Saturday 30 November 2013
Nov. 30, 2013 - It’s getting ugly…
"It’s getting ugly…" is an informative Facebook post by Mychailo Wynnyckyj (Associate Professor, PhD - Kyiv-Mohyla Academy) on November 30, 2013 at 2:24 PM in Kyiv, some 10 hours after riot police brutally dispersed a peaceful protest at #Euromaidan. Mychailo was born and raised in Canada. He has been living in #Ukraine for many years now and has terrific insights into the current events in Ukraine, which he is able to relate in a unique way that will appeal to Westerners.
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It’s getting ugly…
Last night Ukraine changed forever. This is no longer a post-Soviet state that is trying to “muddle through” economic and political difficulty. This is no longer a country of peaceful demonstrations that periodically supplies the world media with striking images of hundreds of thousands of smiling protestors with Orange or Euromaidan symbolism. This is now a war zone. And the war is between the Ukrainian government and its people. Soon it could degenerate into outright civil war (God knows I hope it doesn't, but ignoring the realities will not make them go away...).
At approximately 4am Kyiv time, riot police savagely attacked and dispersed the remaining protestors on Kyiv’s Independence Square. Approximately 50 people were arrested; many more were brutally beaten. Images of the wounded are currently all over the internet. Videos clearly show that the police were not acting with the intent to disperse; their orders were to clear and occupy the monument in the middle of Independence Square where the protesters had set up their stage, and the center of their operations. The several hundred people who had remained in the square overnight did not resist (many were actually sleeping on makeshift mattresses when the attack began). They were savagely beaten anyway.
During the past 24 hours I have realized how stupid (inept? idiotic?) the current leadership of Ukraine is in fact. Previously (like some EU leaders – I suspect) I had given Yanukovych the benefit of some doubt. Assuming some ability to think strategically, I had believed that Ukraine’s current President was trying to repeat the electoral story of Kuchma in the 1990’s: elected initially thanks to popularity in Ukraine’s Russian speaking east, then re-elected five years later by a respectable margin with support from all regions (the fact that Kuchma’s second term was a disaster is not relevant to his very real electoral victories). Had Yanukovych signed the EU Association Agreement in Vilnius yesterday, his chances of re-election in 2015 would have been quite good: he would have maintained some support in the east while gaining significant support in the west. After last night’s violence, his chances of legitimately winning an election are now nil.
But at this point it is clear that Yanukovych has no intention of even trying to win a fair vote in 2015. Ukraine is today ruled by a would-be dictator who is attempting to consolidate control over his stream of booty by using force against social groups that he considers marginal. He is wrong. The students who gathered on EuroMaidan in Kyiv do not represent a marginal group. The young people on Independence Square that I spoke with yesterday, and the people currently gathering in front of Mykhailivsky church are intelligent, erudite, and deeply patriotic. They represent the epitome of middle class European values: they want to live “normal” lives; they want careers (not wealth); they want to work in stable environments; they want to travel freely; they want to raise their children (or future children) in relative safety; they want to be proud of their country. Put simply, they want the personal dignity that life in a European country should offer. And the further west one travels from Kyiv, the more widespread these wants are.
That’s the social fact that Yanukovych does not understand. Putin could disperse crowds on Manezhnaya square in Moscow because the opposition demonstrators did not represent mainstream views in Russia. Force can be used to stifle dissent only if a significant group of citizens believes that the state’s monopoly on the use of force is legitimate. In countries such as Lybia, Egypt, Tunisia, and others where popular revolutions have toppled entrenched governments, the people simply rejected the legitimacy of their rulers. In Kyiv at least, it is difficult to find someone who recognizes the legitimacy of Yanukovych.
On the other hand, it should be said that few among the core of Euromaidan protesters support the opposition party leaders (another parallel with the Arab Spring countries). Although the threesome of Klitshko-Yatseniuk-Tiahnybok represents an organized alternative to Yanukovych, the protesters on Kyiv’s streets are just as skeptical of them as they are of organized politics generally. In neighboring Belarus, the lack of a popular alternative to Lukashenko is often cited as the reason that country has sunk into long-term isolation and authoritarian rule. The current protests in Ukraine show that (as in Arab countries) a single leader is not an absolute necessity for a social movement to gain widespread appeal.
I suspect that there is a basic fact that Ukraine’s president does not understand: Ukraine is not Belarus, and he is not Lukashenko. Unlike the Belarusian leader, Yanukovych is deeply unpopular in the country’s capital, and hated in the west of the country; his image in the industrialized east of the country as a “local boy who made it” has been seriously undermined by the lack of expected improvement in the material wellbeing of his electorate during the past 3 years of his presidency. To become a dictator, one needs a concentrated base of support. Yanukovych simply doesn’t have one. Incidentally, although wealthy, Lukashenko has not been as blatent as his Ukrainian counterpart in amassing wealth, and he seems more restrained when it comes to ordering the use of force.
The riot police who cleared Independence Square last night were bussed into the capital from the eastern and southern regions of the country (unconfirmed reports claim they came from Crimea). According to sources within Kyiv’s police force, these imports had spent the previous 4 days living in the very buses that had brought them in – a fact that may have added fuel to their lust for violence during the raid on EuroMaidan. Local Kyiv-based police officers have spent the past week under orders to guard the perimeter around the protesters during 12-hour shifts in freezing temperatures; often without food; sometimes enduring verbal abuse from demonstrators. The salary of a Kyiv-based police officer does not exceed 2200 hryvnia (approx. 200 euro) per month. Not surprisingly, many are asking whose interests they are in fact protecting… Given that both the imports and the locals have guns, and that their interests do not coincide, life in Kyiv is beginning to get a little scary.
Incidentally, reports have just surfaced that the local police in Lviv have refused to provide logistical support to "Berkut" riot police that were bussed in from other regions to disperse demonstrators in the western Ukrainian Euromaidan.
Last night before the riot police attacks in Kyiv, Deputy PM Vilkul and Foreign Minister Kozhara, speaking on the ShusterLive political talk show, were both hopeful that a deal could still be signed in 2014, and alluded that this would be in candidate Yanukovych’s interests in the run-up to the 2015 Presidential race. That same TV program was abruptly interrupted and taken off the air for over an hour (apparently due to a “technical fault”) when Ukraine’s three opposition party leaders attempted to enter the studio. When the broadcast was resumed, the host was clearly shaken. Savik Shuster left Ukraine today for Italy, and it is unclear whether his regular Friday evening live broadcast will be aired next week.
Today, Serhiy Lyovochkin, the head of Yanukovych’s administration, resigned in protest against the use of force on EuroMaidan. I would not be surprised if other government officials followed his lead. Any illusions as to the real essence of Yanukovych’s politics were dashed last night – forever.
Naively, during the past 3 years, there have been several occasions when I questioned the simplistic portrayal of Yanukovych as a thug (pirate?). Several people who work in his administration are acquaintances and (former?) friends. In 2012 I personally took part in a working group organized by Prime Minister Azarov called upon to draft a new Law on Higher Education for Ukraine – how silly I was to believe that this government could actually be attempting EU-oriented reforms! Clearly I am not alone in feeling duped.
Former Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko (one of the leaders of both the Orange Revolution protests in 2004, and organizer of the “Ukraine without Kuchma” demonstrations in 2001, who was jailed in 2011 and amnestied by Yanukovych last year) has not tired of repeating: “the use of force by the state must be countered only by peaceful protest”. This is excellent advice, and I sincerely hope that it will be followed. But we need to realize that a thug understands only a thug’s language. International sanctions may help to isolate Yanukovych, but in the end, it will probably take more radical (ugly?) action to displace him. A general strike may be an answer.
More street protests are sure to come – and more blood…God help us!
Mychailo Wynnyckyj PhD
Kyiv-Mohyla Academy
Wednesday 27 November 2013
Nov. 27, 2013 - 36 hours to go – will Yanukovych sign?
Begin forwarded message:
From: Mychailo Wynnyckyj
(Михайло Винницький)
Sent: Nov. 27, 2013 @ 17:16 EST
To: [GROUP]
Subject: 36 hours before scheduled signing in Vilnius
(Please distribute as appropriate.)
36 hours to go – will he sign?
Since yesterday I have become more pessimistic about the results of the upcoming Vilnius summit. In my opinion, the odds of a signature on the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement (which includes a pact on Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade) now seem to have dropped to about 3:1 against. A deal is not out of the question, but EU leaders need to come to Vilnius in the same haggling mindset as Yanukovych. The price of a deal is probably about 2-3 billion euros per year over the next few years. Is this too high? By tomorrow we should know…
Sadly, Ukraine’s President seems to be convinced that EU Association is about money. Tonight, Ukraine’s TV channels aired an extensive interview/discussion between Yanukovych and 5 journalists (excerpts were made available on websites this morning) during which he angrily condemned the EU for its laughable offer of 610 million euro per year in aid in the event of a deal. Apparently this figure represents the amount offered by the EU to Ukraine as a stabilization fund to be made available in conjunction with an IMF stand-by loan agreement. For Yanukovych, this amount of money is like offering “a little bit of candy in a nice wrapper” - an insult to a “serious country”. During the televised program, the President repeated the phrase “defending our own interests” several times with respect to his motives for signing or not signing any agreement with the EU – clearly pointing to quantifiable economic benefits to the nation as the price for his signature on the Association Agreement.
Unlike Yanukovych, the protestors on the “Euromaidans” of Ukraine’s cities understand the Agreement not as an economic deal, but rather as a proclamation of common values, and a declaration of Ukraine’s European identity. Accordingly, for them, the question of how much money Ukraine’s eurointegration will cost is irrelevant. To some extent this non-materialist (romantic?) paradigm reflects the youthful exuberance of the students gathered in Kyiv and in other centers, but it also reflects a very real social cleavage between Ukraine’s leaders and its people.
Clearly many of the students who marched to Independence Square today from Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, from Kyiv State University, and from Kyiv Politechnic Institute (the country’s 3 top-ranked universities) were motivated by a desire to live through their own version of a kind of Orange Revolution (most were too young to have taken an active part in events in 2004). But many others - particularly those who have traveled to the EU for studies – are genuinely attracted by the egalitarian, communitarian social model of Europe.
In his televised address to the nation on Monday, Yanukovych proclaimed his unwavering belief in a “Ukrainian dream”, and his desire to build “a society of equal opportunity”. Even if one discounts the lack of credibility of Ukraine’s current President with respect to such visionary proclamations, the materialism of his discourse sounds hollow to protesters gathering in sub-zero temperatures to demand a deal in Vilnius. Tonight, for over an hour, the President’s discussion with TV journalists touched on gas price negotiations with Putin, Ukraine’s trade volumes with Russia and the EU, comparative macroeconomic indicators, import tariffs, aircraft assembly, unemployment levels, pensions, salaries, prices… Values such as social justice, freedom of movement, expression, and association, and rules-based government (not surprisingly) were not mentioned by the President.
Sadly, Yanukovych’s materialist paradigm is irreconcilable with the post-materialist worldview of Euromaidan’s protesting students, and is probably incompatible with the frames of reference of the EU leaders currently on their way to Vilnius. If a deal is to be reached between these two worldviews, one side needs to give way for the sake of the greater good. One option may be to sign an Association Agreement without a Free Trade Agreement. Another option may be to increase the EU’s economic aid offer to Ukraine (essentially “buying” Yanukovych’s signature), and then to use the financial “stick” as a means of ensuring the Ukrainian government keeps its promises after the summit becomes history. Clearly neither option is attractive to EU leaders not accustomed to haggling over the price of joining the European family.
In Vilnius, the EU’s leaders not only face a difficult decision with respect to values, they must also deal with the problem of the persona of Yanukovych – a counterpart that few of them find personally amenable. By supporting the Ukrainian people’s desire to join Europe’s community of values, they risk allowing the country’s President (the embodiment of the antithesis of such values) to return from Vilnius as a hero with a strong chance of re-election in 2015. On the other hand, if the Ukrainian people’s aspirations for a European future are denied in Vilnius, the EU risks social unrest on its borders. Ukraine is not Belarus, and Yanukovych is not Lukashenka, so an authoritarian clamp-down (to be followed by EU isolation) is unlikely. This country will not tolerate dictatorship, but the EU’s most populous eastern neighbor may yet succumb to its regional, generational, and linguistic cleavages. One shudders to imagine the human losses of such a scenario.
Yesterday I posted a note analyzing current events in Ukraine in which I placed 3:1 odds in favor of a successful conclusion to the Vilnius summit. That post generated two mutually contradictory reactions: a) I was accused of wishful thinking by people who see Yanukovych as the embodiment of evil, surrounded by essentially stupid advisors who could not possibly have crafted a plan to improve the President’s bargaining position with the EU and simultaneously his chances of re-election; b) I was accused of pessimism because I dared to mention that the current situation could potentially lead to violence on the streets, widespread social unrest, and even Ukraine’s possible disintegration if the Association Agreement is not signed. On the one hand, I guess, I was/am too optimistic, and simultaneously too pessimistic.
I remain hopeful that the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement will in fact be signed on Friday in Vilnius. On her birthday, Yulia Tymoshenko, whose continued imprisonment was considered only a week ago to be a major obstacle to any deal, today issued a statement asking EU leaders to swallow their distaste, to ignore her confinement, and to sign the deal for the sake of the Ukrainian people. For the EU this is clearly a difficult pill to swallow, but the alternative is much worse…
According to news reports from Europe, the draft of the final communique from Vilnius (to be finalized at the Summit) still includes a reference to a signed Association Agreement with Ukraine. European Commissioners Fule and Ashworth have both stated that the Agreement remains on the agenda of the Vilnius meeting. Clearly this is a polite way of saying that the decision is up to Yanukovych. Today, Ukraine’s President publicly broadcast that he is willing to bargain and haggle. That may be disgraceful (perhaps even disgusting from a European perspective), but it’s a fact that leaders in Vilnius must now deal with.
One can only hope that those who proclaim their belief in European values, and are called upon to lead their nations with values as guides for their decisions, will heed the calls of the young people demonstrating their belief in these same values on the freezing squares of Kyiv and Ukraine’s other cities. Distasteful as a deal may be for EU leaders today, it is these young Ukrainians who will benefit in the long term. And they are worth it!
Mychailo Wynnyckyj PhD
Kyiv-Mohyla Academy
Tuesday 26 November 2013
Nov. 26, 2013 - Will Yanukovych sign the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement?
Begin forwarded message:
From: Mychailo Wynnyckyj
(Михайло Винницький)
Sent: Nov. 26, 2013 @ 08:40 EST
To: [GROUP]
Subject: 36 hours before scheduled signing in Vilnius
(Please distribute as appropriate.)
Will he sign?
In my opinion, as of 3pm Kyiv time on Tuesday November 24 (approx.. 70 hours before the start of the Vilnius summit) the odds are 3:1 in favor. So at this point – I say “yes”. My reasons, and analysis of current events in Kyiv are laid out below.
First a recap of what the newswires and social media have been broadcasting for the past 4 days. Last Thursday, a somewhat surprising announcement appeared on the website of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine: apparently, in secret session, the government of Prime Minister Azarov voted to cease all preparations for the signing of the Association Agreement (which includes a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade pact - DCFTA) with the EU. Given that according to Ukraine’s Constitution, foreign affairs are the exclusive domain of the President, the fact that such an announcement should be posted on the Cabinet of Minister’s website, at a time when President Yanukovych was on a state visit to Austria, is suspect at least. But more on that point later…
The reaction to the announcement was swift. On Friday evening I participated in a demonstration of about 5000 students in Lviv (I was on a teaching assignment in western Ukraine Thursday to Saturday), and apparently a similar number of young people gathered on Ukraine’s central “maidan” – Independence Square in Kyiv. Smaller groups began gathering on city squares in other regional centers. The organizers called for a mass demonstration of people power – untarnished by politics, and without official participation of political parties. To be fair however, the Lviv students’ initiative was immediately and publicly supported by Ivan Vakarchuk, the rector of Lviv State University (former Minister of Education), by Bishop Borys Gudziak, the President of Ukrainian Catholic University, and by the city’s mayor Andriy Sadovyj. Although the student initiative was clearly a grassroots campaign organized primarily through social media, throughout western Ukraine (similar demonstrations were organized in Ivano-Frankivsk and Ternopil), the students received swift and vocal support from local authorities. This was not the case in Kyiv, and other eastern Ukrainian cities (e.g. all public gatherings have been banned in Kharkiv – officially due to a risk of flu epidemic).
In a direct parallel with the Arab spring, the current Ukrainian demonstrations were initially called by young activists using social media. In each case the instructions were clear: no party flags or other political party symbolism.
The romanticism of the demonstrators lasted for a few days, and then on Sunday, the organizational machines of Ukraine’s opposition parties kicked in. In the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, the right-wing Svoboda party attempted to take over the central square from the students, but the politicos were pushed back, leaving the area in front of the Shevchenko monument under the control of grassroots organizers. Clearly the widespread disillusionment with politics in general, and in political parties in particular (irrespective of their “color”) has resulted in a desire to distance this protest from the party establishment. Although Svoboda is clearly in opposition to the Yanukovych regime in Kyiv, the right-wing party currently has a majority in the Lviv city council, and so over time has lost part of its anti-system association.
The scene in Kyiv was different: Svoboda activists quickly took center-stage in the Independence Square protests, and although their flags were not necessarily prominent, their leaders and activists were clearly in control. Andriy Iliyenko, the 26-year old Parliamentary deputy from Svoboda (representing a constituency in the city of Kyiv), and the 29-year old Yuriy Levchenko, the Svoboda’s candidate in the upcoming run-off election in one of Kyiv’s districts, have been prominent and vocal on Independence Square. Sunday’s clashes with police in front of the Cabinet of Ministers building are rumored to have been instigated by Svoboda, and last night (Monday) a Svoboda activist who had participated in the previous night’s violence was arrested and taken to the Pechersk police station. A scuffle erupted in front of the police station when Iliyenko and Levchenko brought about 100 of their followers there (approx. 30 minutes walk from the city centre) just before midnight in an attempt to free their comrade.
But the political story of the current protests is not just about Svoboda. The other two opposition parties (Batkivshchyna – led by Arseniy Yatseniuk, and founded by Yulia Tymoshenko; and Udar – led by Vitaliy Klychko) have also been active, but somewhat subdued. It is becoming increasingly clear that Ukraine’s opposition leaders were caught completely off guard by the government’s announcement of a policy-about-face on Thursday. To their credit, the opposition parties organized a mass rally on Kyiv’s European Square (approx. 300 meters from Independence Square) on Sunday that drew upwards of 100 000 people. The mood on the square on Sunday was festive with popular singers and bands playing both recent hymns and music inspired by the 2004 Orange Revolution on the stage. My wife and I attended the rally with our four small children, and felt absolutely safe – a kind of festive carnival with Ukrainian, EU and party political flags everywhere.
However, in a testament to the fact that this was NOT 2004, when every move of the protestors on the streets was organized, preplanned, and controlled, at around 3pm, Oleksandr Turchynov (one of the leaders of Batkivshchyna, and a close confidant of the jailed Yulia Tymoshenko) called on the crowd on European Square to march towards the Cabinet of Ministers building and then on to the Presidential Administration. Based on the reaction of the demonstration’s “speaker” this was clearly not a planned action. Immediately after Turchynov, the speaker asked Petro Poroshenko (a former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Economics, and owner of Roshen chocolates and Channel 5 TV) to take the stage. Poroshenko is a charismatic speaker, so a part of the crowd remained on the Square to hear him speak, but a large group carrying party flags began to move towards the government buildings where they were met by riot police with tear gas. The skirmishes were minor and localized, but nevertheless, they occurred. Unlike the Orange Revolution of 2004, this time, demonstrations of “people power” Ukrainian style have not been bloodless.
Last night (Monday), yet more evidence surfaced demonstrating the dangerously spontaneous nature of the protest actions. According to eye witnesses (I was not on European Square at the time), Tetiana Chornovil, a vocal opposition journalist who unsuccessfully ran for Parliament in the last election, discovered a white van parked near the center of the demonstration. Inside, were several SBU (Ukrainian Secret Service) agents with electronic eavesdropping equipment. The surrounding crowd (estimated at 30-40 thousand) became enraged, and started beating the van with rocks – Chornovil herself apparently smashed the sunroof. Riot police were called in to rescue the secret service agents, and according to the opposition parties, were able to successfully retrieve them from the van with the help of Yatseniuk (Batkivshchyna leader) and Tiahnybok (leader of Svoboda). According to a source within the riot police squad sent to the scene, the two party leaders were actually orchestrating the whole operation – playing for the cameras, and provoking the crowd against the police officers.
Whichever side of the story one believes, it is clear that the ongoing street demonstrations in Kyiv are not well organized. If in 2004, within the first two days the tent city on Kyiv’s main square had established a clear chain of command, food supply, and security hierarchy (including, according to some accounts a communications link with the secret service and police), this time only food and blankets are plentiful in the protesters’ tents. Last night’s events have now resulted in a semblance of order in the small tent city on European Square, and the students on Independence Square (a much smaller number of radicalized youth) have retreated to the relative safety of the central monument, on the steps of which they have set up a kind of “open microphone” from which anyone can speak their mind. This morning, about 70 people were milling around on the square listening to poetry, drinking tea and trying to keep warm. Although the square is still accessible, this group of protestors is practically surrounded by a ring of police dressed in riot gear – standing at approx. 5 meter intervals.
Today Kyiv-Mohyla Academy’s students announced a 4-day strike, and marched across town to join their counterparts at Kyiv’s much larger Shevchenko State University. Officially both universities are still holding classes, but students are not attending. Instead they plan to spend the next few days on Kyiv’s squares encouraging the President to sign a pact with the EU. The flywheel of mass protests seems to be gaining momentum…
And now the main question: will President Yanukovych sign the DCFTA and Association Agreement with the EU at the Eastern Partnership Summit in Vilnius on Friday? At this point I am still more convinced that he will than otherwise (although as time passes more doubts begin to creep into my head). Indeed, when I first heard the Cabinet of Ministers’ announcement last Thursday, I was convinced (and I still want to believe) that this was actually a well planned ruse put together by Yanukovych’s closest advisors. They anticipated street protests, and understood from the very beginning, that if the cards are played right, their boss may yet emerge from this seemingly chaotic situation as the popular hero – the man who understands the will of the people, and therefore deserves to be re-elected as the whole nation’s President in 2015. At least that’s the image that they will try to present both to Ukraine’s voters and to the international community.
Let me explain: Yanukovych’s main goal for the summit was to get the Agreement signed with the EU, and at the same time to avoid releasing his archrival, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, from jail. Clearly there are also economic concerns associated with a Ukraine-EU deal: the likely deterioration of trade relations with Russia in the immediate aftermath of a signature in Vilnius will hurt Ukraine’s large industrial concerns, primarily located in the east of the country which is Yanukovych’s traditional base of support. Nevertheless, these economic problems could be overcome if the IMF and EU agree to provide bridge financing to Ukraine. And with a Presidential election scheduled for 2015, the political benefits of an Association Agreement to Yanukovych far outweigh any short term economic problems: having signed the agreement, Yanukovych could legitimately position himself as the President of the Whole Nation (as Kuchma once did), mitigating his current image as the “President from Donetsk”, and taking away an important political argument from his opposition opponents.
Now let’s play out a scenario: the President’s advisors receive an instruction from the boss – to improve the President’s popularity. At the same time they understand Yanukovych’s fear of Tymoshenko – an emotion that is both rational, given her prowess as a political opponent, and vengeful – Tymoshenko is seen as the initiator of criminal investigations against the losers of the Orange Revolution (primarily from Donetsk) during 2005-2010. But the EU has been clear that one of its main demands (to be met before any agreement is signed) is Tymoshenko’s release – at least for health reasons, if not an outright amnesty. So, the President’s advisors seem to have a problem… But what if the Cabinet of Ministers were to announce a “cessation of preparations” to sign the Agreement (officially) without the President’s prior approval? That would surely spark street protests (N.B. the former leader of the radical wing of the Orange Revolution “Pora”, Vlad Kaskiv, who was the primary organizer of students in November 2004 now works for Yanukovych, and is a close personal friend of the Serhiy Liovochkin – the head of the Presidential Administration). If the President were to react positively to the street protests, and to announce on the eve of the Vilnius summit that he actually intends to sign, Yanukovych could claim that was “duped” by his Prime Minister. Clearly Prime Minister Azarov would have to resign at that point, but according to analysts close to the government, Azarov’s resignation has recently been seen as just a matter of time: deputy PM Arbuzov (former chairman of Ukraine’s National Bank and close confidant of Yanukovych) has been preparing for the top executive post for months. If the resignation of the government, and the “heroic” announcement by Yanukovych of his support for the demonstrators were to occur on the immediate eve of the Vilnius summit, the President would be able to legitimately claim that the Parliament did not have sufficient time to pass a law that would allow Tymoshenko to be released. He would then ask Ukraine’ s EU partners for an extension with respect to this final demand. Meanwhile Tymoshenko would be obliged to also make a gesture to her political supporters on the streets, and to ask the EU to sign the Agreement for the benefit of the whole Ukrainian people, irrespective of her own fate. In such a scenario, the EU would almost certainly sign, and Yanukovych would return from Vilnius as a national hero…
During the next 3 days we will see whether such a scenario will actually be played out or not. Many of my friends in Kyiv tell me that I give too much credit to Yanukovych and his advisors: apparently Ukrainians do not believe that their political leaders are smart enough to plan such a complex series of events. My answer to such criticism is the following: I would like to believe that Ukraine’s political leaders are smart enough to plan and execute such a scenario because the alternative is just too scary. If Yanukovych does not sign the DCFTA and Association Agreement with the EU at the Eastern Partnership Summit in Vilnius on Friday, Ukraine is destined to become a place of protest, violence, and eventually revolution during the next 12-18 months. The fact that popular mobilization has been accompanied by sporadic violence during the past few days is proof of the fact that this time the revolution will not be bloodless.
Ukrainians – particularly the country’s youth – have lost all faith in their politicians. But they have not lost the will fight for better lives for themselves, and their children. This ideal (at the moment) is embodied by the EU.
Yanukovych can either recognize that Ukrainians are European, or they will sweep him away. There is no other choice.
Mychailo Wynnyckyj PhD
Kyiv-Mohyla Academy
From: Mychailo Wynnyckyj
(Михайло Винницький)
Sent: Nov. 26, 2013 @ 08:40 EST
To: [GROUP]
Subject: 36 hours before scheduled signing in Vilnius
Will he sign?
In my opinion, as of 3pm Kyiv time on Tuesday November 24 (approx.. 70 hours before the start of the Vilnius summit) the odds are 3:1 in favor. So at this point – I say “yes”. My reasons, and analysis of current events in Kyiv are laid out below.
First a recap of what the newswires and social media have been broadcasting for the past 4 days. Last Thursday, a somewhat surprising announcement appeared on the website of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine: apparently, in secret session, the government of Prime Minister Azarov voted to cease all preparations for the signing of the Association Agreement (which includes a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade pact - DCFTA) with the EU. Given that according to Ukraine’s Constitution, foreign affairs are the exclusive domain of the President, the fact that such an announcement should be posted on the Cabinet of Minister’s website, at a time when President Yanukovych was on a state visit to Austria, is suspect at least. But more on that point later…
The reaction to the announcement was swift. On Friday evening I participated in a demonstration of about 5000 students in Lviv (I was on a teaching assignment in western Ukraine Thursday to Saturday), and apparently a similar number of young people gathered on Ukraine’s central “maidan” – Independence Square in Kyiv. Smaller groups began gathering on city squares in other regional centers. The organizers called for a mass demonstration of people power – untarnished by politics, and without official participation of political parties. To be fair however, the Lviv students’ initiative was immediately and publicly supported by Ivan Vakarchuk, the rector of Lviv State University (former Minister of Education), by Bishop Borys Gudziak, the President of Ukrainian Catholic University, and by the city’s mayor Andriy Sadovyj. Although the student initiative was clearly a grassroots campaign organized primarily through social media, throughout western Ukraine (similar demonstrations were organized in Ivano-Frankivsk and Ternopil), the students received swift and vocal support from local authorities. This was not the case in Kyiv, and other eastern Ukrainian cities (e.g. all public gatherings have been banned in Kharkiv – officially due to a risk of flu epidemic).
In a direct parallel with the Arab spring, the current Ukrainian demonstrations were initially called by young activists using social media. In each case the instructions were clear: no party flags or other political party symbolism.
The romanticism of the demonstrators lasted for a few days, and then on Sunday, the organizational machines of Ukraine’s opposition parties kicked in. In the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, the right-wing Svoboda party attempted to take over the central square from the students, but the politicos were pushed back, leaving the area in front of the Shevchenko monument under the control of grassroots organizers. Clearly the widespread disillusionment with politics in general, and in political parties in particular (irrespective of their “color”) has resulted in a desire to distance this protest from the party establishment. Although Svoboda is clearly in opposition to the Yanukovych regime in Kyiv, the right-wing party currently has a majority in the Lviv city council, and so over time has lost part of its anti-system association.
The scene in Kyiv was different: Svoboda activists quickly took center-stage in the Independence Square protests, and although their flags were not necessarily prominent, their leaders and activists were clearly in control. Andriy Iliyenko, the 26-year old Parliamentary deputy from Svoboda (representing a constituency in the city of Kyiv), and the 29-year old Yuriy Levchenko, the Svoboda’s candidate in the upcoming run-off election in one of Kyiv’s districts, have been prominent and vocal on Independence Square. Sunday’s clashes with police in front of the Cabinet of Ministers building are rumored to have been instigated by Svoboda, and last night (Monday) a Svoboda activist who had participated in the previous night’s violence was arrested and taken to the Pechersk police station. A scuffle erupted in front of the police station when Iliyenko and Levchenko brought about 100 of their followers there (approx. 30 minutes walk from the city centre) just before midnight in an attempt to free their comrade.
But the political story of the current protests is not just about Svoboda. The other two opposition parties (Batkivshchyna – led by Arseniy Yatseniuk, and founded by Yulia Tymoshenko; and Udar – led by Vitaliy Klychko) have also been active, but somewhat subdued. It is becoming increasingly clear that Ukraine’s opposition leaders were caught completely off guard by the government’s announcement of a policy-about-face on Thursday. To their credit, the opposition parties organized a mass rally on Kyiv’s European Square (approx. 300 meters from Independence Square) on Sunday that drew upwards of 100 000 people. The mood on the square on Sunday was festive with popular singers and bands playing both recent hymns and music inspired by the 2004 Orange Revolution on the stage. My wife and I attended the rally with our four small children, and felt absolutely safe – a kind of festive carnival with Ukrainian, EU and party political flags everywhere.
However, in a testament to the fact that this was NOT 2004, when every move of the protestors on the streets was organized, preplanned, and controlled, at around 3pm, Oleksandr Turchynov (one of the leaders of Batkivshchyna, and a close confidant of the jailed Yulia Tymoshenko) called on the crowd on European Square to march towards the Cabinet of Ministers building and then on to the Presidential Administration. Based on the reaction of the demonstration’s “speaker” this was clearly not a planned action. Immediately after Turchynov, the speaker asked Petro Poroshenko (a former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Economics, and owner of Roshen chocolates and Channel 5 TV) to take the stage. Poroshenko is a charismatic speaker, so a part of the crowd remained on the Square to hear him speak, but a large group carrying party flags began to move towards the government buildings where they were met by riot police with tear gas. The skirmishes were minor and localized, but nevertheless, they occurred. Unlike the Orange Revolution of 2004, this time, demonstrations of “people power” Ukrainian style have not been bloodless.
Last night (Monday), yet more evidence surfaced demonstrating the dangerously spontaneous nature of the protest actions. According to eye witnesses (I was not on European Square at the time), Tetiana Chornovil, a vocal opposition journalist who unsuccessfully ran for Parliament in the last election, discovered a white van parked near the center of the demonstration. Inside, were several SBU (Ukrainian Secret Service) agents with electronic eavesdropping equipment. The surrounding crowd (estimated at 30-40 thousand) became enraged, and started beating the van with rocks – Chornovil herself apparently smashed the sunroof. Riot police were called in to rescue the secret service agents, and according to the opposition parties, were able to successfully retrieve them from the van with the help of Yatseniuk (Batkivshchyna leader) and Tiahnybok (leader of Svoboda). According to a source within the riot police squad sent to the scene, the two party leaders were actually orchestrating the whole operation – playing for the cameras, and provoking the crowd against the police officers.
Whichever side of the story one believes, it is clear that the ongoing street demonstrations in Kyiv are not well organized. If in 2004, within the first two days the tent city on Kyiv’s main square had established a clear chain of command, food supply, and security hierarchy (including, according to some accounts a communications link with the secret service and police), this time only food and blankets are plentiful in the protesters’ tents. Last night’s events have now resulted in a semblance of order in the small tent city on European Square, and the students on Independence Square (a much smaller number of radicalized youth) have retreated to the relative safety of the central monument, on the steps of which they have set up a kind of “open microphone” from which anyone can speak their mind. This morning, about 70 people were milling around on the square listening to poetry, drinking tea and trying to keep warm. Although the square is still accessible, this group of protestors is practically surrounded by a ring of police dressed in riot gear – standing at approx. 5 meter intervals.
Today Kyiv-Mohyla Academy’s students announced a 4-day strike, and marched across town to join their counterparts at Kyiv’s much larger Shevchenko State University. Officially both universities are still holding classes, but students are not attending. Instead they plan to spend the next few days on Kyiv’s squares encouraging the President to sign a pact with the EU. The flywheel of mass protests seems to be gaining momentum…
And now the main question: will President Yanukovych sign the DCFTA and Association Agreement with the EU at the Eastern Partnership Summit in Vilnius on Friday? At this point I am still more convinced that he will than otherwise (although as time passes more doubts begin to creep into my head). Indeed, when I first heard the Cabinet of Ministers’ announcement last Thursday, I was convinced (and I still want to believe) that this was actually a well planned ruse put together by Yanukovych’s closest advisors. They anticipated street protests, and understood from the very beginning, that if the cards are played right, their boss may yet emerge from this seemingly chaotic situation as the popular hero – the man who understands the will of the people, and therefore deserves to be re-elected as the whole nation’s President in 2015. At least that’s the image that they will try to present both to Ukraine’s voters and to the international community.
Let me explain: Yanukovych’s main goal for the summit was to get the Agreement signed with the EU, and at the same time to avoid releasing his archrival, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, from jail. Clearly there are also economic concerns associated with a Ukraine-EU deal: the likely deterioration of trade relations with Russia in the immediate aftermath of a signature in Vilnius will hurt Ukraine’s large industrial concerns, primarily located in the east of the country which is Yanukovych’s traditional base of support. Nevertheless, these economic problems could be overcome if the IMF and EU agree to provide bridge financing to Ukraine. And with a Presidential election scheduled for 2015, the political benefits of an Association Agreement to Yanukovych far outweigh any short term economic problems: having signed the agreement, Yanukovych could legitimately position himself as the President of the Whole Nation (as Kuchma once did), mitigating his current image as the “President from Donetsk”, and taking away an important political argument from his opposition opponents.
Now let’s play out a scenario: the President’s advisors receive an instruction from the boss – to improve the President’s popularity. At the same time they understand Yanukovych’s fear of Tymoshenko – an emotion that is both rational, given her prowess as a political opponent, and vengeful – Tymoshenko is seen as the initiator of criminal investigations against the losers of the Orange Revolution (primarily from Donetsk) during 2005-2010. But the EU has been clear that one of its main demands (to be met before any agreement is signed) is Tymoshenko’s release – at least for health reasons, if not an outright amnesty. So, the President’s advisors seem to have a problem… But what if the Cabinet of Ministers were to announce a “cessation of preparations” to sign the Agreement (officially) without the President’s prior approval? That would surely spark street protests (N.B. the former leader of the radical wing of the Orange Revolution “Pora”, Vlad Kaskiv, who was the primary organizer of students in November 2004 now works for Yanukovych, and is a close personal friend of the Serhiy Liovochkin – the head of the Presidential Administration). If the President were to react positively to the street protests, and to announce on the eve of the Vilnius summit that he actually intends to sign, Yanukovych could claim that was “duped” by his Prime Minister. Clearly Prime Minister Azarov would have to resign at that point, but according to analysts close to the government, Azarov’s resignation has recently been seen as just a matter of time: deputy PM Arbuzov (former chairman of Ukraine’s National Bank and close confidant of Yanukovych) has been preparing for the top executive post for months. If the resignation of the government, and the “heroic” announcement by Yanukovych of his support for the demonstrators were to occur on the immediate eve of the Vilnius summit, the President would be able to legitimately claim that the Parliament did not have sufficient time to pass a law that would allow Tymoshenko to be released. He would then ask Ukraine’ s EU partners for an extension with respect to this final demand. Meanwhile Tymoshenko would be obliged to also make a gesture to her political supporters on the streets, and to ask the EU to sign the Agreement for the benefit of the whole Ukrainian people, irrespective of her own fate. In such a scenario, the EU would almost certainly sign, and Yanukovych would return from Vilnius as a national hero…
During the next 3 days we will see whether such a scenario will actually be played out or not. Many of my friends in Kyiv tell me that I give too much credit to Yanukovych and his advisors: apparently Ukrainians do not believe that their political leaders are smart enough to plan such a complex series of events. My answer to such criticism is the following: I would like to believe that Ukraine’s political leaders are smart enough to plan and execute such a scenario because the alternative is just too scary. If Yanukovych does not sign the DCFTA and Association Agreement with the EU at the Eastern Partnership Summit in Vilnius on Friday, Ukraine is destined to become a place of protest, violence, and eventually revolution during the next 12-18 months. The fact that popular mobilization has been accompanied by sporadic violence during the past few days is proof of the fact that this time the revolution will not be bloodless.
Ukrainians – particularly the country’s youth – have lost all faith in their politicians. But they have not lost the will fight for better lives for themselves, and their children. This ideal (at the moment) is embodied by the EU.
Yanukovych can either recognize that Ukrainians are European, or they will sweep him away. There is no other choice.
Mychailo Wynnyckyj PhD
Kyiv-Mohyla Academy
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