Media reports

BBC Monitoring has a roundup of Ukrainian and Russian press commentary on the present situation in Ukraine. While some of it sounds an optimistic note, the comments from Russia have a distinctly old-fashioned ring, and there is no mistaking the traditional inflections of Soviet-style bluster in the approach taken by Pravda:

Now these same [Western] forces are striving to yoke Ukraine and Belarus, in order then to gain complete control of Moscow. Complete control! They are no longer pretending to hide it...

Specialists in strategic analysis reckon that the personal qualities of the Ukrainian opposition figures are of no great importance. They have done their job: they have roused the people, brought the economy to the brink of collapse, and the state to the verge of dividing in two. Now more serious people can take over. According to sources, Nato troops in Hungary and Poland are preparing to move, and Romanian and Slovakian military units have been put on alert. Ukrainian towns are in their sights.