You're reading: EuroMaidan needs businesspeople to keep it operating

Ukraine’s business community stepped in to help EuroMaidan early on. Tea packers from eastern Ukraine have sent boxes of tea to help out the protesters. Water bottlers in Kyiv have supplied pure water to use in cooking food for protesters. Others chipped in with ideas and skills to help out civil society and politicians who are trying to structure a mass demonstration for basic rights.

“It is not a good idea to idealize the Maidan. This is like a real society. Not every part of it is positive, but the vast majority is,” says Dmytro Shymkiv, general director of Microsoft Ukraine.

Microsoft is only his day job, however. After the office hours are over, he becomes an ordinary Ukrainian, spending hours on the Maidan, organizing activities removing snow and keeping order.

There are hundreds of people like Shymkiv on the square every day – CEOs, top-flight lawyers, business owners – some of the most highly paid professionals in Kyiv. Each is free to contribute the best way they see fit.

“What is great here on the Maidan is that everyone is equal, you won’t find a hierarchy here,” Shymkiv explains.

Mykola Markevych, president of the Association of Farmers and Private Landowners of Ukraine, comes daily to help organize the food supply. “Farmers are bringing a lot of products and someone has to help them with transportation, with entry permits, with unloading. Someone has to ensure that the food makes it to the Maidan’s kitchens,” Markevych said.

Protesters consume around six tons of bread and more than 1.5 tons of sausages and cheese every day. According to the commandant of the protesters’ headquarters and Batkivshchyna lawmaker Stepan Kubiv, food is the biggest expense for protesters. The Trade Union building, which houses the headquarters, including the biggest kitchen, in the first nine days spent around Hr 230,000 on food and Hr 10,000 on water.

Kubiv is a former senior banker. He worked as the CEO of Western Ukrainian Commercial Bank and then of Kredobank. He says his management skills helped him organize the work of the resistance headquarters, and his business savvy helped mitigate many risks.

For example, in the first days of the Maidan, he recruited or found volunteers to handle various aspects of operation of the Trade Union House, such as food safety, hygiene, medicine, psychological help and so on. He supervises their work.

He, along with other parliament deputies, also thought up the idea to sign a rent agreement with trade unions, the owners of the building, to make sure protesters are not evicted by court order. Moreover, he uses his old negotiating skills to organize services like rubbish collection, which is becoming a problem, and his public speaking skills to talk to journalists who flock to the Trade Union House to see it function.
Others, like Markevych, have smaller roles.

“We are in contact with the headquarters’ kitchen chief. If there is a lack of fat, bread, garlic or meat, I ask farmers to bring this,” Markevych says. His ultimate goal is to achieve European standards in the agricultural sector, which includes rule of law. “The farmers don’t have (government) support for now. But the political association and trade deal with the EU will let us have this,” Markevych says.

Shymkiv supports EuroMaidan for special reasons. “Citizens have the right to express their opinion and nobody should have permission to disperse them at night,” he says.

The Microsoft CEO is also applying his management skills. “My task is to help, to protect and to reduce the number of conflicts. People are tired; they start to discuss, to speak in raised voices. In view of my experience, my task is to extinguish the conflict,” he said.

Aside from management, he helps to organize ordinary life on the square. During one of the coldest nights, he was giving tea to Interior Ministry police forces. “The guys drank tea, gave their phones to be charged, and asked their cigarettes to be lit,” Shymkiv says.

Another businessman from the IT sector, Andrey Kolodyuk, managing partner in AVentures group, spent four days setting up a special IT tent. The idea was to provide consultation to protesters, to give them access to computers and the internet. “During five days around 3,000 people joined us,” Kolodyuk says. He insists that his help is apolitical and the main idea is to help with practical things. For example, his Divan.TV, an interactive television, added hromadske.tv – an online public broadcasting project to the list of channels it rebroadcasts.

Alexander Taran, who works in e-commerce, focuses on providing accurate information about the Maidan to regions in the east. “I want a better future for my children; an adequate, equitable justice system; simplification of bureaucracy, improved living standards,” he says.

Taran also helps out in the kitchen in St. Michael’s Cathedral and financially supports projects he finds interesting or people who try to help Maidan. “I generally do subscribe to those (pro-European) principles that are defended now. I believe that Ukraine is able to exist without entering into alliances,” said.
Most, however, want to help anonymously and the reason is fear of backlash from the authorities, including tax collectors and other government bodies, Kubiv explains.

Kyiv Post writer Mariia Shamota can be reached at [email protected]