And now it`s my turn to ask some questions.
1) Why is the "police" shooting protesters that are not attacking anybodyat the moment? This is crime, this violates a TON of conventions and police officers KNOW that.
2) Why does the "police" shoot before even officially given permission and weapons?
3) Why the hell do some of said "policemen" wear civilian footwear? "Dear commander, I forgot my boots at home"?
4) Why do they use outdated guns? AKSU are not used anymore, they are unaccurate and too penetrative for a police weapon.
5) Why do some of them wear yellow stripes that are not a part of usual uniform?
You can call me a conspiracy theorist, but first please try to give a probable explanation to this facts.
1) Government supporters had already been torturing people before. Which also kinda sorta is a crime and against several conventions. And since the police is the ones who are supposed to uphold the law, I don't exactly see who could punish them for breaking the law, and it's not likely that Yanukovych cares to prevent opposition deaths.
2) See above. Also, if the claims that this is a unit responsible directly to Yanukovych, this isn't even the police, those are black ops. The whole point of whom is to do illegal stuff for their government.
3) Meaningless, since as people responded multiple times, it's not like anyone who has access to the rest of the uniform wouldn't be able to take the boots as well. If it were protesters' provocateurs, it would be even less likely if anything, because them getting outed because of such a detail would carry a lot more risk than for the police.
4) Wikipedia begs to differ, claiming that each urban police foot patrol is issued at least one of those and that they are commonly used by special forces and air assault troops. All of which fit pretty well with the possibilities on who they might be exactly.
5) Someone mentioned covering up normal unit markings before. Or unit identification, if they are the special unit.
Frankly, the idea that they are used to signal to protesters that they are friendly is rather stupid, since it presumes that each and every protester is in on the conspiracy, not a single policeman gets the same idea as you, and government utterly fails to announce they are not, in fact, actual police.
And if any of them did get shot by a protester, you could always rationalize it as the protester not being in on the conspiracy. So it is unverifiable.