You're reading: Anti-government protesters storm the streets of Kyiv

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians gathered again at Kyiv’s central Independence Square on Dec. 8, braving snow flurries and freezing temperatures, to demand the resignation of the country’s president and its government.

Opposition leaders
dubbed the Dec. 8 rally the “march of a million,” though most
estimates put the crowd closer to 500,000. Kyiv police estimated the
size of the group to be about 100,000 people, saying that the city
center simply cannot fit more.

By any count, the
crowd was the largest since the beginning of mass protests more than
three weeks ago, and resembled the protests during the Orange
Revolution of 2004, the biggest peaceful demonstrations Ukraine has
seen in its short history since independence.

“Previous policies
brought Ukraine into decay, so we definitely have to move in another
direction as otherwise it will be a disaster. I was at Maidan in
2004, and now I’m happy to see this new Maidan. I would even sleep
here if my health allows this,” said Liudmyla Kedria, a 50-year-old
Kyivan.

The target of
protesters then and now is Viktor Yanukovych – the nation’s current president –
who for the second time in nine years has earned the ire of millions
of his people. Then it was over a rigged election that spawned the Orange Revolution. Now it is over his
decision last month to abandon negotiations to sign a major trade
and political deal with the European Union.

This time,
protesters were also inflamed by violent police crackdowns against
peaceful demonstrators on Nov. 30 and Dec. 1 that injured dozens, as
well as an off-the-books meeting on Dec. 6 between Yanukovych and his
Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

During a six-hour
meeting in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, the two discussed new
agreements on “trade and economic cooperation in different economic
spheres and preparation to the future Strategic Partnership
Agreement,” according to a statement released by the Russian
president’s press service.

The fact that the
meeting was the fourth of its kind in recent weeks fueled fears that
Yanukovych was preparing to sign up Ukraine to the Kremlin-led
Customs Union that includes Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia, a move
that critics say would place the country again under the rule of
Moscow.

Arseniy Yatseniuk,
leader of the Batkivschyna faction, warned on Dec. 7 that the signing
by Yanukovych of any agreement aimed at joining Ukraine to the
Customs Union would cause a second wave of mass protests here. “No
one will let Yanukovych sell the country,” he added.

Pro-presidential Party of Regions held its own smaller rally in support of the president and government policies. It gathered a few thousand people in Mariinskiy Park.

EuroMaidan lists
its demands

Sunday’s rally
served as a platform for opposition and protest leaders to clarify
their demands.

Former vice deputy
on European accession and leader of New Citizen public campaign Oleh
Rybachuk, told the Kyiv Post that organizers of the EuroMaidan
rallies, as they have been called since they began on Nov. 21, are
asking for the resignations of President Yanukovych and the
government of Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, as well as the end of
persecution of innocent people and the signing of association and
free trade accords with the EU. He also said that organizers, which
include opposition parties, want a roundtable with the government.

Speaking to
protesters from a stage on Independence Square, the daughter of
former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who is serving a seven-year
prison term after being convicted on abuse-of-office charges that
West considers to be politically motivated, read aloud a letter to
protesters from her mother that reiterated the demand for Yanukovych
to resign but rejected the idea of opposition parties negotiating
with the government.

“Yanukovych has
lost legitimacy as president,” the ex-premier wrote. “He is no
longer the president of our state, he is a tyrant.”

For his part, world
champion boxer and leader of opposition party UDAR Vitali Klitschko
highlight the need for justice to be brought to those protesters
injured on Nov. 30 and Dec. 1, when police dispersed crowds using
brutal force.

“We will fight and
we are confident that we will win,” Klitschko added.

Building
barricades

As opposition
leaders spoke at Independence Square, thousands of protesters worked
to build blockades around government buildings nearby in an attempt
to effectively shut them down.

On Hrushevskoho
Street, where the Cabinet of Ministers is located, protesters used
everything they could find, including trees, steel grates, park
benches and concrete planters, to block access to the building.

Some 600 meters up
the road, following a tense standoff with pro-government
demonstrators and police in riot gear, a group of radical protesters
donning armbands with the face of nationalist hero Stepan Bandera in
masks and hard hats erected more barricades.

No government
buildings were seized this time, unlike the previous big rally on
Dec. 1, when protesters took over the Kyiv city hall and the Trade
Union building on Maidan Nezalezhnosti. Hundreds of activists have
since taken up residence inside them, turning them into makeshift
“revolution headquarters,” as a spray painted tag beneath the
official city hall sign indicates.

Investigation
into coup d’état, Lenin falls

Meanwhile
speculations swirled of a possible state of emergency declaration as the
president, thought to be holed up in his palatial estate outside
Kyiv, loses control of the capital.

The National
Headquarters of Resistance (NHR), the coordination body for
EuroMaidan, said they received reliable intelligence from the Dec. 6
meeting between the two presidents in Sochi and are worried that
curfew will be introduced in Ukraine.

“As a condition
for providing aid to the Yanukovych regime, the Kremlin introduced
the condition of “bringing order to Ukraine,” which means
introduction of a state of emergency and cruel suppression of mass
protest actions,” their statement said.

Another indication
came this afternoon, when the State Security Service (SBU), Ukraine’s
KGB-successor agency, said via a statement on its official website
that it was investigating politicians involved in the EuroMaidan
rallies for “attempting to seize state power.”

The NHR said that in
case the president introduces a state of emergency, they will
consider the president, the Cabinet and other power organs
illegitimate and “will be forced to take the responsibility for the
situation in the country.”

It also urged
Ukrainians to come en masse to Kyiv in this case “to defend the
Constitution and fight back.”

Just how quickly
things can swing out of control became clear when at 6 p.m. a radical
group of about 100 protesters managed to pull down a statue to Soviet
leader Vladimir Lenin
that stood on Kyiv’s Shevchenko Blvd,
following a failed attempt a week ago.

The group then took
a sledge hammer to the statue, eventually decapitating it, while
singing the Ukrainian national anthem.

“Yanukovych is
next!” many of the protesters there shouted.

Taras Berezovets, a
political consultant and director of Berta Communications, said that
given the events the forceful removal of protesters from government
buildings and camps near them was not out of the question, but that
the embarrassment of more government sites being kept from operating
might push the president over the edge.

“If (Yanukovych)
feels humiliated, he knows one way only to react – with force,”
Berezovets said.

Kyiv Post editor
Christopher J. Miller can be reached at [email protected].