JANUARY 22nd was meant to mark Ukraine’s unity day, a celebration of its short-lived pre-Soviet independence. Instead, it was a day of civil unrest and perhaps the biggest test of Ukraine’s post-Soviet integrity. After two months of largely peaceful encampment on the Maidan in Kiev, the protests turned violent. Five people were reported killed and hundreds were injured. An armoured personnel carrier pushed through the streets. Clouds of black smoke and flames mottled the snow-covered ground. Never in its history as an independent state has Ukraine witnessed such violence.

It was triggered by the passage of a series of repressive laws imposing tight controls on the media and criminalising the protests of the past two months. One law copied almost verbatim a Russian example, including stigmatising charities and human-rights groups financed from abroad as “foreign agents”. If Russian human-rights activists denounce their parliament as a “crazy printer” churning out repressive legislation, says Oleksandra Matviichuk of the Centre for Civil Liberties in Kiev, Ukraine has a “crazy photocopier”. The clashes show vividly the refusal of the protesters to heed such laws.

But they also reflect frustration with Ukraine’s ineffective opposition leaders, who include Vitaly Klitschko, a popular former boxer, Arseny Yatseniuk, a technocrat, and Oleh Tyahnybok, a nationalist. Between them they have failed to accomplish much since people first came out on the streets in protest against the decision of President Viktor Yanukovych to ditch a trade deal with the European Union. They demanded, unrealistically, that Mr Yanukovych step down and call early elections. Even after negotiating with several of Mr Yanukovych’s financial backers, they failed to extract any concessions. In the process they have lost much support on the Maidan, where action is wanted more than words. At a rally on January 19th, the crowd even booed its supposed leaders.

The clashes reveal an alarming radicalisation on both sides of the barricades. In recent days the momentum has belonged to a group called the Right Sector, a motley confederation of football hooligans and far-right nationalists. They have shown their own nastiness by lobbing petrol bombs at police and, in a rough display of revolutionary justice, parading around people detained under suspicion of acting as pro-regime provocateurs. Yet even more striking were the numbers of middle-class Ukrainians, who did not wish to go to the front lines of battles with police, but prepared stones for others, while grandmothers offered tea and sandwiches, plus milk to counter the sting of tear gas.

What happens next will depend in part on perceptions both in Ukraine and outside of who was responsible for violence. Mr Yanukovych may try to provoke the protesters so as to justify the use of force. Worryingly for the country’s future, it is increasingly clear that neither he nor his political rivals are in control of the situation. With more protesters pouring into Kiev, the opposition has now given Mr Yanukovych 24 hours to repeal the laws.

Western leaders strongly condemned both the repressive laws and the violence. America’s State Department has introduced visa sanctions against some Ukrainian officials and the EU budget commissioner plans to probe their bank accounts. Nikolai Azarov, Ukraine’s prime minister, was cold-shouldered at the World Economic Forum—after delegates observed a moment of silence for those killed in Kiev.

Russia, which foiled Ukraine’s European plans and bought off Mr Yanukovych by promising to bail out his bankrupt economy with a $15 billion loan and cheap gas, accused the West of meddling in Ukraine’s domestic affairs. The violence in Kiev certainly pushes Mr Yanukovych deeper into Russia’s sphere of influence, moving him closer to Alexander Lukashenko, dictator of neighbouring Belarus.

Yet although Mr Yanukovych is a politician who makes up for a lack of cunning with clumsy brutishness, Ukraine is no Belarus. It is linguistically, culturally and politically split between a Russian-speaking east and a nationalist, pro-European west, joined by Kiev, where Mr Yanukovych’s Party of Regions commands little respect or authority. It also has a pluralistic media controlled by a diverse group of powerful magnates who have no interest in splitting the country or in seeing Mr Yanukovych strengthen his economic grip.

Many are wary of the encroaching influence of Mr Yanukovych’s son and his friends in big business. Those oligarchs who wanted closer European integration did so not for access to its markets but as a protection against the Yanukovych family’s shameless rapaciousness. For much of the past two months television coverage has been overtly on the side of the protesters, at the very least refusing to block pictures from the Maidan as Mr Yanukovych’s administration demanded. The scenes of violence could also taint the reputation and business interests of Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man and Mr Yanukovych’s main backer.

The clashes will also further split Mr Yanukovych’s own entourage. So far he has managed to stave off defections by those who might have followed the example of Sergy Lyovochkin, a longtime chief of staff who chose to resign soon after the protests first erupted. Now the prospect of Belarus-style isolation could change the calculations of those round Mr Yanukovych whose fortunes are tied to the West.

Even if Mr Yanukovych manages to clear Kiev of protesters, which is far from certain, he will find himself more cornered and isolated than ever. The irony is that, by walking away from a symbolically important trade deal with the EU in December, he had hoped for short-term economic and social stability that could carry him through to a presidential vote in early 2015. But in the end, his resort to ugly force may be the thing that does most to spoil his chances of re-election.