KIEV, Ukraine — The decision to deploy riot police against the long-lasting political protest here, under cover of darkness, and then to pull them out again 10 hours later, has left the Ukrainian government struggling to find a footing at home and abroad.
President Viktor Yanukovych has greatly lifted the morale of his opponents with the seemingly ferocious but ultimately unfruitful police action and has created a new set of heroes: the veterans of the Soviet war in Afghanistan who faced down armored cops. And he sat down with two Western diplomats who let him know their displeasure.
“I made it absolutely clear to him that what happened last night, what has been happening in security terms here, is absolutely impermissible in a European state, in a democratic state,” Victoria Nuland, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs, said after a two-hour meeting with Yanukovych.
“But we also made clear that we believe there is a way out for Ukraine, that it is still possible to save Ukraine’s European future, and that is what we want to see the president lead,” she said.
The dispute that has engulfed Ukraine started with Yanukovych’s last-minute decision to spurn an agreement with the European Union and seek closer economic ties to Russia. But opposition political parties and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have shown they disagree and have maintained a fluctuating but permanent presence on Kiev’s Independence Square since late November.
Ukraine is heading for a default in early next year without financial assistance. The fumbled use of police appalled Western governments — Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States viewed it with “disgust” — and it also will not make it any easier for Yanukovych to negotiate better terms with Russia.
The opposition has called for the release of all political prisoners; two students arrested Nov. 30 in an earlier police assault were released Wednesday. It also wants Prime Minister Mykola Azarov replaced. Under those conditions, political leaders had said they might accept Yanukovych’s invitation to negotiations.
But they said that before Wednesday’s police incursion. Vitali Klitschko, the former boxer and rising political star of the opposition, said that with the police action, “Yanukovich closed off the path to any kind of compromise.”
The president also talked about finding a deal with the EU after all. Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign affairs chief, met with him Wednesday for the second time in two days.
