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Riot police try to remove a barricade held by protesters on Independence Square in Kyiv early on December 11.
Riot police try to remove a barricade held by protesters on Independence Square in Kyiv early on December 11.
Ukraine

Live Blog: Kyiv Protesters Dig In

Updated
Final Wrapup (Barring major events)

-- EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said after an afternoon meeting that President Viktor Yanukovych pledged to her that "something should be done in the course of the next 24 hours."

-- Yanukovych then announced he had invited the opposition to participate in dialogue. He added that Ukrainian authorities would "act only within the law and never use force against peaceful assemblies."

-- Opposition parties have rejected negotiations unless all of their demands are met. UDAR leader Vitali Klitschko said the overnight crackdown on December 10-11 meant that "Yanukovich closed off the path to any kind of compromise."

-- Early on December 11, about 10 hours after police first began to clear Independence Square and other protest sites in Kyiv overnight, police withdrew from those locations. People have returned to Independence Square and are rebuilding barricades.

-- Former Interior Minister and Yulia Tymoshenko ally Yuriy Lutsenko announced that the next major rally in the capital was planned for December 13 and urged people to come to Independence Square.

-- Prime Minister Mykola Azarov announced that Ukraine was requesting 20 billion euros in financial aid from the European Union to help lay the groundwork for an Association Agreement.

-- U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland went personally to Independence Square to hand out food to riot police and protesters, then met with President Viktor Yanukovych and said the United States believed it was still possible to save Ukraine's "European future." Secretary of State John Kerry had said earlier that he was "disgusted" by the government's overnight actions in Kyiv. A State Department spokesperson said all options, including sanctions, were on the table.

Glenn Kates and RFE/RL editors
13:39 11.12.2013
Ex-President Leonid Kuchma reportedly says the absence of the opposition or protesters invalidates any "roundtable."

13:44 11.12.2013
Nuland on her meeting today with Yanukovych, via Reuters: "We also made clear that we believe there is a way out for Ukraine and it is still possible to save Ukraine's European future, and that's what we want to see the president lead, and that's going to require immediate security steps."
13:50 11.12.2013
"Yanukovych is in office because the oligarchs wanted him there. If they abandon him, he’s toast."

-- Bloomberg, "Ukraine Billionaires Desert Yanukovych After EU Reversal"
13:54 11.12.2013
13:59 11.12.2013
More from @RadioSvoboda on today's "roundtable." Opposition leaders didn't attend again (they've described them as "orchestrated" and didn't go to the first round). But former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko also boycotted today's meeting, saying they'd been "compromised" by the overnight crackdown.
14:31 11.12.2013
Becoming quite the hot topic, the perceived lack of support for President Yanukovych among Ukraine's "surviving tycoons."
For BBC, the Peterson Institute for International Economics author of "How Ukraine Became A Market Economy And Democracy" Anders Aslund argues that -- with the exception of Petro Poroshenko of Roshen chocolate (yes, that Roshen chocolate) -- while Yanukovych "is widely seen as living in symbiosis with Ukraine's tycoons," increasingly "the surviving tycoons now see Mr Yanukovych as the greatest threat to their survival, which has made most of them supporters of the European Association Agreement that the president shelved last month."
Our own @CoalsonR wrote last week about the oligarchs and their place in "Yanukovych's Base Eroding In Ukraine's Russophone East."
14:37 11.12.2013
World heavyweight boxing champion and opposition leader Vitali Klitschko, who knows a little something about physical force, said today: "With what happened last night, Yanukovich closed off the path to any kind of compromise. We had planned to have talks with Yanukovich. We understand that Yanukovich has no wish to talk to the people and only understands physical force, which he uses against the protesters."
14:43 11.12.2013
Bomb threats have been reported at two Kyiv airports and the city's central and southern train stations, UNIAN and lb.ua are reporting.

Passengers at the Borispol airport have been evacuated from terminals B (domestic and international charter flights) and D (international flights), and all plane traffic has been halted at Zhulyani airport, which handles a mix of domestic and international flights.

Searches are being conducted at all four sites. Today's threat comes after an anonymous source on Monday told an emergency hotline that bombs had been planted at the three metro sites closest to the Maidan protests, Kreshchatyk, Maidan Nezalezhnosti, and Teatralna. Maidan Nezalezhnosti and Khreschatyk were closed again Tuesday after another bomb threat.

No actual explosives have been detected at any of the sites so far.
14:46 11.12.2013
RFE/RL video of U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland's comments after a meeting with President Yanukovych:
Nuland: 'Still Possible To Save Ukraine's European Future'
Embed
Nuland: 'Still Possible To Save Ukraine's European Future'

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0:00 0:02:22 0:00
15:10 11.12.2013
This picture getting a lot of praise today. Many people interpreting it as a sign God is on the side of the protesters:

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