Though the elite riot police may be more reliable, there aren't enough of them to reestablish control throughout the entire country. At a minimum, mass demonstrations are sure to continue: if the police seize one square in the capital city, demonstrators will just move to another one. And Ukrainians may refuse to be intimidated. They know that, if they lose this fight, their country risks becoming the Zimbabwe of Eastern Europe for years to come. They know that this is a turning point.
People with nothing to lose often roll the dice, resorting to desperate measures. Now, in contrast to 2004, there exists a significant cohort of pro-European ultra-nationalists in Ukraine, and they have shown that they're not afraid of fisticuffs. If the security forces resort to excessive violence, some Ukrainians will almost certainly respond in kind.
The world is now watching Yanukovych, and both the Americans and Europeans have explicitly warned him against resorting to violence. For him to do so now under such circumstances would likely result in further isolation and rejection.
All in all, violence is much too risky a strategy for him to follow. If it fails -- as it likely would -- he will have no options left but to resign in humiliation. If violence succeeds, the gains will prove temporary, tensions will intensify and Yanukovych's isolation at home and abroad will be nearly complete.
The next few days will be critical. The longer the demonstrations continue in Kiev and throughout the country, the slimmer Yanukovych's chances of surviving the crisis.
If he's smart -- and the evidence for this proposition is hardly overwhelming -- he'll accede to the opposition's demands and try to position himself as the people's candidate. Minimally, he'll fire the government and try to co-opt opposition leaders. Whether or not that would work is anybody's guess, but the degree of popular hatred of Yanukovych is so deep that what might have worked a week ago may no longer be possible today. If he remains stubborn, then he may be felled by people power.
Whatever the case, Yanukovych will either depart the scene or become a completely ineffective and illegitimate ruler. If he stays, Ukraine will become ungovernable; if he goes, it just might break out of the cycle of stagnation that it's been in for close to two decades.
How will Vladimir Putin -- who opposed Ukraine's acceding to the EU Association Agreement and thinks of Ukraine as a province of Russia -- respond to the ongoing tensions? A Russian military intervention to rescue Yanukovych risks tearing the country apart, energizing the anti-Putin opposition in Russia and initiating a new Cold War with the United States and Europe.
An ungovernable, unstable and stagnant Ukraine teetering on the brink of economic collapse would also be an enormous drain on the Kremlin's dwindling resources. Might it not be better to let Ukraine go its way and try to keep it within Russia's sphere of influence by means of soft power? It's noteworthy that, although the Russian media's coverage of the mass demonstrations in Ukraine is scandalously one-sided -- depicting them as the handiwork of violence-prone fanatics -- Putin has offered no tangible support for Yanukovych himself.
