“These are the times that try men’s souls,” wrote Thomas Paine as Americans embarked on the War of Independence against their British masters. “Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

As Ukrainian protesters mourn their dead, celebrating the collapse of Viktor Yanukovich’s kleptocracy but uncertain of Russia’s next step, they are experiencing the intense emotions expressed so eloquently by Paine in 1776.

Many Ukrainians yearn for their revolution to be a re-enactment of 1989 in Poland or 1991 in the Baltic states: a decisive turn in the direction of freedom, civic dignity, national independence and economic prosperity underpinned by close ties with the European Union.