I keep wondering why we are not seeing this story in our U.S. broadcast media – the potential cinematography is prime for interest ?  ….In a scene that veered from primeval to apocalyptic, demonstrators used sticks to hit barrels and sheets of metal, creating a savage drumbeat as a backdrop, while billows of smoke rose from piles of burning car tires….

KIEV, Ukraine — With President Viktor F. Yanukovych and antigovernment demonstrators at an impasse here, a cease-fire disintegrated on Friday night as the Ukrainian capital convulsed in renewed violence and fire bombs lit up the night sky.

Civil unrest spread across the country earlier on Friday as protesters laid siege to government buildings in at least nine other cities — occupying some and thronging outside others.

The widening turmoil, in the central Ukrainian cities of Khmelnitsky, Zhytomyr and Cherkasy, as well as in the western strongholds of Lviv, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lutsk, Rivne and Chernivtsi, showed that the authorities, including the elite Berkut riot police and Interior Ministry troops, were outnumbered and at risk of being spread too thin.

[…] In Rivne, demonstrators demanded that riot police units deployed to Kiev be sent home.

In Kiev, efforts to defuse the crisis suffered a major setback as the police fired rubber bullets at protesters near the Dynamo soccer stadium shortly after 10:30 p.m. on Friday, while demonstrators hurled stones, firebombs and even firecrackers that exploded in a rainbow of colors — at times illuminating the clash with oddly festive plumes of light.

In a scene that veered from primeval to apocalyptic, demonstrators used sticks to hit barrels and sheets of metal, creating a savage drumbeat as a backdrop, while billows of smoke rose from piles of burning car tires along a barrier made of bags of snow.   (read more)