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LVIV, Ukraine – More than three months into his presidency, Viktor Yanukovych finally made a trip to Lviv, where he is a deeply unpopular and divisive figure for his pro-Russian policies.

More than three months into his presidency, Viktor Yanukovych finally made a trip to Lviv, where he is a deeply unpopular and divisive figure for his proRussian policies.

The result?

He came. He talked. He answered questions. And he probably didn’t change many minds in the unofficial capital of western Ukraine, where less than 10 percent of voters supported his presidential bid.

Olha Balaban is a second-year student at Lviv Politechnic University, where Yanukovych spent two hours of his five-hour visit. Balaban may have summarized the local feeling with these comments: “I didn’t see him. I don’t want to see him. Everything would be fine if we had a normal president.”

As one might expect, more than 1,000 protesters turned up outside Polytechnic University, where a similar number officers, many of whom were helmeted and armed, forcibly pushed the crowd to a side street for their demonstration. There were, unsurprisingly, conflicting reports over whether unruly protesters were to blame for breaking through security lines or whether the officers got overly aggressive and started striking demonstrators with truncheons.

‘I think Lviv Oblast in general positively assesses our work, but the group of people [yelling outside] are paid for political issues.”

– Viktor Yanukovych, president.

In either case, Yanukovych barely noticed the demonstrators before he ended the official part of his visit about 3:30 p.m. on May 27. He suggested the protesters had been hired to cause trouble.

“I think Lviv Oblast in general positively assesses our work, but the group of people [yelling outside] are paid for political issues,” Yanukovych told regional government leaders. “We have a democratic society and this shouldn’t get in the way of our decisions and our attitude toward any regions. Do you agree with me or not?” Members responded: “Yes!”

The biggest news of the day, perhaps, was his announcement that Ukraine will make an official bid to host the Winter Olympics in 2022.

The president arrived at the airport, visited a new soccer stadium under construction to host the Euro 2012 football championships and also spent time at a military academy. The bulk of his visit was taken up by a two-hour discussion that he chaired with regional government officials. Yanukovych brought along many leading members of the Ukrainian government, including Central Bank chairman Volodymyr Stelmakh and Deputy Prime Minister Sergiy Tigipko.

He took four questions from regional journalists. He brushed aside one question about whether his Russian-friendly policies are dividing the nation. Yanukovych has criticized early 20th century Ukrainian nationalist leaders Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych, both popular in western Ukraine for fighting Soviet rule. The president also has agreed to let the Russian Black Sea Fleet remain based on Ukrainian territory until at least 2042, a decision that is an anathema here. His appointment of Dmitry Tabachnyk as education minister continues to rile many, since Tabachnyk has questioned whether Ukraine deserved to be an independent nation and has been especially dismissive of western Ukrainians.

Yanukovych is welcomed with the traditional bread-and-salt ceremony at the Lviv airport.

 

“I will do everything so people in Lviv, Ternopil and other western regions don’t live any worse than anywhere else in Ukraine.”

– Viktor Yanukovych, president.

When asked about the divisive policies, Yanukovych refused to address, much less defend, the policies that anger most people in this part of the nation. He preferred, instead, to talk about economics.

“I will do everything so people in Lviv, Ternopil and other western regions don’t live any worse than anywhere else in Ukraine,” Yanukovych responded, then proceeded to talk about the average salary in the area of $200 monthly. When another journalist asked him to respond to the first question, he walked away.

Yuriy Serotyuk, spokesman for the nationalist group Svoboda (Liberty) group, led by Oleh Tiahnybok, said about two dozen members gathered on the square in front of Politechnic University before Yanukovych arrived to meet the regional governors. They were forcibly removed about 11 a.m. by 50 Berkut riot police.

“The police swept them off the square onto a side street,” Serotyuk said. “Party of Regions supporters were then ushered in to replace them.”
Iryna Sekh, head of Svoboda’s Lviv chapter, was on the square when the police moved in. She said riot police used force to escort her group away from the university. “They used truncheons and beat people. Some fell down, including me. The police actions of the law enforcement authorities are grotesque,” Sekh said.

The Lviv-based Western Information Agency quoted Lviv police chief Ihor Tsykalo as saying that about 1,000 militiamen had been deployed to keep public order. “We didn’t know that the Svoboda people would be so aggressive today,” Tsykalo said.

“Svoboda representatives of provoked an altercation with a youth group and civic organization leaders who brought placards supporting the president,” Denis Kharchuk, Lviv Oblast police spokesman told the Internet site Podrobnosti. “This is why special Berkut riot police were called in to move them off the square to other side of the street.”

Addressing delegates at the regional governmental meeting, Lviv Governor Vasyl Horbal said: “I don’t know against whom the demonstrators are protesting. Maybe they have gathered to learn what economic issues we will resolve today at our meeting.”

Yanukovych’s visit came after he had cancelled two previously scheduled trips.

His arrival left many residents ambivalent, and others worried that despite reassuring rhetoric, the president and his team are set on purposely isolating western Ukraine so they can crack down on the region later.

In the end, the visit is unlikely to do much to win the hearts and minds of western Ukrainians. Yanukovych won the presidency on the strength of his popularity in the densely populated industrial eastern half of the nation. He served as governor of Donetsk Oblast, the most populous one in Ukraine.

“Yanukovych came to power principally with economic themes… We don’t see any real steps from the authorities.”

– Oleksiy Antypovych, Rating sociological group director

Despite a recent survey by the sociological group Rating that shows some 41 percent of Ukrainians nationwide are happy with the president’s work and 38 percent says it’s too early to judge, this part of the nation remains distrustful of Yanukovych.

“Right after the election, in March and April, Viktor Yanukovych’s ratings went up,” said Oleksiy Antypovych, Rating’s director.

Those numbers, which reached a high of 14 percent in April, fell at the end of the month after the president signed the now infamous Kharkiv accord, which gives Ukraine a touted 30 percent discount on natural gas imports in exchange for allowing Russia to continue basing its Black Sea Fleet in Crimea until 2042.

Ceremonies held jointly with Russia and Belarus commemorating the 65-year anniversary of the end of World War II on May 9 added to a decline in the president’s approval ratings.

“Residents of western Ukraine then had a worse attitude of Viktor Yanukovych,” said Antypovych. “This is because of those actions and the president’s politics.”

Even though he is building a top-to-bottom command structure that is certain to be useful in future elections, it is also unlikely Yanukovych will be able to do anything to change his image with western Ukrainians soon, Antypovych said.

In photo at left, a protester draped in a Soviet flag and wearing a symbolic crown holds a placard that reads “Medved(ev) is a tsar” as he joins others in protest against President Viktor Yanukovych, who made his first visit to Lviv on May 27 since becoming president.

“Yanukovych came to power principally with economic themes… We don’t see any real steps from the authorities” to improve the economic situation for average people, he said.

In conversations with a wide variety of individuals in recent days, many said they believe Yanukovych is building a culture of fear that was prevalent during the Soviet period, but began to subside under the administration of former president Viktor Yushchenko.

As evidence that Yanukovych wants to curb democracy, they point to recent crackdowns on the media and this week’s news that the Security Service of Ukraine, the country’s successor to the KGB, visited Boris Gudziak, the rector of Lviv’s Ukrainian Catholic University, ostensibly to warn him that students should not be participating in protests (see related opinion on page 5).

“Our people still have not shed fear from the Soviet period,” said Stanislav Bahniuk, an electrician. “It’s almost genetic. People are waiting for the future. Yanukovych is not the best.”

Vasyl Racevych is an historian with the Institute of Ukrainian Studies at Ukraine’s Academy of Sciences. He also blogs for the popular Zaxid.net website. Racevych said he is concerned about longer-term plans Yanukovych has for the region.

Racevych said he has an uncomfortable feeling that the administration is purposely isolating western Ukraine as a way of bringing some of its more radical forces out of the woodwork. These are groups that do not enjoy widespread support, but can cause trouble. Any trouble they stir up could be a pretext for cracking down on the region to quell nationalist sentiment.

“We don’t see any steps from his side that he wants to get sympathy from western Ukraine. There is a force that wants to create [the image] of western Ukraine as a nation of xenophobes, a pro-Nazi enclave that carries out nationalist actions … whose heroes are the SS Halychyna,” Racevych said, referring to the controversial 14th Galician Waffen-SS Division which was established in the spring of 1943 to fight against the Soviet Union within the framework of the German army during World War II.

“Will it be turned into an enclave like Belfast?” Racevych asked. “We must be very careful here.”


Kyiv Post staff writer Natalia A. Feduschak can be reached at [email protected], while Peter Byrne can be reached at [email protected].