TODAY: Putin’s Ukraine success challenged by hundreds of thousands of protesters in Kiev; Sochi stadium incomplete, residents talk of environmental damage; IOC President meets gay rights activists; Kudrin says 15 years to build competitive economy.

News sources are talking about Vladimir Putin’s success in winning Ukraine back into his dream of a ‘Eurasian Union’, but for Ukrainian citizens, the battle is not over – demonstrations in Kiev yesterday were the largest since the Orange Revolution, with many calling for revolution.  Hundreds of thousands stormed government buildings and clashed with police, expressing anger at Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s U-turn on a trade agreement with Europe in favour of closer relations with Russia.  But, as First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov pointed out to Bloomberg, ‘No one other than Russia can provide Ukraine with the necessary funds so quickly and in such a quantity.’  This piece says the EU is at fault for having no ‘proper tactics, much less a strategy concerning Ukraine’; another sees Europe’s varied official responses to the news as ‘loaded Cold War rhetoric’.  (Such as those of Poland and Sweden, perhaps.)