Reportedly, MPs are forced to vote as they are told. They are physically assaulted, and their families are held hostage. In the photo below the governor of Volyn region was nearly killed, then dragged to the local Maidan and chained to the post:
What kind of legitimacy can be expected from a lynch mob?
The question is - who reported it? Note that the Russians came up with the blood libel that the CIA invented AIDS to kill black people. If you read the Russian media's English language forums, you'll notice that it's full of vituperation against the "fascist" West written by people whose first language is clearly not English. It's clear, from the way Russia hasn't removed Lenin's statues from public areas, that the Russian public remains infatuated with him. It's also clear, from jimbo's reposting of a Lenin statue being removed from a Ukrainian public space, that he views this as sacrilege of the highest order and ipso facto proof that the Ukrainians are Nazis. I understand the Russian view - Lenin occupies no pride of place in any Western public places. Ergo, we must all be fascists to slight this great Russian and world citizen.
My point is - I could show you a handcuffed guy and tell you he is Putin’s personal slave. Heck, the Palestinians will show you any number of body parts of dead children and tell you that the Israelis cooked them to bake matzohs. That photo showed a guy chained to a post, with a riot police shield and some generic guy in the background. Was he a protestor being held before processing? Was he a pro-Yanukovich official posing for the camera? Nobody knows. We’ll find out how the Ukrainian people really feel when elections are held in May 2014.
The continued Russian blood libels - that Americans are fascists, Nazis and so on tells me that the Russians are unreconstructed imperialists with an unlimited appetite for land grabs, unchanged from the Soviet and Tsarist eras. Do they really think Americans are fascists and Nazis? Who knows? Who cares? The point here is that the Russians are on the march.