Ukraine protests

I'm not an expert on Ukraine, international politics, riots, or really much of anything besides electrical engineering and being a first-class smartypants. But there are some things going on that I find distressing.

The Euromaidan is a series of massive protests and riots that have been going on in Ukraine for two months now. These protests are huge. Overthrow-the-government huge. You see, Ukraine was right on the edge of signing a big agreement with the European Union. At the last minute, they backed off in response to pressure from Russia. Russia wants Ukraine to join a post-Soviet customs union. The current President of Ukraine is pretty much in the back pocket of Vladimir Putin, the strongman running Russia for the last decade.

Since by most polls, the Ukrainian public supports associating with the EU much more than associating with Russia (and really, who wouldn't?), this obviously made lots of people very angry. In response to early protests, the Ukrainian government passed (I use the term loosely) new laws making protest illegal.

So now there are huge protests in Kiev, tens of thousands demanding the resignation of the government. Police are getting more and more violent, including several deaths. I'm starting to have flashbacks of the start of the Syrian civil war. And I seriously doubt that Russia would let an allied despotic government next door be overthrown.

We may be watching the start of a new Russian empire.

Now tell me: have the news sources you follow mentioned any of this? The entire thing is being streamed, live! A catapult built by the protestors had a twitter feed! And CNN's top story was that Lady Gaga was no longer banned in China.

I'm doing a better job reporting than CNN. I wish I could be proud of that. Better information here.