THIEVES and thugs like to act in the small hours of the morning, and so did Viktor Yanukovych, president of Ukraine. On November 30th, at about 4.30am, Ukraine’s riot police moved in to beat up a few hundred students peacefully standing vigil to support their country’s receding European future. The police pummelled them with truncheons, beat them, sprayed them with tear gas and then chased them up a hill to beat them more. Never in its 22 years as an independent country has Ukraine seen such violence.

The next day Mr Yanukovych was said to be hunting in his private grounds as hundreds of thousands of people poured onto the streets of Kiev in protest. The protest was no longer about an association and free-trade agreement with Europe, which Mr Yanukovych had just ditched. It was about an existential choice between a post-Soviet system, in which a corrupt and dysfunctional state violates its citizens, and a European one, based on the rule of law and respect for citizens.

To justify its use of force the government provoked more violence. It bused in thousands of plain-clothed goons and infiltrated the crowd with agents provocateurs who moved freely between police cordons. Somebody brought in a tractor, trying to ram into a police line. Petro Poroshenko, a billionaire who actively supports the protest, climbed on top of the tractor, trying to prevent clashes. Then masked provocateurs started to hurl stones and wield chains at the police. Minutes later a peaceful demonstration had turned violent. Miraculously nobody died.

Police arrested random protesters while letting the organisers of this violence walk free. The scenario seemed identical to a Moscow demonstration in May 2012 and to one in Belarus a few years earlier. Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, was quick to condemn the Kiev protests as “pogroms”. Russia’s state television put out shameless anti-protest propaganda.

A few hours later Maidan, Kiev’s central square and the stage for the 2004 Orange revolution, was again filled with hundreds of thousands of people. The square’s Christmas tree was dismantled and used for barricades. Its carcass was decorated with Ukrainian flags and anti-government slogans. Several municipal buildings were occupied. “Revolutionary headquarters,” read the graffiti on a wall of the city hall.

Protesters marvelled at the symbolism of dates: it was exactly nine years from the days of the Orange revolution, which defeated Mr Yanukovych’s attempt to steal a presidential election. The deep disappointment with the result of that upheaval made the rebirth of its spirit almost miraculous. People put up tents, made fires, brought in warm clothes and food for those who came to Maidan, now EuroMaidan, from afar. People greeted each other on the street hailing “Glory to Ukraine” and replying “Glory to Heroes”. The cold night air was filled with the sound of a thousands-strong chorus singing Ukraine’s melancholic national anthem. Alcohol was banned. To keep warm, people danced or played football.

Unlike the 2004 upheaval, the latest protests are spontaneous and driven not by politicians but by civil activists and students. None of the opposition leaders—Arseny Yatseniuk, who leads the party of Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister imprisoned under Mr Yanukovych, Vitaly Klitschko, a boxing champion, and Oleh Tyagnibok, a right-wing nationalist—saw it coming. None of them has a clear strategy or a message. It is unclear to what extent they can control Maidan.

On December 3rd the government survived a parliamentary vote of no confidence. Mr Yanukovych may yet sacrifice his prime minister, Nikolai Azarov, but this may no longer appease the protesters, who are now calling for Mr Yanukovych himself to go. Mr Azarov said the government is prepared to negotiate if the protesters stop blockading government buildings. Mr Yanukovych seems in denial about the scale of the crisis he has triggered. Pretending it was business as normal, he went to China this week and then on to Moscow to negotiate cheaper gas and work on a new strategic agreement with the Kremlin. This could fuel the protest further.

In any event, the people on Maidan Square, who have come from all over the country, are unlikely to go home without achieving something. If anything, the protests are getting more entrenched. The mood is defiant and the spirit has been boosted by veterans of the Afghan war, clerics and pop stars joining in the protest. But Mr Yanukovych is highly unlikely to call fresh elections, which he would almost certainly lose, along with his wealth and, possibly, his freedom. For now, both sides are waiting for the other to move first, while also warning of an imminent provocation. Mr Yanukovych may not dare to deploy regular troops or the uniformed police, but he could use his plain-clothed thugs to provoke a state of emergency.

Mr Yanukovych may like to act like Mr Putin or Alexander Lukashenko, the dictatorial president of Belarus, but Ukraine is neither Russia nor Belarus. The country is almost bankrupt and support for Mr Yanukovych is low. Its population is diverse and its television is controlled by oligarchs resentful of Mr Yanukovych. The crisis has split the elite. A mood of fin de règne prevails within Mr Yanukovych’s Party of Regions. Serhiy Levochkin, Mr Yanukovych’s chief of staff, handed in his resignation, although it has not been accepted.

Mr Yanukovych has already lost control over the western part of Ukraine where police refused to disperse the protesters and local councils threatened a general strike. Kiev also showed that it does not respect the government, is not scared of it and will not follow its orders, says Mr Poroshenko. Yet with no unifying opposition leader in the background, any use of force could tip the country into a Yugoslav-type civil conflict, says Inna Bogoslovskaya, one of Mr Yanukovych’s former supporters, who quit his party. The talk in Kiev is not whether blood will be spilled but how much of it. Whatever happens next the situation will be messy.

This may also create problems for Mr Putin who celebrates the break-up of Ukraine’s deal with Europe as his triumph. The Soviet Union controlled its satellites by military force and ideology and took responsibility for them. Russia does not like to take responsibility for its actions. In 2008 it prevented the expansion of NATO to Georgia by provoking a war and occupying two breakaway territories. It paid little price for this. It has now prevented the expansion of Europe to Ukraine by exploiting Ukraine’s weakness and the greed of its rulers. Mr Yanukovych may be Russia’s best hope to keep Europe away from Ukraine. But as Yulia Mostovaya, editor of Zerkalo Nedeli, a weekly, puts it, the struggle for Ukraine depends on the ability of the young generation of Ukrainians to keep the country together.

Twenty-two years ago Ukraine became independent without a fight. Instead of modernising the country and building institutions, its elites looted its resources, leaving the country vulnerable to outside pressure. Now a new generation of Ukrainians, who feel European, is fighting to change the entire political system and shake off the post-Soviet legacy. They do not want to be part of a power struggle within the same corrupt elite. On Maidan Square, they dance and sing along to a song called “the Wall”, which captured their spirit. “Where are we going to be when their war ends? Can we do everything for this wall to fall?”