Ukraine: On the front line The president's abrupt turn from the EU to Russia has exposed national faultlines Clashing views: anti-government protests in Kiev turned violent this week, leaving at least five people dead Smoke drifts over Kiev's Hrushevskoho street in a scene that resembles trench warfare. Protesters lob fire bombs and cobblestones hacked from the street. Facing them, black-helmeted riot police defending Ukraine's parliament return fire with stun grenades, tear gas and rubber bullets. Outside boarded-up shops, grandmothers making tea mingle with youths splitting rocks for the frontline, or banging metal pipes against lampposts in an angry drumbeat. Young women shovel snow into sacks to reinforce the barricades. Nearby on the Maidan, Kiev's imposing central square, is a tent city nestling behind metres-high defences, after two months of what had been peaceful protests against President Viktor Yanukovich. The fighting broke out when hardline protesters clashed with police last Sunday. At least five people have died; more than 1,000 have been injured. Without a compromise, and with protesters starting to seize government buildings in west Ukrainian cities, many more casualties could yet follow. "At the beginning it was a peaceful protest and mood, but now it's a totally different atmosphere," says Andriy, a 25-year-old programmer from western Ukraine. It became clear the regime is not interested in hearing our voice, but in crushing us. Compromise is an unlikely scenario. The violence has provoked the biggest geopolitical stand-off between the US and the EU on one side, and Russia on the other, since Russia's war with Georgia in 2008. Tensions could escalate if fighting spirals out of control and Mr Yanukovich, whom Russia is backing, launches a violent clampdown. Not since the 1990s wars in the former Yugoslavia has a European country seen such prolonged, and now violent, unrest. The spectre of civil conflict lurks in the background. Ukraine is not ethnically divided. But a cultural and historic faultline runs between its Ukrainian-speaking and pro-European west, and Russian-speaking east and south. A closer analogy for now is the Arab spring, itself partly inspired by Ukraine's 2004 pro-democracy Orange Revolution. Then, Mr Yanukovich was declared winner of rigged presidential elections, but stepped aside after demonstrations triggered a repeat poll that he lost. He clawed his way back to a broadly fair victory in 2010. Now, protesters are infuriated by what they call his kleptocratic and incompetent government. The catalyst was his withdrawal from an integration deal with the EU last November. Instead, he made what his critics see as a Faustian pact with Russia, which for centuries controlled large parts of the country before the 1991 Soviet collapse, for a $15bn bailout of Ukraine's ailing economy. After parliament passed swingeing anti-protest laws last week that would criminalise the demonstrators, they claim Mr Yanukovich is leading the country towards authoritarian de­pendency on Moscow. They fear a future less like its neighbour Poland, a prosperous EU member, and more like autocratic Belarus. "We cannot lose our independence and our freedom," says a senior banker in Kiev. We only had them for 20 years. Ukrainian leaders accuse the demonstrators of attempting a coup d"état against a democratically elected president and government. Mykola Azarov, prime minister, says this week's violence has been instigated by "ultranationalists, xenophobes and anti-Semites" and used by the wider opposition to pressurise the government. We need to get the militants out of the heart of our capital and to make Kiev a safe place. The stakes are higher than in 2004. While he conceded then, Mr Yanukovich seems determined to fight this time. Russia - watching the protests with evident displeasure two weeks before it hosts the $50bn Sochi Winter Olympics - is heavily invested in the outcome. It does not want another pro-western regime change in a country it sees less as its backyard than part of its own house. We cannot lose our independence and our freedom. We only had them for 20 years A senior banker in Kiev The crisis was sparked by an east-west tussle that forced Ukraine to choose between joining a Russian-dominated bloc or a form of greater EU. Brussels offered to make Ukraine an extension of the EU's single market, in return for sweeping reforms. Russian president Vladimir Putin urged it to join an economic union he is building with former Soviet republics including Belarus and Kazakhstan. Incompatible trade rules make joining both impossible. Mr Yanukovich seemed tempted to sign the EU deal. But then Russia banned Ukrainian goods and disrupted cross-border trade, hurting its economy. Meeting Mr Yanukovich privately in November, officials suggest Mr Putin threatened further economic pain if Ukraine signed with the EU. But he dangled financial aid and help in ensuring that Mr Yanukovich won elections in 2015 if it did not. The result has split the country. The latest opinion poll (before this week's deaths) found 50 per cent of Ukrainians, mostly from the country's west and centre, supported the anti-government protests, while 42 per cent were opposed. Scenarios now range from a peaceful resolution to an escalating confrontation that could wrench the country apart. Scope for compromise is narrowing. If he bowed again to protesters and lost early elections, Mr Yanukovich could face jail. He himself imprisoned his arch foe and the co-leader of the Orange Revolution, Yulia Tymoshenko, on questionable charges in 2011. Mr Yanukovich, who in his youth served sentences for theft and assault, rose through the mob-like politics of industrial Donetsk in the east, where he was governor. Associates say he retains a street fighter's instincts and is surrounded by hardline allies. "Yanukovich is now very dependent on a very small group of people," says James Sherr, a Ukraine expert at London's Chatham House. They are all hardline, and all Russian-oriented. Many Ukrainians hoped the country's handful of billionaire "oligarchs" who dominate the economy would press him to compromise. But people close to them say they are afraid of Mr Yanukovich and his cronies. Even if Mr Yanukovich were to go, no clear leader is waiting to take over. Leadership is split between Vitali Klitschko, the popular boxer but political neophyte; Arseny Yatseniuk, a technocratic former central banker; and Oleh Tiahnybok, a nationalist. None has shown the charisma or tactical nous of Ms Tymoshenko in 2004. This week's violence by more radical protesters - including some members of fringe ultranationalist groups - partly reflected disillusionment with weak leadership. Moscow is watching with growing alarm. It needs Mr Yanukovich in power to ensure repayment of its financial aid, $3bn of which has been delivered. It faces the prospect that any pro-European government could sign the EU agreement, "losing" Ukraine for Russia. Political insiders dismiss direct Russian intervention, certainly during Sochi. But many believe Moscow is pushing Mr Yanukovich to crush the Kiev demonstrations, just as he and Mr Putin urged outgoing president Leonid Kuchma to do in 2004. Mr Kuchma refused, deterred in part by public threats of resignations by top security officials, including Ihor Smeshko, then head of the SBU, successor to the Soviet-era KGB. Today, Gen Smeshko says he fears Mr Yanukovich faces no such restraints. He says Mr Kuchma, shaped by the Soviet era, respected the "state," its stability and territorial integrity. Mr Yanukovich's only allegiance is to the group that helped him gain power. "All of law enforcement, all the "power" ministries, are run by people who received their positions from [Mr Yanukovich's group]," he says. It's very dangerous. The worst-case scenario of an outright east-west civil conflict is unlikely, most analysts say. Easterners are politically passive and Mr Yanukovich's support has slumped even there; few have been ready to rush to his support. More likely, west Ukrainian regions would attempt to resist an authoritarian clampdown. Adrian Karatnycky, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think-tank, says that without a compromise, "we are likely to see the escalation of conflict, successful efforts to create independent regional governments in western and central Ukraine, defections from the [police] and perhaps from the military to the opposition camp, and the setting up of large and armed self- defence units." In the past two days there has been a ceasefire on Hrushevskoho and Mr Yanukovich has signalled flexibility, calling an emergency parliament session next week to "resolve" the crisis. One possibility is reintroducing the post-Orange Revolution constitution that boosted parliament's powers and curtailed the president's - reversed by Mr Yanukovich in 2010. Senior leaders might be offered immunity after leaving office. But on the Maidan, demonstrators are sceptical. Vitaly, a former soldier from Kharkiv in the east, says only the president's exit could resolve things. It's becoming clear we'll have no choice but to force him from power. Additional reporting by Gideon Rachman in Davos