January 17, 2015

2014: From Euro-Maidan to Revolution of Dignity

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Vladimir Gontar/UNIAN

The scene on January 20 on Kyiv’s Hrushevsky Street, where violent clashes between the Berkut and protesters broke out on January 19 and were continuing.

OSCE monitors accompany experts to the site where the cockpit of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was found after the plane was downed on July 17.

OSCE/Evgeniy Maloletka

OSCE monitors accompany experts to the site where the cockpit of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was found after the plane was downed on July 17.

Other notable developments of 2014 in the Verkhovna Rada included the passage of the bill on lustration on September 16 and the first anti-corruption bills on October 7.
And, the president, in his first major press conference, on September 25 assured the public that he genuinely wants reform. “I am certain we need to not simply walk, but run on the path to complicated, tectonic changes. The Ukrainian government and I, the Ukrainian president, certainly have the political will,” he stated, while noting that these changes would not be pursued until after the pre-term parliamentary elections.
On August 27, President Poroshenko had signed a decree dismissing the Verkhovna Rada and setting early parliamentary elections for October 26. The election campaign began immediately. Mr. Poroshenko wasted no time in organizing a congress on August 27 for his Solidarnist party, which had been an empty shell since it was registered in 2000. The congress voted to rename the party the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, enabling voters to better recognize the pro-presidential party on their voting ballots. Yurii Lutsenko, the former internal affairs minister who became a political prisoner under the Yanukovych administration, was elected the head of the Poroshenko Bloc.
The parliamentary elections would mark a turning point in Ukraine’s history: for the first time ever, pro-Western parties collectively gained more votes in the southeastern oblasts, with the exception of Kharkiv and partially occupied Donetsk and Luhansk. And for the first time in independent Ukraine, the Communist Party would not be represented in the Verkhovna Rada. “Colossal changes have occurred in the consciousness of Ukrainians,” commented Olexiy Haran, a political science professor at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy.
On the negative side, voter turnout reached a historic low of 52.4 percent. Meanwhile, the Russian occupation of Ukraine prevented elections from being held in Crimea, as well as in 56 percent of the districts in the Donetsk region and 70 percent of the districts in the Luhansk region.
Prime Minister Yatsenyuk emerged as the winner of the October 26 early parliamentary elections, leading his People’s Front party to an unexpected first-place finish (22.2 percent) that observers said will serve as a counterbalance to the ambitions of President Poroshenko, whose party finished a close second (218 percent). Self Reliance (11 percent), the Radical Party (7.4 percent) and Batkivshchyna (5.7 percent) completed the group of five parties, which are committed to Ukraine’s integration into the European Union, that qualified for Parliament. A sixth party that qualified for Parliament, the Opposition Bloc – a collection of former Party of Regions members and eastern Ukrainian oligarchs – pulled off one of the elections’ surprises, coming in with an unexpectedly strong 9.4 percent result.
On November 27, the national deputies elected in late October formed the parliamentary majority; five days later, they voted to approve the new Cabinet of Ministers. Prime Minister Yatsenyuk was re-elected to his post, as were Foreign Affairs Minister Klimkin and Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak. Volodymyr Hroisman, 36, was elected as chair of the Parliament that same day, representing the Petro Poroshenko Bloc. The vote on the new Cabinet on December 2 was controversial as deputies voted for the entire list of candidates rather than separately for each minister.
Also controversial was the creation of a new ministry, the Information Policy Ministry, which drew fierce criticism from journalists and others who foresaw that it could be used to censor media or require registration of Internet news sites. Minister Yuriy Stets tried to reassure critics by stating that the new ministry will address the government’s information needs related to the Donbas war – particularly after failures this year – by working with the mass media and educational institutions. It will develop and implement a program of positioning Ukraine in the world, as well as a strategy of protecting Ukraine’s information space from foreign information influences, he said.
The new Cabinet was notable also for the fact that it included three foreigners: Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, a Ukrainian American; Economy Minister Aivaras Abromavicius of Lithuania; and Health Minister Aleksandr Kvitashvili of Georgia. All three were granted Ukrainian citizenship and then approved by Parliament.
The Verkhovna Rada voted on December 23, to abandon the country’s neutral “non-bloc” status and set a course for NATO membership. President Poroshenko signed the bill on December 29. To be sure, NATO membership is not something that will happen quickly, since certain standards must be met by prospective members of the alliance. Mr. Poroshenko himself predicted that those standards could be met “within five-six years in the framework of Strategy 2020.” The amendment to Ukraine’s law on domestic and foreign policy, which was proposed by President Poroshenko, passed easily, receiving 303 votes in favor. It stated that the previous version of the law providing for “non-bloc” status and adopted under the Yanukovych administration had made Ukraine vulnerable to “external aggression and pressure.”
More than 4,700 people were killed in the eastern regions of Ukraine since April – more than 1,300 of them after the so-called ceasefire was declared in September in Minsk. Plus, according to the OSCE, violations of the ceasefire continued on a daily basis. And then there were those “humanitarian” convoys: 10 such convoys illegally entered Ukrainian territory from Russia during 2014. Meanwhile, Crimea became a veritable Russian military base. The Ukraine Crisis Media Center reported that nearly 40,000 troops, 43 battleships, and dozens of missile launchers and fighter jets deployed to the Ukrainian peninsula now threatened the security of the entire European region.
Predictably, Ukraine’s move renouncing its neutrality was immediately characterized by Russia as “unfriendly.” The stone-faced Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergei Lavrov called the step “counterproductive” and one that would result in increased tensions. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned that Ukraine’s rejection of neutrality and the Ukrainian Freedom Support Act of 2014 signed by President Barack Obama “will both have very negative consequences” and “our country will have to respond to them.”
But President Poroshenko told foreign ambassadors in Kyiv on the day before the Verkhovna Rada’s vote that “Ukraine’s fight for its independence, territorial integrity and sovereignty has turned into a decisive factor in our relations with the world.” And, former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko said the bill was “about our place in Western civilization.”

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