Brown Revolution

A coup d’état, as they say in Russia? A popular protest based on pro-European inspiration, as the Western press claims? Revolution of national dignity, as the Ukrainians think? The Euromaidan, which turned ten years old in recent days, will be talked about for a long time to come, also because the political and emotional burden of those events has so far restrained a colder and more rational consideration. Among the elements to be studied is also the role that the Ukrainian oligarchs played in the protests and unrest that led to the annulment of the agreement reached on February 21, 2014, with the killing of 100 people, between President Yanukovych and the leaders of the Ukrainian opposition (Vitaly Klitschko, Oleh Tyahnybok, and Arseniy Yatsenyuk), mediated by a European troika consisting of the foreign ministers of Poland (Radoslaw Sikorski, who returned to the same ministry a few months ago after a change of government in Warsaw), France (Laurent Fabius), and Germany (Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who became federal president in 2017). And what finally pushed Yanukovych himself to flee to Russia.

It is now clear that the oligarchs played an important role. This is also being stated by observers critical of Euromaidan, such as Ivan Katchanovski, a Ukrainian by birth and professor of political science at the University of Ottawa; or fully engaged in the new Ukrainian course, such as Serhiy Leshchenko, a journalist, anti-corruption activist, parliamentarian under Petro Poroshenko and then close to Volodymyr Zelensky, author of a study for the European Council on Foreign Relations. Except that it remains to be established how it all happened.

In those weeks, beyond the popular will, the ambitions of the people who dominated the political and economic scene of independent Ukraine collided, and who – since 2010, since Viktor Yanukovych came to power – had to deal with a voracious clan that operated even from the presidency of the country and from there, as Leshchenko explains well, took over some banks, which were then used as vaults for capital obtained through fictitious or corrupt privatizations. Some frontline oligarchs had to come to terms, and they saw in the Euromaidan protests an opportunity to get rid of the Yanukovych clan: for example, Rinat Akhmetov, the steel king, Ukraine’s richest man, or Dmytro Firtash, the gas boss, who glorified the protests with his media coverage of police violence. Or oligarchs, who were considered secondary at the time but had extensive experience in Ukrainian politics and its intricacies, such as confectionery industrialist Petro Poroshenko (who was a minister several times, particularly under Yanukovych) and Yulia Tymoshenko, also active in the energy sector and a former prime minister. Or even Igor Kolomoisky, a financier who sought to dominate.

These and other characters needed everything to change in Ukraine so that nothing would change and they could continue to dominate the scene. According to Kachanovsky, “the oligarchs were and remain opportunists, they had no ideology or high ideals, they only wanted to retain power or get more.” Euromaidan, in their opinion, made sense only if it would end with a complete change in the current (vicious) balance. Everyone acted in their own fashion. All of them, in one way or another, had as interlocutors extreme right-wing nationalist movements, such as Svoboda and Right Sector, decisive elements in managing radicalization and then winning the protest field.

It is no coincidence that one of the three leaders who had dealt with Yanukovych on the fateful day of February 21 was Oleh Tyahnybok, the leader of the Svoboda party, formerly a founding member of the Social National Party of Ukraine. Kolomoisky knew them well because he used many of their men as private militias to protect his companies and to settle scores with unruly or violent opponents.

These same people will form Kolomoisky-funded battalions against the separatists of Donbass in a few months. Poroshenko and Tymoshenko were also familiar with right-wing movements from the time (2005-2010) of Viktor Yushchenko’s presidency. Poroshenko was the protagonist of Yushchenko’s election campaign and was supported by all right-wing movements and leaders, including Tyahnybok. And Tymoshenko, the heroine of pre-Maidan Ukrainian nationalism, was prime minister at the time.

It is no coincidence that in 2010, at the end of his mandate, Yushchenko wanted to “thank” with the posthumous title of Hero of Ukraine not only Stepan Bandera, the founder of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in 1941, but also Roman Shukhevych, his military leader, who, following the Nazis, participated in the pogroms of Ukrainian Jews and Poles.

The importance of the extreme right in the development and outcome of the Euromaidan was recognized when the first government was formed after Yanukovych’s ouster: people from the Svoboda party, who soon received a modest 4.71% in political elections, took the posts of deputy prime minister, agriculture minister, and environment minister, as well as the posts of secretary of the Security Council and prosecutor general. The governors of Rivne, Poltava, and Ternopil were also Svoboda members.