An editorial in the Kyiv Post wrote on Jan. 30: “Yanukovych and his supporters ….. appear to be mobilizing the military, police, and private goons for an all-out assault on Euro-Maidan activists.”
If violent assault is inevitable — as many have expected all along — a reasonable question is: How will “the activists” and the opposition leaders respond?
Expecting a rescue from theWwest is not an option, because it will not come, despite U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry saying in Munich on Feb. 1 that “the US and EU stand with the Ukrainian people.”
Wait to be dispersed or killed?
Nonviolence works only if backed by credible evidence of defensive force — as it
was in the Orange Revolution in 2004. Read my op-ed “Reality blows away a myth” in the Kyiv Post, Dec. 3, 2013, about how President Leonid Kuchma agreed to a deal because his security force and high-ranking military brass had switched sides.
This is something that only the New York Times had published, while virtually all Ukrainian press had pigeonholed it, and does not dare (for unknown reasons) to mention to this day, pretending that “people power” alone did the trick.
Many may be wondering why it’s not working now. The answer is that Yanukovych has a tight leash on his security resources.
Protesters have been able somehow to defend themselves with physical resistance when assaulted by riot police with clubs and sticks. But what about response to gunfire, which appears to be imminent? That question seems to be totally ignored in Ukrainian press.
The Ukrainian Weekly in New Jersey had an editorial on Feb. 2, in which the merits of nonviolent protesting are stressed (when it has a chance of success), while pointing out that the Yanukovych regime is not of the kind that that bends to peaceful protests.
It then concluded: “Hopefully it (the ouster of Yanukovych) will be achieved with minimum casualties.”
How?
This doesn’t sound optimistic. In the same online issue, Zenon Zawada described how Yanukovych cajoled his Regions Party parliamentary deputies to vote for a conditional amnesty resolution on Jan. 28, which authorized a state of emergency (and implicitly the use of force) if the offer is not accepted by protesters.
At this stage it seems reasonable to extrapolate the size of the riot police units the regime has at its disposal to attack the protesters with deadly force, and wonder if the protesters can master anything comparable to defend themselves.
Somebody in Kyiv needs to think about it –without being falsely accused of planning an armed revolt.
Wikipedia encyclopedia has it that Ukraine’s cabinet of ministers in a secret meeting on Jan. 27 had authorized “to increase the size of Berkut riot police sixfold to 30,000.”
If that arithmetic is correct, the size now is about 5,000. It stood at 3,200 in 2007, according to the same source. Not to address this subject is to hide the head in the sand. According to news reports, much of the country is no longer under Yanukovych regime’s control. But the outcome of the ongoing confrontation will be decided in Kyiv.
Boris Danik is a retired Ukrainian-American living in North Caldwell, New Jersey.
