For Ukraine, 2010 was a year of drastic pro-Russian reorientation in the country’s political vector, fueled by the fateful Kharkiv agreements, regular fights in the parliament, and politically motivated prosecutions.
The year also saw the deadliest car accident in the history of independent Ukraine, while the country’s results in sports were disastrous.
Ukraine is still living with the consequences of 2010.
Yanukovych win
The most dramatic and most important event of 2010 was the election of Viktor Yanukovych as the fourth president of Ukraine. In February, Yanukovych, the twice-convicted felon, defeated Yulia Tymoshenko, Ukraine’s prime minister at that time, in the second round of the presidential elections by only 3.5 percentage points.
In 2004, he almost became Ukraine’s president in a rigged election, but the results were overturned after the popular uprising known as the Orange Revolution, spearheaded by Viktor Yushchenko. The Ukrainian Supreme Court ordered a revote on Dec. 26, won by Yushchenko.
Tymoshenko cried foul after losing, but lost her appeal of the 2010 election results.
The new president, who led the pro-Russian Party of Regions, actively took the reins of power. He created a ruling parliamentary majority illegally, critics argued, by wooing 16 lawmakers away from their factions to join the coalition that also included the Communist Party and Bloc of Volodymyr Lytvyn.
Yanukovych’s cronies filled the Cabinet of Ministers.
He stacked the Constitutional Court with four new appointees, who in October ruled in his favor to change the Constitution to give the president more powers.
As a result, Yanukovych effectively had control of all three branches of government — executive, legislative and judicial.
With his newfound powers, Yanukovych began ruling with greater arrogance. His pit-bull prosecutor Renat Kuzmin, deputy to Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka, started opening up criminal cases against Tymoshenko and her allies, including ex-Ukrainian Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko and Bohdan Danylyshyn, who served as economy minister in 2007–2010.
Selling out interests
In April, Yanukovych and then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, a longtime ally of Vladimir Putin, met in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv and clinched one of the most outrageous deals of the decade.
Russia gave Ukraine a 30% discount on natural gas, but critics say the price was, in fact, merely lowered to the market price that Ukraine should have been paying anyway.
So, despite giving nothing financially, Moscow got a lot in return — an extension of a rental agreement to keep its Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, a Crimean port city, until 2042. Back then, Yanukovych said Ukraine needed this agreement to “normalize relations with Russia and change unfair gas contracts,” which would save the country $40 billion over the next 10 years.
Many experts immediately described the Kharkiv agreements as a betrayal of the country’s national interests with the unconstitutional presence of foreign troops on Ukrainian soil.
The political opposition led by Tymoshenko demanded that Yanukovych be impeached.
At the end of April, before the ratification of the agreement in the Verkhovna Rada, lawmakers pelted parliamentary speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn with raw eggs and smoke boms. Lytvyn sat at the rostrum under two black umbrellas, protected by his bodyguards.
However, the agreements were still ratified.
The “discount” later turned out to be a mirage since Ukraine still had to buy Russian gas at the highest price of any European country.
And the Kharkiv agreements gave Russia the right to have its troops in Crimea, a convenience that helped the Kremlin easily annex the peninsula four years later. Russia unilaterally terminated the infamous agreements after illegally claiming that the peninsula is now part of the Russian Federation.
Wreath hits Yanukovych
Ukrainian and Russian leaders had least 10 bilateral meetings in the first three months of Yanukovych’s rule. Putin, then prime minister but always the real power in the Kremlin, wanted to merge entire sectors of the two nations’ economies — including Ukraine’s Naftogaz and Russia’s Gazprom. Even this was too much for Yanukovych.
In May, Russian President Medvedev flew to Kyiv for a two-day official visit. On the first rainy day, both presidents went to Kyiv’s Glory Park to lay two large wreaths made of pine branches at the Tomb of the Unknown Ukrainian Soldier.
As Yanukovyvch bowed his head to honor fallen soldiers, a gust of wind picked up his wreath and tossed it on his head.
A video of the incident went viral on YouTube. It became so popular that the wreath was even sold in an internet auction 10 days later for $5,300.
Tragedy in Marhanets
In October, the small city of Marhanets in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast became the epicenter of national news.
In the morning, a train hit a passenger bus, killing 45 people and injuring eight others. The victims were heading to work from nearby Nikopol.
It was the deadliest road accident in Ukraine’s history.
The bus, whose driver had clearly violated traffic rules, was pushed 500 meters down the tracks as the train tried to stop.
Among the passengers killed were three children: boys aged seven, 13 and 15.
Sport achievements
In February 2010, almost 50 Ukrainian athletes went to the Canadian city of Vancouver to participate in the 21st Winter Olympic Games.
But the results were worse than expected: not a single medal.
However, in May, Inna Osypenko-Radomska won the gold medal at the World Canoeing Championships in Poznan, Poland. However, four years later, she changed her citizenship to play for Azerbaijan, as Ukraine constantly lacked financing for sports.
