I am watching events in the Ukraine closely these days. Of course I know that neither alternative will prove to make things better for most of the people, but my sympathies are with those who try to not get sucked into Putins dictatorship orbit. A bad market economy with at least some democracy is always better then a badly managed state economy with no democracy at all…

Behind the scenes I get word of astonishingly well financed and professional managed “NGOs” that massively support the pro-western candidate. Reminiscent to the choreography of the coup in Georgia, but circumstances are different this time. Russia has too much at stake here.

As the Internet has made it into the Ukraine too, there are of course a number of up-to-date weblogs that report of events, including pictures. Here is the quick list of those I try follow:

http://vkhokhl.blogspot.com/
http://eng.maidanua.org/
http://windowglass.blogspot.com/
http://www.postmodernclog.com/
http://TulipGirl.com
http://europhobia.blogspot.com/
http://fistfulofeuros.net/

(On some of them, scroll down to the bottom for latest news)

Latest are reports on militia units moving against the protestors to push them back from the central area of Kiev (Ukraines capital), conflicting with reports that the Ukrainian special forces guarding the presidential palace are friendly to the protesters. There are also reports about unidentified, probably russian, special forces that are heavily armed inside the buildings.

Unfortunately my current bet is that the pro-russion side will win this time, as the “security forces” have much more to gain from an alliance with russia. That bet is good unless the west pulls some real stunt (like the one with the “students” that are said to have been “by chance” in the Moskow white house near Jelzin and talked over the satellite phone they brought “by chance” to their “uncle” in the US who just happened to know an awful lot about what the evil generals just talked about on their phones…).