Berkut riot police throw stones at anti-government protesters, who are throwing rocks in return, on Independence Square on February 19, 2014 in Kiev, Ukraine.
The fast-changing situation in Ukraine continues to alternate between exhilarating and frightening. Reports that armed men had stormed Parliament in the Crimea region raised the prospect of war, and Russian jets were reported to have scrambled to patrol borders.
Ukrainian authorities warned the Russian Navy, which headquarters its Black Sea fleet in Crimea, to keep its troops on base.
Brian Bonner, chief editor of the English-language Kyiv Post newspaper in Ukraine since 2008, spent more than two decades as a reporter and editor at the Pioneer Press in St. Paul. He left the Pioneer Press in 2007.
Protesters carry a wounded demonstrator in Kiev on February 20, 2014.
Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty Images
Now, he's leading coverage of the unrest in Ukraine, with a focus on the protests and political shifts in Kiev, which last week he called a "city with closed businesses and full morgues and hospitals ... with protesters building higher barricades in the center, and expanding their perimeter, as politicans continue to dither."
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The Kyiv Post newspaper really wanted today's issue to be different. Our small, dedicated and overworked team has been living and breathing EuroMaidan so much since November that readers started to complain. Give us something else to read, many told us. So this week, we planned to publish several stories that had nothing to do with the nation's deepening and ongoing political crisis and the anti-government protests.
But then we scrapped those plans and those stories. Somehow light feature stories about musicians or movies didn't fit the mood.
An anti-government protester throws a molotov cocktail during demonstrations in Independence Square on February 19, 2014 in Kiev, Ukraine.
Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images
If there's such a thing as a death holiday, Ukraine is having one now.
Since Feb. 18, at least 75 people, according to the Health Ministry, have been killed in violence. Most of them were protesters. But at least 13 of these victims were police officers. All were human beings with families, loved ones and political views. Nearly 50 were killed alone on Feb. 20.
Laughing, drinking or having fun seem out of place.
Bonner and a Washington expert join The Daily Circuit to discuss events in Ukraine.
