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The president of Ukraine has suspended his deputy security chief and Kiev's mayor over the police violence against protesters on 30 November.

Prosecutors are investigating claims the two officials put pressure on Kiev's police chief to use violence.

Meanwhile tens of thousands have gathered in Kiev to show their support for President Viktor Yanukovych.

Protests erupted last month after the president pulled out of an integration agreement with the EU.

The violent crackdown energised the pro-EU protesters, who are now camped out in the capital's Independence Square.

Organisers - who are demanding Mr Yanukovych's resignation - have called for another big pro-EU rally on Sunday.

The BBC's correspondent in Kiev, David Stern, says the pro-government rally is just 100 metres from the pro-European encampment.

Divided country
While protests have gripped the capital and other cities in western and central Ukraine, President Yanukovych retains support in the east and south.

Those who want closer ties with Brussels believe meeting EU standards on competition, regulation and investor protection would make Ukraine's economy more open and transparent.

Protesters believe joining the EU has benefited Ukraine's neighbours to the west.

However, the government and its supporters fear that economic liberalisation would put at risk many enterprises reliant on trade with Russia.

Moscow has already put economic pressure on Ukraine, with customs delays and a ban on Ukrainian chocolates, and there are concerns it could escalate such measures if Kiev drew closer to Brussels.

It just got more interesting: Russia just bought off Ukraine's debt

The issue is that the Donbas and Crimea are, frankly, Russian. So of course they want closer ties with Russia. The west of Ukraine? Actual Ukrainian, and historically western-looking.

Russia's re-assertion of traditional domination of her periphery means she wants the Ukraine as a reliable Russian-facing state, if not an outright satellite. Honestly my big fear, given what happened in Georgia in 2008, is that if the Ukraine goes western anyway the Russians will simply start supporting Russian separatism in the Crimea and Donbas.

As I recall, the first Crimean War was a bloodbath. I have little doubt a separative movement would be worse.

It'd be worse. The Crimean War was a fight between 19th Century Great Powers. A civil conflict would be worse and may escalate to ethnic cleansing.

In the Soviet Union the Crimea was administratively part of Russia until 1954. I'm not sure why they transferred it from the Russian SSR to the Ukranian SSR, but clearly it was a mistake to do so. On the other hand, the Soviets can hardly be blamed for failing to plan for their own break-up nearly four full decades before the fact. Even when it happened it was pretty sudden and unexpected, not to mention highly unpopular outside the Baltics and Caucasus. Pretty much the whole of the reason why Belarus, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Russia, and the Central Asian Republics are now separate countries is because Yeltsin and his cronies deliberately dismembered the USSR against the will of the people so that they could enrich themselves by looting the ruins.

I would be very careful about relying on that referendum as some sort of endorsement of the Soviet Union. The question was intentionally worded so as to ask that if a wholly mythical version of the Soviet Union remained as a form of federated republic in which the minority groups would not be slaughtered and crushed, would they wish to try it. Unsurprisingly, many said yes. But that just wasn't the Soviet Union as anyone ever saw it.

Yeltsen and his cronies did indeed loot the USSR, but it would be a mistake to claim that this was the only reason it dissolved. The ethnic Ukrainians within the Ukraine did not have much love for the Soviets in practice, and neither did the Caucasus or Central Asian minorities. Separatist movements within Central Asia had existed since the days of the Russian Empire's annexation of the region in the mid-19th century, while the Caucasus' movements went back even further. The Baltic States unquestionably wanted the Russians gone, and the Ukrainians (as distinct from the Ukraine) did not by and large wish to remain the subjects of the USSR any longer either. The only cases where I can see a case for retention having broad popular support was in Belarus, Kazakhstan, and ethnically-Russian enclaves like the Crimea, Abkhazia, or Trans-Dneistria. Most of the remaining claims of how everyone wanted to keep the USSR is either referring to some wholly theoretical USSR that never existed even on paper, or a carefully-worded act of political theater.

The issue of minorities within the Soviet Union and its successor states is rather complicated. It really fucking sucked to be a non-Russian minority under Stalin, as he instituted a number of ethnic cleansing campaigns that are as reprehensible as they are indefensible. Matters had, however, changed by the 1980s, and many of the minorities in the Soviet Union actually had it better before the break-up than they did after. The collapse of the Soviet Union precipitated a series of vicious civil wars in Central Asia and the Caucasus, many of them driven by ethnic tensions that had been kept in check under Soviet rule. I mean, fuck, even before the break-up the Abkhazians knew that they really didn't want to be part of an independent Georgia, which is why they did participate in the referendum while the rest of Georgia boycotted it. The Abkhazians knew that the Russians treated them (and the Ossetians and Avars) better than the Georgians ever would. It was also the Russians who were keeping the Azeris and Armenians from murdering each other, and violence between them escalated in direct proportion to the weakening of Soviet power in the region.

Also, I did specifically say that the Baltics and the Caucasus didn't want stay in the Soviet Union. Though, in the case of the Caucasus it's only really Georgia. I mean, the Armenians didn't want to be in either, but then they had that moment of utter pants-shitting terror when they realized they're a small land-locked country with two neighbours that hate their guts and a third that doesn't give a shit. This actually joined the CIS to get Russia to support them against Azerbaijan on account of that. On the other hand the Azeris have a severe case of cultural Stockholm Syndrome with respect to Russia so they're more amenable to mantaining the Union, but then keeping them obligates the Russians to help them beat the shit out of the Armenians. Not that I object to beating the shit out of Armenia, but war is expensive and the Russians are already kind of busy trying to keep the Chechens from doing things like declaring independence, terrorizing their neighbours, instituting sharia, and running an international slavery ring.

Interestingly, the Estonia and Latvia were quite happy to be part of the Russian Empire because their nobles were German and the Germans were grossly overrepresented within the Russian nobility in general. In other words, their own ruling class was also the Empire's ruling class, which was a convenient state of affairs for them. Then the communists shot all the nobles and that was that. (The Russian noble was an international man. His nationality was Russian, his ethnicity German and Scandinavian, his language French, his religion Greek. It wasn't uncommon for some Russian nobles be fluent in French and German, have a passable understanding of Old Slavonic, but only know enough Russian to give orders to the peasantry.)

Anyway, I'm kind of rambling, but I do sincerely think that the total collapse of the Soviet Union caused a lot of unnecessary and avoidable suffering and the average citizenry outside the Baltics and Caucasus wasn't expecting it to happen, and largely didn't benefit from it happening... Well, except that the Belarusians and Ukranians actually did benefit, but only because their leaders did the transition away from communism in a sane manner. Heck, Belarus has spent the last two decades pretty much running Soviet System 7.0, because Lukashenko may be an ambitious authoritarian bastard, but he's a highly competent ambitious authoritarian bastard. Would have been great to have a united Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, and Khazakstan under Lukashenko, but alas the world seldom provides the best outcome.

Not that the current leadership of any of those countries is anything to celebrate, but a united Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, and Khazakstan under Lukashenko would not only be one of the most repressive regimes on Earth, with a restarted Gulag system that makes the current Russian one look like Norway, but would almost without question have already engaged in several "preemptive" wars with the rest of the former Soviet States in order to forcibly reintegrate them. This was the guy who argued publicly that Latvians as a people were something the West made up to deny Russians their proper homelands, and that the area should be ethnically cleansed, after all.

Putin is no picnic, but that part of the world could actually do far worse.

I think you have Belarus and Best Korea confused. I realize that they both start with "Be", but come on man, one is one word and the other two words, it's not that hard. All joking aside, yes Belarus autocratic and repressive but it's not as horribad as you're making it sound. I wouldn't want to live there, but then I wouldn't want to live in Putin's Russia either. Though I suppose if I really had to pick... I'd move to Petropavlosk-Kamchatsky, which is about as far away from Moscow as you can get while still being in Russia. Plus it seems to be a legitimately nice city. Also better weather than Vladivostok, with warmer winters and cooler summers. Only downsides are that Petropavlosk only has 30% of Vladivostok's population, it's surrounded by active volcanoes, and it snows a heck of a lot so you'd better learn to like shovelling.

Anyway, I really don't think Lukanshenko in charge of a non-totally-collapsed Soviet Union would be dumb enough to wage a pointless war on the Baltics. He would no doubt say the exact same thing about the Latvians or Lithuanians or Estonians, and cause a bit of a panic that could very well drive the Baltics into NATO, but that would be about the extent of it. He'd totally invade Georgia, but Yeltsin would have too had he anything to do it with, and Putin actually did five years ago. I seriously doubt he would attempt to occupy and annex the country though, it's just too fucking stupid to do so. No, he'd just liberate Abkhazia and South Ossetia and call it day, like it happened in reality except maybe a decade earlier. Now Azerbaijan and Armenia? That one's a toss-up, I could see him attempting leverage the conflict between into control of one or the other. If it was me, I'd try for Azerbaijan, they have territorial contiguity, petroleum, and cultural Stockholm Syndrome going for them. Lukashenko probably would as well, and it would either work very well or blow up in his face. It depends on how exactly the Azeris react when they realize that all their functional military units happen to be Russian.

It's pretty much a given that Lukanshenko would not tolerate any of the Central Asian Republics having a leadership unfriendly to his regime, but that's not really different from any other Russian leader. Russia was not at all impartial in the various conflicts that broke out in the region, and the local governments have been on generally good terms with Moscow partly because they got support from them against the other guys. So there's no actual change there. The question is whether he'd go further and try to bring them back into the fold and... Well, honestly? It's stupid to try. Khazakstan is geographically useful and full of Russians, but he already has it, and the rest of the area is completely worthless and had been a net resource drain on Moscow for decades. It wasn't that much of a drain on the Russian Empire, but unlike the Soviets the Empire didn't spend massive amounts of resources trying to grow cotton in the goddamned Karakum Desert. (They shouldn't have abandoned Stalin's version of the canal project, it was less stupid.)

Is it possible that he might anyway? Yeah, it is possible, because they're weak and tempting, it would stroke his ego, and there's reason to believe he'd get away with it. Still, it seems far more likely that he won't. Not only is there no benefit whatsoever to the endeavour, but his entire military would be going, "Dude, remember Afghanistan? Our last Central Asian adventure didn't go so well. How about we don't repeat that mistake?" Lukashenko may be an egocentric asshole but there's no evidence that he's delusional, and only a delusional person would look at the ledger sheet for Glorious Reconquest of Central Asia and not blanch at all the red in there.

So ultimately, no I don't think Lukashenko would proceed to wage a series of wars on his neighbours. Not any more than Russia has in reality. There is one possible exception in Azerbaijan, but that's about it.