UKRAINE – AT 8:46 A.M. ET:  There is some presumed political movement in the Ukraine crisis.  We note that a truce earlier this week lasted less than a minute.  We'll see whether some new "concessions" by the government have any effect.  From Fox:

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych on Friday announced early presidential elections and promised to bring opposition members into the government in a bid to defuse the country's political crisis, even as police and anti-government protesters exchanged gunfire near Kiev's Independence Square.

Yanukovych, who was in talks with opposition leaders and foreign officials until early Friday, gave no time frame and it's unclear whether his belated concessions will be enough to hold off protesters who have occupied a piece of Kiev and government buildings around the country in a nationwide battle over the identity of their country.

There was no immediate comment from opposition leaders, who were meeting among themselves after a marathon night of meetings with European diplomats.

Meanwhile, gunfire was exchanged near the main square in Kiev Friday morning. A police statement obtained by Reuters said Ukrainian police shot back when protesters opened fire on officers between the protest square and the parliament building.

COMMENT:  In the last day we've learned that government snipers have been targeting individual protesters and killing them with bullets to the head.  An inordinate number of the dead appear to have two bullet wounds in the head. 

It's hard to know whether the latest violence in Kiev, Ukraine's capital, was timed to coincide with the Olympics, but it is certainly embarrassing to Russia's Vladimir Putin, who has put his prestige on the line in trying to make Ukraine a kind of new Russian satellite.

February 21,  2014