vow to Protect Protesters

By James Novogrod
KIEV, Ukraine - About 40 police officers defected to Ukraine's opposition and marched into the heart of the protest encampment in the Kiev on Friday, the day after violent clashes between demonstrators and security forces killed dozens.

"We wear this uniform, and in this uniform I made a vow to be a servant of the Ukrainian people," said Col. Vasyl Krykovskiy, the head of police in the district of Lviv. "I just have to be here and protect these people."

Reupping shot from earlier of the 40 police officers from western Ukraine marching through Kiev to join opposition: pic.twitter.com/Vz2Fm53Tvb
-James Novogrod (@JamieNBCNews) February 21, 2014

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Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images an hour

Ukraine President Backs Down, Signs Peace Pact with Protesters

By Maria Stromova, Alexander Smith, James Novogrod and Jason Cumming

KIEV, Ukraine -- President Viktor Yanukovych signed a deal with Ukraine's main opposition leaders on Friday brokered to end the deadly violence that put the country on the brink of civil war.

He agreed to early elections and to surrender some of his powers after 77 people were killed as a geopolitical tug-of-war over whether Ukraine should embrace the West or Russia turned violent this week. (The agreement can be read in full by clicking here.)

Yanukovych said he offered the concessions to "restore peace and to avoid further victims of the stand-off" and addressed his statement to "compatriots."

The deal states that:

• Within 48 hours Ukraine must revert to its 2004 constitution, meaning some of Yanukovych's powers will be given to the parliament. This was passed by lawmakers shortly after the deal was finalized.
• A coalition government will be formed in the next 10 days and presidential elections will be brought forward from March 2015 until no later than December.
• Illegal weapons must be handed in and there will also be an investigation into the deadly violence that has dominated Kiev this week.

The agreement was signed by the three main opposition leaders, including former boxing star Vitali Klitschko. However, it was almost immediately rejected by the extremist Right Sector party, which has been blamed for much of the civilian violence since protests in Kiev's Independence Square began in November.

"We are inclined to consider Yanukovych’s statement as another whitewash," Right Sector said in a statement. "National revolution continues."

ANDRIY MOSIENKO / Ukrainian government via EPA

The agreement came after overnight negotiations with opposition leaders, European Union ministers and Russia.

But photographs of the document showed that the signature of Vladimir Lukin, special envoy of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was missing. Reuters confirmed that Lukin did not sign the deal and said there was no immediate explanation for his absence.

One of the European foreign ministers who helped broker the deal, Poland's Radosław Sikorski, said the agreement was a "good compromise."

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Ukraine threatens 'anti-terrorist operation' against protests

LA Times

Riot police take a break near Kiev's Independence Square Wednesday afternoon after two days of clashes with the opposition. (Sergei L. Loiko / Los Angeles Times)

KIEV, Ukraine -- In the wake of violence that claimed 25 lives and left hundreds injured, the Ukrainian government declared Wednesday that it was launching "an anti-terrorist operation" that some feared would escalate its conflict with pro-Western demonstrators.
“What is happening today is a conscious use of violence by way of arson, murder, hostage-taking and intimidation ... for the sake of pursuing criminal goals,” the country's security agency chief, Alexander Yakimenko, said in a statement published on the agency's website. “All of that with the use of firearms. These are not just signs of terrorism but concrete terrorist acts.
“By their actions, radical and extremist groups bear a real threat to lives of millions of Ukrainians,” his statement said.
Yakimenko's statement followed two days of the worst violence the country has seen during several months of political conflict over President Viktor Yanukovich's decision to align Ukraine economically with Russia, not the European Union.
Hours after Yakimenko issued his warning, the Associated Press reported that Yanukovich had fired the head of Ukraine's armed forces.
[Updated, 10:58 a.m. PST Feb. 19: The UNIAN news agency said the armed forces chief, Vladimir Zamanu, had been replaced by Yuri Ilyin.
One analyst said the move may have been prompted by Zamanu's reluctance to use the army against civilian demonstrators.
“The sudden switch can be explained by Yanukovich's desire to use the army in combating the growing protests,” Vadim Karasyov, head of the Institute of Global Strategies, a Kiev-based think tank, said in an interview. “Zamanu has recently hesitated to express readiness to get involved in helping to defuse the political crisis.”]
As dusk set over Independence Square in central Kiev, several thousand protesters armed with sticks, stones and Molotov cocktails faced hundreds of police armed with teargas and stun grenades, water cannons and shotguns firing rubber bullets.
An eerie fog descended on the square, where several thousand protesters were praying together. At a square nearby, police buses arrived, disgorging new units of riot police and interior troops, who joined government forces positioned near Independence Square.
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Ukraine’s Yanukovich agrees ‘truce’ with opposition, start to negotiations

A portrait of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich burns near the destroyed building of the security service in Lviv yesterday after a night of violence when protesters seized public buildings and forced police to surrender

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich said on Wednesday he had agreed a “truce” with opposition leaders, after street violence in which at least 26 people were killed, and a start to negotiations to end further bloodshed.
A statement on the presidential website said that during talks with the three main opposition leaders, Yanukovich had agreed firstly a truce and secondly “the start to negotiations with the aim of ending bloodshed, and stabilising the situation in the state in the interests of social peace.”
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Obama condemns Ukraine violence, threatens ‘consequences’ if clashes escalate

Published time: February 19, 2014 22:11

US President Barack Obama.(AFP Photo / Jewel Samad)

President Barack Obama said the US “condemns in the strongest terms the violence” in Ukraine, adding that the Ukrainian government must uphold the rights of peaceful protesters. Obama said there would be consequences should “people step over the line.”
“We expect the Ukrainian government to show restraint, to not resort to violence in dealing with peaceful protesters,” Obama said Wednesday from Mexico ahead of a summit with other North American leaders. “We’ve also said that we expect peaceful protesters to remain peaceful.”
As Tuesday’s riots and clashes between protesters and police in Kiev continued into Wednesday, the European Union announced that a rare meeting of its 28 member countries would occur on Thursday to address what is to be done about the ongoing violence, AP reported.
“We’ll be monitoring very carefully the situation, recognizing that, along with our European partners and the international community, there will be consequences if people step over the line,” Obama said.
At least 26 people, including 10 police officers, have been killed and some 800 injured since the start of violent riots in Kiev on Tuesday. The most recent, deadliest wave of violence in Ukraine started with an attempt by radical protesters to storm the building of the Ukrainian parliament (Verkhovna Rada), which prompted fierce clashes with police. Several buildings in central Kiev – including the office of the Party of Regions – were stormed, looted, and set on fire.
At least 426 people have sought medical help following the clashes in Kiev, the city’s health department said. There are currently 277 people being treated in hospitals for injuries, including gunshot wounds and burns.
Despite the fierce battles on Independence Square (Maidan) and the possibility of further violence in coming days, Obama said the US and its partners would watch vigilantly to make “sure the Ukrainian military does not step to what should be a set of issues that can be resolved by civilians.”

Reuters / David Mdzinarishvili

Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have “agreed to continue to do everything so that there is no escalation of violence” in Ukraine, Merkel said, as quoted by Reuters. The German Chancellor spoke with the Russian president over the phone.
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Vitali Klitschko : The face of the opposition in the Ukraine is a heavyweight boxing champ with a Ph.D who has lost only two fights but is now locked in the battle of his life.

• NBC News

Etienne De Malglaive / Getty Images, file an hour

Ukraine Crisis

Ukraine Opposition Leader Vitali Klitschko in Fight of His Life

By Tracy Connor, Henry Austin and Alastair Jamieson

The face of the opposition in the Ukraine is a heavyweight boxing champ with a Ph.D who has lost only two fights but is now locked in the battle of his life.

Vitali Klitschko, a 6-foot-7 father of three, is known as Dr. Ironfist for his achievements in the ring and the academic arena.

Once feared for a devastating left jab, the 42-year-old is now landing political blows as head of the Ukranian Democratic Alliance for Reform and the protests that have erupted into deadly clashes in Kiev.

At least one old opponent is in his corner. Lennox Lewis, who defeated Klitschko in a controversial 2003 match, tweeted his support on Wednesday.

Prayers and safety to my brother in arms Vitali @Klitschko and the citizens of Ukraine. #ukraineprotests
— Lennox Lewis (@LennoxLewis) February 19, 2014

Klitschko's new rival is Ukranian President Viktor Yanukovich — and he demanded Yanukovich resign on Wednesday, saying he's responsible for "murder and terror against peaceful civilians."

"Blood is shed on the streets of Kiev," Klitschko said in a video address. "The main reason for this is actions of the authorities. Therefore, people today demand Yanukovich and his government to resign.

"The sooner this happens, the less blood is shed, the faster Ukraine will move to a civilized future for which people has taken to the streets."

Earlier, he had appeared in Independence Square — after fierce fighting left 26 people, including 10 police officers, dead — to urge demonstrators to hold their ground.

"We will not go anywhere from here," he told the crowd. "This is an island of freedom and we will defend it."

The son of a Soviet pilot and former colonel who launched his boxing career in 1995, Klitschko got involved in politics during an injury-forced temporary retirement. In 2005, he made a bid to become mayor of Kiev — the first of three failed runs for the seat.

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• The Washington Post

Vitali Klitschko, Sergei Bubka speak out on Ukraine violence

By Cindy Boren

• February 19 at 9:19 am

Vitali Klitschko, the UDAR (Punch) party head, helps anti-government protesters carry a wounded man. (Yury Kirnichny / AFP Getty Images)

As protests turned deadly violent Tuesday in Kiev, two of the Ukraine’s more vocal and visible leaders are men who became household names in the world of sports.
Vitali Klitschko, the former boxing champion and the head of the pro-Western Udar opposition party in Ukraine, urged protesters to continue their actions while Sergei Bubka, the former pole-vaulting great, urged peace from the Winter Olympics in Sochi. Klitschko addressed a crowd of about 20,000 Wednesday, telling people to defend their camp even as fires burned around it.
“We will not go anywhere from here,” Klitschko told the crowd (via the Associated Press) at the main encampment at Independence Square. “This is an island of freedom and we will defend it.”
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Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine : Removing advertising videos ,a screen on the Passage mall is used to defy the government. in response to a draconian law against dissent

The Telegraph

Ukraine Chief Loses Support in Stronghold

By ANDREW HIGGINSFEB. 5, 2014

Launch media viewer

The European Union flag outside the Passage mall in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, a gesture of revolt in a Russian-speaking region. Joseph Sywenkyj for The New York Times

DNEPROPETROVSK, Ukraine — As violence flared late last month in Kiev after Parliament approved a draconian law against dissent, two of the richest men in this industrial city 300 miles to the east of the Ukrainian capital met in an expensive Italian restaurant that they own and made a fateful decision.

The men, Hennadiy Korban and his partner Borys Filatov, decided to remove advertising videos featuring glamorous models from a large outdoor screen at an upscale shopping mall called Passage and replace them with a live broadcast of raucous anti-government protests at Independence Square in Kiev.

They also ordered their local properties to hoist the flags of the European Union and Ukraine, a gesture of open revolt in a Russian-speaking region where economic and political power have traditionally been united in looking more to Moscow than to Europe for guidance.

Retribution, or at least some extraordinarily bad luck, swiftly followed. Hours after the flags went up on Jan. 25, all three of their company’s shopping malls in Dnepropetrovsk lost their electricity, and panicked shoppers scrambled through the dark for the exits.

Launch media viewer

A screen on the Passage mall in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, is used to defy the government. Joseph Sywenkyj for The New York Times

The video screen outside went dark, silencing the antigovernment chants from Kiev and, at least on the surface, restoring Dnepropetrovsk as a bastion of calm support for Ukraine’s embattled president, Viktor F. Yanukovych.

Caught in a titanic tug of war for influence between Russia and the West, Ukraine is also being tugged in opposite directions by the forces facing off at the Passage mall in Dnepropetrovsk. In an economy dominated by a relative few wielding enormous wealth, the outcome of the struggle could well hinge on how many other businesspeople make the same switch as Mr. Korban and Mr. Filatov and join the street in rejecting Mr. Yanukovych’s tilt toward Russia.

The defection of two provincial businessmen — motivated as much by resentment of the strong-arm tactics of rivals in league with the government as by lofty ideals — will not tip the balance of power in Kiev or even here in this city of more than a million people, its economy dominated by huge Soviet-era factories like Yuzhmash, a rocket maker still owned by the state.

But it underscores how a protest movement that the government dismisses as the work of nationalist extremists from the country’s west has reached into Mr. Yanukovych’s political power base in the east and is even eroding the loyalties of those who have thrived under him.

And it shows how, for all their differences, the disaffected moguls and the protesters are driven by a deep frustration with what they see as the country’s lawless law-enforcement system and ubiquitous corruption. Both camps call for not just democracy but for a more “normal,” European-style government with transparent institutions, secure property rights and an impartial justice system.

Fearing arrest, Mr. Korban and Mr. Filatov fled Ukraine for Israel last week. A Dnepropetrovsk judge ordered on Jan. 29 that Mr. Korban be detained and interrogated as a witness in connection with a previously dormant investigation of a 2012 murder.

According to the pair’s lawyers, state security officers then raided the premises of their accountant, saying they were looking for bombs or other evidence of terrorism. They found none, said one of the lawyers, Oleksandr Sanzhara.

The businessmen do not regret their decision. “We decided that we had to do something as citizens, to send a signal that not all businessmen are afraid,” said Mr. Korban, an aggressive local tycoon whose interests include a string of hotels, three big shopping centers and stakes in many of Ukraine’s biggest companies.

“We want to live in Europe, not in an outpost of the Russian empire,” added Mr. Korban, 43, speaking by phone from Israel.

The president ignited the current turmoil in November when he abruptly spurned a sweeping trade and political accord with the European Union and instead went to Moscow to secure a $15 billion credit deal, which has since been suspended.

Ukraine’s biggest business moguls, known as oligarchs, have so far mostly hedged their bets, with the exception of Petro Poroshenko, a shipping, confectionery and agriculture magnate whose television station, Channel 5, has been broadcasting around the clock from Independence Square.

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