French press review 21 February 2014

The deadliest day of anti-government protests in Kiev puts Ukraine on the front pages of all the French dailies.

Libération says that at least 90 pro-European demonstrators have been killed over the past two days by bullets fired by the regime’s police. The paper accuses Europe of having betrayed the people of Ukraine.

The economic daily Les Echos puts the death toll at 100, expressing the indignation sweeping through Europe and the mobilisation of European governments to halt the violence of a scale unseen in Europe since the dislocation of Yugoslavia in 1995.

The Communist Party newspaper L’Humanité warns that there is a real risk of Europe witnessing the partition of Ukraine, as it struggles to come to terms with the scale of the bloody insurrection in Kiev,

The Catholic newspaper La Croix sees a glimmer of hope in the mediation mission launched by France, Germany, Poland and Russia as the foreign ministers of the three European Union members are spending their second day in Kiev to try to halt the escalation.

Le Figaro is enraged that Ukrainian government troops dared use live bullets on protesters despite the presence of the European troika while they made desperate diplomatic efforts to end the bloodbath. It brands President Viktor Yanukovych a fake strongman, who has lost the legitimacy bestowed on him by the ballot box in 2010. Le Figaro, however, warns that he is certainly not a fool, noting that it will be erroneous to judge him on the part of his life when he was a delinquent and a clan boss in Donetsk.

Libération has a portrait of Yanukovych titled “the crook who became president”. It holds that Russia is pushing his control buttons and poised to torpedo the European interference in what it considers its sphere of influence.

The shadow of Russian President Vladimir Putin actually hovers over the European efforts to halt the Ukrainian tragedy, says Aujourd’hui en France. It describes Putin as the godfather of the regime in Kiev. It bases its assumptions on the 10-billion-euro loan the Kremlin granted Ukraine as compensation for the rejection of a long-negotiated European Union integration deal in favour of closer ties with Russia.

And the French papers are all thumbs up to salute the French 123 at the Sochi Winter Olympics Thursday in the ski cross event after Jean-Fréderic Chapuis, Arnaud Bovolenta and Jonathan Midol took the gold silver and bronze for their country. "French gang stages hold-up of medal chest!" shouts Libération, while sports daily L’Equipe shares its enthusiasm.