Foreign Affairs committee  Popular support that this is really a government that speaks to the people, without any illusion. As I said, some people have experience, which might be a good thing, but from the point of view of the demonstrators it may be a bad thing, because they don't want experienced people

Foreign Affairs committee  I'm very worried because.... Again, I'm not here to speak in hyperboles, but we may be reliving some kind of 1930s here. We have an absolutely unaccountable, absolute power president who lives in his own world and has the means and the media to somehow raise an entire class to do

Foreign Affairs committee  I would second that.

Foreign Affairs committee  My understanding is that obviously it's a very young government, but looking at the makeup you have people with government experience—the prime minister, the foreign minister, and speaker of parliament, to give one of several examples. Then you have an infusion of new blood, part

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, accountability. There could be all kinds of grey areas, such as what lustration will actually mean.

Foreign Affairs committee  I don't think that the government will order the troops to fire on the Russian troops, but I honestly don't know the answer. Ukraine's strategy is not to react to these provocations and avoid giving Russia any reason to say suddenly that the situation has turned into war or viole

Foreign Affairs committee  If Russia were to intervene militarily in eastern Ukraine, that timetable would be out the window. Everything would shift. Let us suppose that Russian intervention stops with the Crimea. In passing, that is already a huge international problem, because it is still a violation of

Foreign Affairs committee  I think that there were already some quite remarkable precedents during the orange revolution. Canada sent 500 official observers and the Canadian Ukrainian Congress sent another contingent of 500 observers. A very large contingent would be needed. That said, if elections were o

Foreign Affairs committee  I would say that—

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, beginning with the president.

Foreign Affairs committee  No, against Putin and his political....

Foreign Affairs committee  Because the sanctions with Ukraine, even if Yanukovych is gone—not in his mind but he's gone from political reality—are still going on actually, but personal sanctions against Russian elites....

Foreign Affairs committee  We're facing an unprecedented situation. I'm here and I'm sitting in a parliamentary hearing, and I don't want to say things that are completely phantasmagoric, but basically, we're facing a scenario where Russia may be intent on destroying the Ukrainian state by invading eastern

Foreign Affairs committee  But of course that kind of assistance is not measurable. What we could observe during Maidan, 10 years after the Orange Revolution, is the rise of a civic community. This was a truly civic uprising. What does it mean? Initially it was a civic mobilization and then it turned into

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes. Taras has made excellent points. The army actually last week made a critical intervention—that is, a verbal and non-physical intervention—saying that they were not intervening in what was a political crisis or a political conflict. That also was very significant—