Frustration ran high this week over the inability of Ukraine’s parliament to bring to a vote a law that would allow imprisoned former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko to go to Germany for medical treatment. Her freedom is one of the European Union’s conditions for signing a political and free trade agreement with Ukraine later this month.
With tensions high, opposition faction leaders Arseniy Yatseniuk of Batkivschyna, Vitali Klitschko of UDAR and Oleh Tiahnybok of Svoboda called upon their constituents to take to the streets on Nov. 24. “Only powerful civil resistance,” their joint statement said, could spur action from President Viktor Yanukovych, whose ruling Party of Regions has dragged its feet on the Tymoshenko issue.
But the planned mass demonstration might be too little, too late.
Grassroots movements and mass public demonstrations have been noticeably absent in the run-up to the Eastern Partnership Summit on Nov. 28-29 in Vilnius.
Kyiv has seen nothing remotely resembling the 2004 Orange Revolution, when millions of Ukrainians flooded Maidan Nezalezhnosti and central Kyiv to protest a rigged presidential election. Demonstrators braved extreme cold for weeks then, refusing to leave the city center until Yanukovych’s tainted win was overturned and his rival, Viktor Yushchenko, was sworn into office in January 2005.
No more than 500 people rallied outside the Verkhovna Rada on Nov. 13, the decisive day when parliament was supposed to vote for any of the three proposed laws Ukraine still needs to pass to sign the landmark deal with the EU. “We came for Europe,” said Lidia Sobko, 80, who showed up with a handful of her elderly friends.
A half-dozen Ukrainians the Kyiv Post spoke with this week, including a university professor and a human rights activist, were largely indifferent to the idea of taking to the streets en masse to demand the government act to ensure EU integration. In their place, instead have been numerous open letters, ribbon handouts and billboard campaigns.
Canada-based diaspora groups Ukrainian World Congress and Ukrainian Canadian Congress have sent a handful of letters each, to Yanukovych and the EU alike, urging them to act in order to sign the association agreement.
The Young Democracy Club, an informal group of some 200 Ukrainians here and abroad, most of whom have visited and lived in Western countries and have a good sense of democracy, according to its founder Olha Bosak, a management consultant, penned an open letter this October signed by 65 of its members. In it, the club calls specifically on the EU to act and to sign agreements on association and free trade with Ukraine.
Asked whether the group would participate in a mass demonstration, Bosak said it would not be necessary. “I don’t think we need to go to the streets right now. Ukraine has promised to integrate with the EU and we expect this to happen,” she said.
In October, Ukraine’s opposition factions sponsored the campaign “I choose the EU!” organized by ex-Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko, who was released from prison in April after being pardoned by Yanukovych. He served nearly two and a half years after being convicted for abusing his power while in office in a case that the European Court for Human Rights said was political.
Lutsenko, with Yatseniuk by his side, appeared in the Kyiv metro on Oct. 7 to hand passersby small blue-and-yellow ribbons adorned with Ukraine’s national flag and the stars of the EU. The campaign, the cost of which was estimated to be about $100,000, was also held in other major Ukrainian cities. “We handed out more than a million flags,” said Larysa Sargan, Lutsenko’s spokeswoman, adding that more were needed. “But we at least tried.”
Activists of grassroots campaign “We – Europeans,” comprised of some 20 permanent members and more than 3,000 on Facebook, has staged numerous rallies outside government buildings in Kyiv, monitored Ukraine’s compliance with EU demands and brightly celebrated the Day of Europe. The self-funded group said on Nov. 14 that they are considering whether to join the opposition rally on Nov. 24, or to hold their own on Nov. 17.
More visible than letters and ribbons have been the anti-EU billboards of pro-Russian Ukrainiskiy Vybor (Ukrainian Choice), a group headed by Viktor Medvedchuk, who was head of former President Leonid Kuchma’s administration and is a close friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The group’s billboards, which Artem Bidenko, head at Outdoor Advertising Association of Ukraine, estimates cost some Hr 11 million ($1.4 million) per year, include such messages as “association with the EU leads to growing prices,” “association with the EU will lead to job losses” and “association with the EU means gay marriages,” pictured with its signature thumbs-up at the bottom.
Olena Markosian of Ukrainskiy Vybor said that Medvedchuk finances the campaign, but that 20 staffers manage the group’s multiple online platforms and advertising campaigns. She calls the EU association a “scam.”
“It will be a sharp break of two economies,” she said. “At least 20 million people will lose their jobs.” Her statements go against most economic studies of EU association impact, though.
Markosian attributes recent moves by Ukraine’s leadership away from the EU partially to Ukrainskiy Vybor.
Experts, however, say otherwise.
Taras Berezovets, director of Berta Communications, a political consultancy, said that grassroots movements of all shades, in their meager attempts to both persuade Ukraine and the EU to ink the association and free trade deal and to dissuade it to do so, have been “absolutely ineffective.”
Kyiv Post editor Christopher J. Miller and staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected], respectively.
