Hundreds of demonstrators gathered on Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Kyiv on Dec. 24 for a supposedly apolitical rally dubbed “Coffee on Khreshchatyk.”
While the event’s organizers denied its political purpose, they also advertised it as a way to counter the nearly-weekly opposition protests led by President Petro Poroshenko’s critic Mikheil Saakashvili, a former Georgian president turned Ukrainian politician.
The rally, organized mainly via Facebook, was backed and promoted by popular bloggers supporting Poroshenko and the government.
It came exactly two weeks after the March for Impeachment, an anti-Poroshenko protest that gathered, by various estimations, up to 20,000 people and was the largest anti-government protest since the EuroMaidan Revolution that ousted ex-President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 and led to Poroshenko coming to power.
The rally’s purpose to counter anti-government protests led to critics comparing it to Yanukovych’s AntiMaidan movement, which was artificially created to counter the EuroMaidan Revolution.
While some of the organizers and participants claimed that the rally was apolitical, and they were “just drinking coffee with friends,” others didn’t hide their support for Poroshenko and disapproval of the opposition.
The Facebook event created for the rally, called “Coffee on Khreshchatyk”, had a not-so-subtle political message: it urged the participants to bring “Roshen candy” – a reference to Poroshenko’s confectionary business Roshen – and referred to Saakashvili’s opposition protests as “weekly political Bacchanalias.”
The participants interviewed by the Kyiv Post refused to give their last names for fear of reprisals from political opponents.
“(Poroshenko) donates to the army,” Anna, an IT specialist, told the Kyiv Post. “I don’t think he’s doing something criminal now, he’s doing something good for Ukraine.”
However, the woman said that she supported some of the anti-Poroshenko protesters’ demands – the creation of an anti-corruption court, lifting lawmakers’ parliamentary immunity, a fairer election law and a law on impeachment.
Still, she said that she did not support the protest leaders, including Saakashvili, and believed that their actions were harmful.
Pavlo, a middle-aged man, said he had come to “meet his friends” and that the rally was not political. He added, however, that he disliked protests for Poroshenko’s impeachment and had a positive attitude to Poroshenko.
Meanwhile, dozens of Poroshenko’s opponents and Saakashvili supporters came to Maidan Nezalezhnosti to argue and debate with Poroshenko supporters. Some of them brought ironic posters that read “I love offshore firms, corruption, and buckwheat,” referring to the product commonly used to bribe poorer voters during elections in Ukraine, and “Poroshenko is the president of the Universe.”
Activists of the National Corps, a far-right group, protested against both Poroshenko and Saakashvili, bringing a banner that read “Send Misha (Saakashvili) to Georgia and Petya (Poroshenko) to Gagauzia.” The mention of Gagauzia, a region in Moldova, was a reference to Poroshenko’s roots.
Poroshenko was born in the town of Bolgrad in Odesa Oblast and grew up in the city of Bendery in Moldova’s now-breakaway region of Transnistria, with both being not far from Gagauzia.
