A UKRAINIAN SPRING

      Last week, while the world watched the Olympic games beaming out from Sochi, Russia, the capital city of neighboring Ukraine, began to burn. Unrest and peaceful protests had been growing since late November after Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych rejected a deal with the European Union and strengthened ties with Russia. Fighting broke out the day after Russia bought $2 billion dollars worth of Ukraine’s government bonds, an act which solidified ties with the East.

      According to the New York Times, the protest turned violent ‘shortly before 8 p.m.’ on the evening of Tuesday February 18, 2014 in Independence Square when riot police began firing on the protestors. By morning, over eighty were dead and over eight hundred were wounded. Then, change came quickly. By the weekend, an imprisoned opposition leader had been freed and the president had left the capital. A warrant has been issued for his arrest for murdering his people.

       Astrologically, the fighting began less than 3 hours after the nodes changed signs with the North Node moving into Libra and the South Node into Aries. Prior to this time, the North Node was in Scorpio, ruled by Pluto,which is currently embroiled in a t-square with Jupiter and Uranus, which was activated that night by the Moon. The immense power struggle between those in power and the people came to a peak. In the Ukraine, where Pluto rules the 10^th house (the president), as long as Pluto ruled the North Node, the balance was tipped in the president’s favor.

         But when the nodes changed sign, with the North Node in Libra, Venus became the new ruler. In the Ukraine chart, Venus rules the 4^th house of the opposition party and was transiting conjunct the country’s North Node, showing a shift of power that now favored the opposition. The fighting lasted a few hours and when the smoke cleared, a new day was dawning.

          For the next eighteen months, while Venus rules the North Node, the opposition will be empowered to act. However, in the short term, with transiting Mars co-ruling the 10^th and conjunct the transiting North Node and ruling the South Node, a weakened and embittered president is taking a stand. Now safe in Russia, Yanukovych has called the take-over a coup, while Putin has ordered 150,000 troops to the shared western border for training exercises.  While in the days to come there will be much posturing and instability, the astrology shows definitively that Yanukoych’s power is gone.