Toppling the Lenin stature in Kiev: a big deal

Vladimir Tismaneaunu at Frontpage Magazine calls it a watershed.

It's not that the European Union is in and of itself a great institution. It's that alignment with, or membership in, it solidifies a nation's standing as Western.  And a critical mass of Ukrainians prefer that to being citizens of a poodle nation within the Russian orbit:

The nature of EU is not the point of the demonstrations. Ukrainians want to belong to the West, not to the East. They refuse Putin’s Eurasian mythologies as another camouflage for Russian hegemonism. EU has many problems, but the Ukrainians see it as a chance to escape a geopolitical fatality that has plagued their history for centuries. Before we minimize or discard their European dreams, let’s try to understand them.

For Ukrainians, Russia means oppression, humiliation, bondage. Others feel the same way. This explains why Georgia’s  former president Mikhail Saakashvili and Moldova’s former prime minister Vlad Filat went to Kiev to spell out their solidarity with the protesters.

Ultimately, what the demonstrators were doing was standing up to Putin.  Which is more than you can say for the Most Equal Comrade and Secretary Global Test.