With Ukraine's parliament dismantling the last vestiges of ousted President Viktor Yanukovych's government, the Obama administration warned Russia against sending troops into the country and told Moscow that it should allow Ukrainians to freely determine their own future. Appearing on Meet the Press Sunday, National Security Advisor Susan Rice was adamant about limiting Russia's role in Ukraine going forward.

Russia is back, or at least that is what you were supposed to think while watching the 2014 Sochi Olympics over the past two weeks. To prove it, Russia spent 51 billion dollars on the first-ever Winter Olympics staged in a subtropical climate zone and took great pains to showcase Russian culture, diversity, wealth, talent, and swagger during nonstop coverage of the Olympic mega-event.

Civil strife often follows a grimly predictable pattern. What at first seems a soluble dispute hardens into conflict, as goals become more radical, bitterness accumulates and the chance to broker a compromise is lost. Such has been the awful trajectory of Ukraine, where protests that began peacefully in November have combusted in grotesque violence.

Three months after the first anti-government protests in Ukraine, the country has experienced its deadliest day of political violence, with nine people dying in clashes between demonstrators and police. The beating heart of the pro-Europe, anti-Russia 'Euromaidan' movement is in Kiev's Independence Square (in Ukrainian, Maidan Nezalezhnosti), and the square is currently in flames after a day of police firing rubber bullets at protesters wielding molotov cocktails and fireworks.

The overall medal count obscures how these small countries are outperforming their rivals in 2014.Judging by the overall tally at the Sochi Olympics, the Netherlands is currently ahead of all other nations with 17 total medals. The United States and Russia are tied for a close second with 16 medals each. 

UN officials lashed out as violence threatened efforts to help civilians. 'We understand that a war is going on. But even wars have rules,' the UN humanitarian chief said angrily. It has not been a promising 24 hours for mediation and humanitarian efforts in Syria. The UN's humanitarian chief lambasted the effort to provide aid to the Syrian city of Homs Thursday night, and today, UN special envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi warned that the failure of ongoing negotiations was "staring us in the face."

Former figure skater Irina Rodnina is now an MP from Vladimir Putin's United Russia party and claims that a racist photo of Barack Obama she tweeted last year was the fault of hackers.

Journalists covering the Sochi Olympics have taken to Twitter to air complaints over the state of their hotel rooms. For the past week, some reporters have been tweeting images describing what they say are appalling conditions in the media hotels.