The Beginning of the End

By Volodymyr Kish

Events are evolving quickly in our long-suffering homeland, and it appears that the days of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s regime are now numbered. We are seeing the beginning of the end of a “government” that is an insult to that very word, and as bad a gang of rulers as Ukraine has ever had in its thousand year history.

The tipping point happened last week when President Yanukovych officially declared that he was not going to sign the Association Agreement with the European Union as he had been trumpeting for months. Instead, he would seek to get a better deal from Russia within its laughable Customs Union. As everyone in Ukraine knows, the Customs Union is but a front for the re-establishment of a new, revived and oppressive Russian Empire.

Yanukovych and his minions realized of course that there would be demonstrations and protests, but assumed that these would peter out, and he could go about his business as usual. In this he miscalculated, and miscalculated in a big way. The protests and demonstrations have grown and intensified in the wake of his betrayal. His ill-conceived and violent unleashing of the Berkut Special Forces on the demonstrators on the renamed EuroMaidan in Kyiv has lit a fire that he will not be able to extinguish.

Over the past few days, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have taken to the streets, not only in Kyiv but in almost every major city in Ukraine, including the Party of Regions base in the eastern oblasts. Up until last week, the protests have been relatively peaceful, but as the police and Special Forces have started to up the ante with unprovoked violence on the demonstrators, the demonstrators are now starting to fight back and the situation is beginning to escalate to more dangerous levels. On Sunday, over a hundred thousand protesters jammed Kyiv’s Independence Square, the same one that had been so violently cleared just over a day previous, despite the fact that the authorities have banned all mass rallies in the nation’s capital. A large group of demonstrators stormed and occupied Kyiv’s City Hall, just down the street from Independence Square.

As fallout from this, Yanukovych’s support amongst his own cadres is beginning to crumble. A number of his Party of Regions deputies in the Verkhovna Rada have denounced their own government’s actions, and some have even defected including one of his high-profile allies, Inna Bogoslovskaya. Serhiy Lyovochkin, the head of Yanukovych’s administration, resigned in protest against the use of force on EuroMaidan. There are reports also that Kyiv police chief, Valery Koryak has resigned as well.

There is now a call by Opposition leaders to organize a nationwide general strike, which will put additional pressure on the administration, pressure, if effectively executed, could lead to the Government’s collapse. It is clear that the events of the past week have set up a chain of events that could topple Yanukovych’s tottering and highly unpopular regime.

What is most interesting is that this uprising, in contrast to the Orange Revolution, has been far more spontaneous. The Orange Revolution was a relatively highly organized affair led by an identifiable leadership group that included Yulia Tymoshenko, Yuriy Lutsenko, Petro Poroshenko, Viktor Yushchenko and others. The current protests have been more of an impulsive and unstructured affair prompted by genuine and deep popular anger. The current crop of Opposition leaders – Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Vitali Klitschko, Yuriy Lutsenko and Oleh Tyahnybok have been scrambling over the past week to bring control and order to this mass movement. A general strike would certainly be one effective way to coalesce the wide-spread discontent into a focused initiative to topple the Government and bring on new elections. The coming week will be telling in this regard.

The events in Ukraine have spurred protests world-wide, wherever there is a significant Ukrainian diaspora presence. There have been a number of protests at the Ukrainian Consulate in Toronto and the Embassy in Ottawa. Other cities in Canada have followed suit, as have cities in the U.S., South America and all over Europe. The world’s media is starting to pay attention, and a large number of Western governments have voiced their displeasure with the Ukrainian government’s actions over the past few weeks. Once again Ukraine has reached another moment of truth, and we can only hope that truth and justice will prevail.