As discontent rises with President Viktor Yanukovych, protests led by grassroots activists, enterpreneurs and war veterans are popping up across Ukraine.
While they remain small compared to the Orange Revolution, the question as winter sets in is whether the street actions will grow or dissipate.
Opposition politicians who played a big role in rallying the 2004 uprising are struggling to win back citizens’ trust. They are trying to organize bigger rallies to challenge the Yanukovych administration’s monopolistic grip on power. But they are, for now, mainly being kept on the sidelines.
On the streets
The latest protest was timed for the 7th anniversary of the start of the Orange Revolution, the demonstrations that overturned a presidential election rigged for Yanukovych, who was prime minister then. Viktor Yushchenko came to power during a Dec. 26, 2004 re-vote.
About 2,000 citizens, many of them supporters of imprisoned former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, flocked to the capital’s main square on Nov. 22 after holding a vigil at Lukyanivka jail where Orange Revolution heroine Tymoshenko is imprisoned after being sentenced to seven years in prison for abuse of office. She is appealing what is widely derided as a politically motivated criminal charge.
Undistracted by cold drizzle, protesters gathered for hours, briefly clashing with a similar number of riot police at the scene. Calling for a revolution to save democracy in Ukraine by ousting Yanukovych, the group pledged to stage a bigger rally on Dec. 1.
Demonstrators gather for the 7th anniversary of the Orange Revolution on Nov. 22. Speakers criticized President Viktor Yanukovych and called for a new revolution on Independence Square in Kyiv. (Andrew Kravchenko)
The plan is to join small business activists, Afghan war veterans and Chornobyl cleanup workers, groups that have staged separate, apolitical protests across the nation in recent weeks against everything from unfair taxes to planned cuts in subsidies and pensions.
Experts said crowd sizes, which have averaged between 2,000 and 10,000, are not yet at the critical 50,000-100,000 levels that are needed to stir change. But crowds are expected to build with the frustration of citizens.
“There is huge protest potential in the society now,” said Andriy Bychenko, director of the sociological polling department at Kyiv-based think tank Razumkov.
According to Razumkov surveys, the percentage of Ukrainians willing to defend their rights through peaceful protests has steadily risen from 36 in February to 45 in May and 49 in August, the last month measured.
“These are the people who sympathize with the protests, but usually the number of people who actually come out to protest on the streets is significantly less,” Bychenko explained.
Sidelined opposition
Opposition parties, including Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna party and Arseniy Yatseniuk’s Front of Change, are jockeying to lead the new protest in hopes of boosting their chances in next autumn’s parliamentary election.
But while citizens have become more annoyed at the current government’s policies, they have been hesitant to embrace politicians who have let them down before.
This was the position of a diehard group of activists that led protests against government tax revisions in 2010. Many protests since have remained partially apolitical, with the exception of protests staged by Tymoshenko allies against her imprisonment and broader political persecution.
“Judging from popularity ratings, attempts by politicians to lead the protests fail to help them, and they won’t be able to lead any protest,” said Iryna Bekeshkina, a sociologist at Kyiv-based non-governmental organization Democratic Initiatives Foundation. “No one follows politicians now, because no one trusts them.”
Razumkov’s Bychenko said that because “there is great distrust in politicians as a class,” protests may lose credibility whenever a political force joins or takes over leadership.
Oleh Liashko, an opposition lawmaker, was kicked off the stage by protest organizers during the 2010 anti-tax protests when he was perceived as trying to hijack the movement.
Lawmaker Natalia Korolevska, a Tymoshenko ally and advocate of small business, has also tried to take on a leading role in the protests, albeit with limited success.
Yet, some of Ukraine’s up-and-coming grassroots activists say that cooperation with political parties is essential to defending citizens’ rights.
More than 1,000 riot-control police officers were called to duty on Independence Square and neighboring streets during a Nov. 22 protest. The big TV screen in the background shows members of the national soccer team. (Kostyantyn Chernichkin)
Oleksandr Danylyuk, one of the organizers of anti-tax code protests and other anti-government rallies since, says unity is helpful. In theory, such a balance would help reinvigorate a healthy civic society that spurs accountability.
Danylyuk, who heads the Spilna Sprava (Common Cause) civic movement, said some political parties, including the nationalist Svoboda group, have agreed to help coordinate efforts with his movement. Other forces have not shown serious interest in taking part in street protests, Danylyuk said.
Bekeshkina said apolitical demonstrators will get closer to political groups when a broader appetite for protest develops. Political parties can be tapped for financial help and organizational expertise. Bekeshkina also said that bigger crowds could take to the nation’s streets if the economy slumps further.
So far, the Yanukovych administration is responding with a heavy show of riot police on the streets, strict traffic control and discouragement of the erection of tent cities for overnight encampments.
Courts have also formally banned many protests, including the Nov. 22 one that marked the seventh anniversary of the Orange Revolution.
According to Danylyuk, the authorities are setting up various roadblocks because Yanukovych fears a repeat of the Orange Revolution, which denied him the presidency in 2004 but which would have different aims today.
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Kyiv Post staff writer Yuriy Onyshkiv can be reached at [email protected].
