This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, February 19th, 2014.

I'm Caleb Brown. A nightmare scenario is now unfolding in Ukraine.

Unrest has been growing for some time and with protests now in Kiev political leaders have

labeled protesters as extremists and terrorists and promised a broader crackdown.

Delabor Rojock is a policy analyst at the Cato Institute's Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity.

We spoke today.

Last year Ukraine, Ukrainian government walked away from a trade deal with the European Union after Russia

threatened to increase natural gas price and that triggered a massive wave of popular unrest, especially in the west part of the

country and people went to the streets and in Kiev they went to the main square, the

independent square, the Maidan as it is called these days,

started to occupy it and refuse to go away unless the government honored its agreement with the EU.

And the regime initially tried to suppress that civil unrest, then tried to negotiate it away in a way

unsuccessfully and finally this week the government essentially called in the security forces to

to clear the square and to sort of chase the protesters away. So far, the government has not been successful, but there have been reports of sort of security

intensifying.

The government is calling the protesters terrorists, which is a sort of distinct change in rhetoric

and there is an attempt to just suppress the dissenting voices through force.

All right, well, if you wouldn't mind, just lay out in one or two minutes the, what is the

situation there and what has brought it about?

Okay, so what we are seeing these days is an attempt by the government to disperse the

protesters from the Independence Square in Kyiv, the Maidan.

There was one attempt last night which was unsuccessful yet which brought about 25 deaths and the government reportedly is attempting to replicate the same thing tonight.

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