Blood stains the streets. Fathers, mothers and children lie face down dead on the concrete sidewalks lined up, asleep forever amongst the revolutionary chaos. Snipers line the top of buildings peering out at their prey through windows shattered by the constant rainfall of bullets and bombs. This is a revolution. This is Ukraine.

Since last November the country of the former Soviet Union has been in violent turmoil surrounding Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to forgo a negotiation with the European Union. Yanukovych decided to keep Russia as Ukraine’s number one trading partner, against half the country’s wishes, rather than pull away from the firm grasp of Russian influence and give up power according to Fox News.

The country, deeply divided by political turmoil left over from the wake of the Cold War and government corruption continued to unravel as anti-government protests started in the capital city, Kiev. Violence between the government police and termed “right wing extremist” protestors broke out last Thursday according to NBC news turning deadly when police decidedly fired into group protesters thus catalyzing an already hostile situation.

Since the fighting started over one hundred protestors have been killed according to CNN and hundreds more wounded all taken to a hotel in the center of Kiev taken over by protesters where volunteers have set up a makeshift hospital.

“I’m cleaning blood from the floor and I’m crying because this is really hard for me,” Anton, a volunteer at the impromptu hospital interviewed by CNN, said.

As fighting went on protesters started to have the upper hand against the opposition eventually taking Kiev. After four days of violent fighting the now former president of the republic Viktor Yanukovych has fled the city seeking refuge in his native eastern Ukraine home where support for both him and Russia are greater. For the time being, according to Fox News, the speaker of the Ukrainian parliament and member of the anti government Oleksander Turchinov will take over the roles Yanukovych performed as president until an election on May 25 of this year according to the Chicago Tribune in the mean time working towards a less corrupt and more democratic nation.

Nations in Europe, including Russia and the United States have taken notice in the shift of power in Ukraine realizing that, according to the New York Times, that this change could mark a “change for the whole region.”

“We Poles,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland in an interview with the Chicago Tribune said, “will not remain indifferent to these events because we know that the developments in Ukraine will decide the history and the future of the whole region.”