Opinions #48/23

The festive commemoration that was generally offered on the occasion of the anniversary of the Kiev revolution, which ten years ago was called Euromaidan, certainly had the advantage of being timely.

Timely because exactly ten years after the start of the protests that ushered in a very long season of protests, which culminated in February with the battle for Kiev, more than a hundred deaths, the flight of President Yanukovych, and the birth of a government of the opposite persuasion, the roundness of the anniversary coincided with the ongoing high-intensity conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The anniversary is intended to give historical depth to Ukraine’s claims to complete and absolute independence from any Russian interests. Moreover, the uprising that began in November 2013 is remembered as an expression of both proud anti-Russian nationalism and a growing desire to become part of the European and Western world, including NATO membership. The history of the ten-year struggle, which ended with the loss of Crimea and a significant part of the Donbass, generally made it possible to present the choice of Kiev as the fruit of an ancient, completely indigenous aspiration. So, Ukraine should therefore have the right to continue the war, even beyond the limits of all reasonable convenience. What kind of war, it is becoming increasingly difficult to explain – week after week – for President Zelensky’s allies, starting with the USA.

The Euromaidan celebration was timely, but could have been more complete. Thus, it misses its nucleus, which dates back to the previous decade: Orange Revolution. A real turning point in the political and geopolitical life of the country, which previously lived and was perceived as an offshoot of Russia. The shock of the first and prolonged mass protest in the capital’s center, directed against the results of the presidential elections on November 21, 2004, is recognized as a turning point in relations between Kiev and Moscow. More precisely, in the tug-of-war between the West and Russia to determine their respective influence on Ukraine.

It would be interesting to supplement the context in which Kiev’s central square became active at that time by tracing the trend that occurred at that historical stage. Long before 2013, when Yanukovych, undecided between not only the economic temptations of Brussels and not only the geopolitical temptations of Moscow, became something like Buridan’s donkey and lost everything, the “Ukrainian project” had already been defined elsewhere.

Thanks to years of experience gained in the Balkans and then in Brussels, the Guardian’s leading Scotch journalist, Ian Traynor, laid out the sequence of steps that led to this extraordinary popular protest on November 26, 2004. Worth a re-read:

“Ukraine, traditionally passive in its politics, has been mobilised by the young democracy activists and will never be the same again. But while the gains of the orange-bedecked ‘chestnut revolution’ are Ukraine’s, the campaign is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes. (…) The campaign was first used in Europe in Belgrade in 2000 to beat Slobodan Milosevic at the ballot box.

Richard Miles, the US ambassador in Belgrade, played a key role. And by last year, as US ambassador in Tbilisi, he repeated the trick in Georgia, coaching Mikhail Saakashvili in how to bring down Eduard Shevardnadze. (…) But experience gained in Serbia, Georgia and Belarus has been invaluable in plotting to beat the regime of Leonid Kuchma in Kiev. The operation – engineering democracy through the ballot box and civil disobedience – is now so slick that the methods have matured into a template for winning other people’s elections.

(…) The Democratic party’s National Democratic Institute, the Republican party’s International Republican Institute, the US state department and USAid are the main agencies involved in these grassroots campaigns as well as the Freedom House NGO and billionaire George Soros’s open society institute.

(…) Freedom House and the Democratic party’s NDI helped fund and organise the ‘largest civil regional election monitoring effort’ in Ukraine, involving more than 1,000 trained observers. They also organised exit polls. On Sunday night those polls gave Mr Yushchenko an 11-point lead and set the agenda for much of what has followed. The exit polls are seen as critical because they seize the initiative in the propaganda battle with the regime, invariably appearing first, receiving wide media coverage and putting the onus on the authorities to respond.

(…) In Belgrade, Tbilisi, and now Kiev, where the authorities initially tried to cling to power, the advice was to stay cool but determined and to organise mass displays of civil disobedience, which must remain peaceful but risk provoking the regime into violent suppression. If the events in Kiev vindicate the US in its strategies for helping other people win elections and take power from anti-democratic regimes, it is certain to try to repeat the exercise elsewhere in the post-Soviet world.

(…)».

Trainor’s article, “US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev,” appeared in the Guardian five days after the start of the Orange Revolution.