DNIPROPETROVSK, Ukraine - Some 3,000 protesters gathered on March 9 in the center of the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk to celebrate the 200th anniversary of national hero Taras Shevchenko's birth and to protest Russian military aggression in Crimea.
Just two blocks away, a pro-Russian rally thrown by Sevastopol-based Russian Block and local Alliance of Soviet Officers took place. Standing next to the grey, Soviet-style building of Opera Theater, some 1,000 people chanted “Russia!” and “Referendum!” Some 30 minutes after the rally began at noon, the cameramen and reporter of 1+1, one of the TV channels that were loyal to EuroMaidan, were brusquely chased out of the crowd.
Two weeks after Russia-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych fled the nation and Russian soldiers invaded Crimea, a wave of pro-Russian protests occurred in the eastern regions of Ukraine. The protests are being closely watched as Putin’s next pretext for a wider invasion of Ukraine and the introduction of more separatist referendums.
The industrial city of Dnipropetrovsk has a population of one million people, almost all of them Russian-speaking, and was a strategic political, military and economic part of the Soviet Union.
After the EuroMaidan Revolution brought a new government in late February, Dnipropetrovsk’s mayor and some officials quickly quit Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, and a local governor was replaced with billionaire Ihor Kolomoyskiy, the third richest person in Ukraine and a Dnipropetrovsk native. Kolomoyskiy said he took the post to ease separatist tensions.
The pro-Russian rally of March 9 gathered some sincere opponents of the new government and EuroMaidan, many of them ready to seek for better circumstances in Russia.
“We call for union with Russia and for reviving the Soviet administration! Dnipropetrovsk is a southern capital of the Russian empire!” said leader of Alliance of Soviet Officers Viktor Marchenko, addressing the crowd.
At closer look, not all the rally participants supported their leaders’ pro-Russian ideology, but were rather protesting against the “new-old” people in power. Protester Klavdiya Kreshchuk, 53, says she supports EuroMaidan movement, but is unhappy with its results, including the appointment of Kolomoyskiy as Dnipropetrovsk Oblast governor.
“EuroMaidan demanded lustration, but it never happened. Did all those people die so that the same old guys came to power again?” Kreshchuk says.
“We shouldn’t separate from Ukraine and join Russia. But if people from the Right Sector continue helping pro-American people to come to power in Kyiv, we will have no choice but to go to Russia for protection. Russian people are Slavic too, we are one,” the woman added.
Kreshchuk, like some other at the rally, supports federalization of eastern regions of Ukraine. However, some protesters think it’s not enough and stand for separating from Ukraine.
“I support the idea of our (eastern) regions quitting Ukraine and joining Russia. People in Russia live better than we do, I see it looking at my relatives who live in Russia. I hope Crimea will get what it wants and we will be next (to join Russia),” said 54-year-old rally attendee Liudmila Katsapova.
Katsapova gets Hr 1,300 as monthly pension from the state, she said, while her Russian relatives get three times more. Apart from economic reasons she says she has “moral reasons” to want to be in Russia.
“The Russian mentality is closer to us than that of people in western Ukraine,” she said.
Many in Dnipropetrovsk disagree.
“We are one nation, and should remain one,” says Tetiana Romadanova, 43, standing at the anti-war rally in central Dnipropetrovsk and wearing a traditional Ukrainian wreath. “We go to western Ukraine for vacations and speak Russian there and people still are very friendly to us.”
She is outraged with events in Crimea but doesn’t believe Dnipropetrovsk is in real danger of separatist movements.
“There is no way that Russia can do to Dnipropetrovsk what it is doing to Crimea now. People here don’t want Russia and will never allow any separation to happen,” says Romadanova.
Anna Ponomaryova, 22, is more pessimistic.
“If Russia follows its current course, there will be war,” she said, standing at the main square holding a sign that read “Putin, get your hands away.”
“Very few people in Dnipropetrovsk are pro-Russian, and the city will never willingly join Russia. Pro-EU rallies gather much more people than pro-Russian protests,” added Ponomaryova, an anti-war protester.
Kyiv Post editor Olga Rudenko can be reached at [email protected]
