During 2014, what started out as the Euro-Maidan was transformed into the Revolution of Dignity. By year’s end, Ukraine had a new president, a new Verkhovna Rada and a new government. And, at the end of the year, the Rada voted to abandon the country’s previous “non-bloc” status and set a course for NATO membership. A civilizational choice had been made.
As the year began, there was concern about the regular presidential election that was to be held in March 2015 as the opposition – that is the pro-Western parties of Ukraine – appeared to have no unified election strategy other than being against Viktor Yanukovych. Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform (UDAR) Chair Vitali Klitschko was calling on his rivals to ditch their campaigns and unite behind his single candidacy. The expected Batkivshchyna candidate, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, and Svoboda party candidate Oleh Tiahnybok said they would compete independently in the first round of the presidential election. Billionaire confectionary magnate Petro Poroshenko also was planning to throw his hat into the ring. The concern among observers was that so many candidates could cannibalize the pro-Western vote or spread it too thinly, letting another victory slip through their fingers. On January 10 came news of a rift between Euro-Maidan activists and leaders when the Euro-Maidan Citizens Council demanded that opposition leaders settle on a single presidential candidate by January 11 or else face protests.
Meanwhile, public demonstrations in support of Ukraine’s European orientation and against President Yanukovych’s decision to scrap closer ties with the European Union continued. On January 5, about 10,000 people gathered at Kyiv’s Independence Square – the Maidan – for the first major opposition rally of the new year.
The government’s violence against opposition activists also continued. As the Euro-Maidan entered its eighth week, former Internal Affairs Minister Yurii Lutsenko, a leader of the movement, was beaten the night of January 10 during scuffles with the Berkut after the police brutally beat demonstrators that evening. Mr. Lutsenko suffered a concussion, head trauma and wounds that landed him in intensive care.
Things got worse later in January when Kyiv erupted in violent clashes between Euro-Maidan protesters and police after the Verkhovna Rada, in a controversial vote – conducted in a wholly illegal manner – on January 16 passed a series of draconian laws curtailing freedoms of speech and assembly. What have been labeled the “dictatorship laws,” signed by President Yanukovych on January 17, created the legal pretext for the government to launch a widely anticipated mass police operation to forcibly clear the Euro-Maidan territory in central Kyiv occupied by the opposition.
On January 19, young demonstrators led by the radical Pravyi Sektor group attempted to storm government buildings, and Hrushevsky street became the site of battles between protesters and Berkut forces. Berkut eventually began firing tear gas canisters and stun grenades to force the demonstrators away from their barricade. Many protesters began digging out cobblestones and flinging them at police, along with Molotov cocktails. The nationalists were soon joined by soccer hooligans, also targeted by the January 17 laws, as well as Euro-Maidan activists. By midnight, at least half a dozen buses – placed by police to form a wider barricade against demonstrators – were thoroughly burnt. Berkut upped the ante against demonstrators by spraying water from water cannons in their direction (amidst freezing temperatures) and firing rubber bullets and live metal cartridges. The next night snipers fired metal bullets at the protesters.
The result was at least five deaths and over 1,300 injured protesters, as well as more than 120 injured police.
The Yanukovych government responded to the protests with a campaign of state terror in which activists were subjected to beatings, kidnappings, torture, shootings and murder carried out by the Berkut special forces. Overnight on January 19-20, the first kidnappings by Berkut forces were reported. The kidnappings and beatings escalated significantly the next few days. Civic activists Ihor Lutsenko and Yurii Verbytskyi were kidnapped on January 21. Mr. Lutsenko surfaced a day later and reported being tortured, while Mr. Verbytskyi was found murdered. Auto-Maidan leader Dmytro Bulatov disappeared on January 22 and suffered eight days of beatings and torture before being left for dead in a forest. Two other activists, ethnic Armenian Serhii Nihoyan of the Dnipropetrovsk area and Belarusian citizen Mykhailo Zhyznevskyi of Bila Tserkva, were killed by sniper fire during battles on January 22, which happened to mark the Unity Day holiday in Ukraine.
Opposition leaders responded by declaring on January 22 that they would lead the formation of a People’s Council and People’s Election Commission as parallel structures to the Verkhovna Rada and the Central Election Commission. They also set an ultimatum to the government to either hold pre-term elections or face an offensive strike. There was palpable fear of a forceful dispersal of the Maidan that evening, but more than 50,000 supporters responded – despite the frigid temperatures and falling snow – to the opposition’s call to protect the Maidan. Thus, the Maidan remained intact.
January 26 was a day of funerals for 21-year-old Mr. Nihoyan and 25-year-old Mr. Zhyznevskyi. Over 1,000 people took part in Mr. Nihoyan’s funeral in the village of Bereznuvativka, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. Radio Svoboda reported his father said, “Maidan must hold out. My son died for Ukraine.” Mr. Nihoyan’s parents had sought refuge in Ukraine from the violence over Nagorno-Karabakh shortly before their son was born. Mr. Nihoyan had served as one of the voluntary defenders of the Maidan since December. In Kyiv, thousands of Euro-Maidan activists and other Kyiv residents came to bid farewell to Mr. Zhyznevskyi, who had come to Ukraine about 10 years earlier from his native Belarus seeking refuge from persecution. In Ukraine he was active in the nationalist UNA-UNSO movement.
Sergey Isaev/UNIAN
Mourners at the funeral of Euro-Maidan activist Serhii Nihoyan in Bereznuvativka, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, on January 26.
By January 29, President Yanukovych’s authoritarian rule was on the brink of collapse during that day’s parliamentary session, as deputies were ready to form a new majority and reinstate the 2004 constitutional amendments that would have brought back a parliamentary-presidential republic. Yet the Russian government – rattled by the prior day’s resignation of Prime Minister Mykola Azarov – renewed pressure on Ukrainian oligarchs and politicians to keep Mr. Yanukovych in power. That day it announced renewed trade barriers and freezes on the financial aid and natural gas discounts extended in mid-December 2013. Mr. Yanukovych rushed into Parliament, where he reportedly blackmailed members of his Party of Regions parliamentary faction to approve his version of an amnesty bill that made possible a state of emergency in 15 days.
Our free-lance correspondent in Kyiv, Zenon Zawada reported that the political winds were slowly eroding Mr. Yanukovych’s support base, which was confirmed in an interview on Polish state radio on January 30 by former Polish President and EU diplomat Aleksander Kwasniewski. “I think the president’s urgent visit to the Rada occurred because he’s afraid that the majority is no longer on his side,” said Mr. Kwasniewski, who has spent more than a decade dealing with Mr. Yanukovych and Ukraine’s politicians. “He lost several dozen votes in the Party of Regions. He went to discipline them, frighten them, blackmail them, and that had an effect.”
Speaking on February 2 on Kyiv’s Independence Square, Vitali Klitschko told a crowd of some 50,000 that President Yanukovych’s resignation followed by elections was the only way out of the crisis. “Our proposition is the return to the Constitution of 2004; division of powers among the president, Parliament and government; formation of a new Cabinet; and the most important thing for the resolution of these issues are early presidential and parliamentary elections,” Mr. Klitschko said. The UDAR party leader also demanded the unconditional release of all protesters arrested since late November 2013.
Both Mr. Klitschko and another opposition leader, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, had attended the annual Munich Security Conference on February 1 and met with Western officials. Mr. Klitschko told protesters in Kyiv that he had requested “international mediation in our negotiations with Yanukovych.” Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, Mr. Klitschko said that the Ukrainian people had shown their will for political change despite violence against them, and he called on friends of Ukraine in the West to help Ukraine’s democratic movement succeed. At the conference Messrs. Klitschko and Yatsenyuk met with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, and European Council President Herman von Rompuy reiterated to conference participants that the EU association deal was still available to Ukraine. “We know time is on our side. The future of Ukraine belongs with the European Union,” he said.
On February 4, the Verkhovna Rada concluded a session without approving changes to the Constitution of Ukraine that would have curtailed the powers of the president. Opposition lawmakers failed to get the necessary support to push through a motion to revert to an earlier version of the Constitution that limited presidential powers. The opposition would have needed support from at least 237 of the 447 national deputies in Parliament to push through the motion.
Prior to the vote in the Rada, Oleksander Yefremov, the parliamentary leader of the ruling Party of Regions, sounded conciliatory. “This is a dead end, and I therefore suggest that we all forget the grievances, victories and defeats, our careers, and instead join efforts to work out the strategy of getting out of the current situation,” he said. But Mr. Yefremov also said Mr. Yanukovych had already made concessions by accepting the government’s resignation, as well as agreeing to rescind controversial anti-protest legislation and to a conditional amnesty for detained protesters. The opposition dismissed the moves as insufficient.
Mr. Klitschko met earlier that day with Mr. Yanukovych. Mr. Klitschko said he told the president “tempers are heating up” and urged him “to immediately make a decision.” Mr. Klitschko had told Parliament reform was needed to end the ongoing. “I’m convinced that if we don’t do that, then the society will explode, and we will see their anger on the street,” Mr. Klitschko said. “That’s why I’m calling on everybody – we should follow the civilized path, stop the dictatorship, return to the Constitution that makes Parliament deputies the decision-makers and not just those who press buttons.”
February 9 was a day of yet another huge demonstration on the Maidan as over 50,000 people gathered to make their voices heard when President Yanukovych returned to Kyiv after private talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin held on the sidelines on the Sochi Winter Olympics’ opening ceremony. Mr. Klitschko called for urgent constitutional reform to reduce presidential powers. “Maidan is not just in the capital of Ukraine, Maidan has to be in every small city,” Mr. Klitschko added. “And if people say, ‘We don’t want to live by these rules,’ then this is one way to change the power and to put pressure on the president.”
The European Union Council decided on February 10 that it would not satisfy the Euro-Maidan’s pleas for sanctions against Ukraine’s officials. “Applying sanctions against Ukraine would be incorrect now,” EU Commissioner Jose Manuel Barroso told the Reuters news agency in an interview published on February 12. “The priority should become creating the conditions for a peaceful resolution to the conflict. Now we are in such a phase that the priority is stability in the country and avoiding violence to begin a serious dialogue between the government and opposition. At the current phase, other measures could have a negative effect.”
A violent dispersal of the Euro-Maidan grew increasingly likely after the Procurator General’s Office of Ukraine announced on February 12 that it had closed its investigations into the November 30, 2013, violent dispersal of protesters that had ignited the nationwide revolts, dismissing the criminal charges. The dropped charges were intended as a signal from the Yanukovych administration to all state employees, particularly the police forces, that they’re protected from criminal charges when obeying unlawful government orders, said a statement released by the Batkivshchyna party.
The Procurator General’s Office based its decision on the amnesty law approved by Parliament on January 16 that was supposed to free from criminal responsibility all those on both sides of the civil unrest between November 21 and December 26, 2013. A second amnesty law passed by Parliament on January 29 was dubbed by the opposition and EU politicians as “the hostage bill” since it proposed releasing imprisoned activists and dropping criminal charges in exchange for the Euro-Maidan protest ceasing its activity.
In preparation for a new wave of repressions, Euro-Maidan Commander Andrii Parubii launched the Maidan Self-Defense (Samo-Oborona) organization, consisting of brigades (sotni) of 75 to 150 activists. About 12,000 were among its ranks already, he estimated. Brigades were formed of Afghan war veterans, nationalist organizations members of political parties and women. “The [Maidan] Self-Defense defends the rights and freedoms of citizens and the organized resistance to the current regime,” Mr. Parubii said on February 11 as he presented its founding mission statement. “We are going beyond the bounds of the barricades because the Maidan is all of Ukraine.” Among the Maidan Self-Defense’s tasks, he said, is to preserve the sovereignty and unity of Ukraine, defend Ukraine’s European choice and resist the “acting criminal regime until its complete removal.”
Then, on February 18, Kyiv’s central district became a war zone after protest marches to the Parliament turned deadly, igniting at least three days of street battles between activists and law enforcement authorities, who attempted to liquidate the Maidan with gunfire and firebombing.
Aleksey Ivanov/UNIAN
Verkhovna Rada Chair Oleksander Turchynov, also the acting president of Ukraine, addresses the Maidan on February 26. That night the nominations of members of the interim government were announced.
Freedom House, in a statement released on February 18, condemned the violence and called on President Yanukovych to step down. “Legitimate democratic leaders do not order riot police to attack protesters asking for a more open government,” said Freedom House President David Kramer. “Yanukovych has forfeited his legitimacy and needs to step down. In the meantime, the United States and the European Union should immediately urge him to end the use of force. It is also vital for the United States and the EU to impose visa and financial sanctions, to speed meaningful political change. Such a step is long overdue.”
At least 105 civilians died in the Kyiv conflict between February 18 and 20, many of them by gunfire. The deadliest day was February 20, with more than 70 reportedly killed. More than 1,000 were injured. The Internal Affairs Ministry reported 10 dead law enforcement officers, killed by gunfire, and more than 445 injured. “This is no longer simply a revolution. It’s a war against brutes, fascists with their punitive detachments,” thundered Maidan master of ceremonies Yevhen Nyshchuk from the stage on the evening of February 19.
The violence – unprecedented in independent Ukraine’s history – erased any progress towards a political compromise made during the weekend when protesters reluctantly freed several state buildings, including the Kyiv City Council. Instead, they retook those buildings and took control of new ones, setting up new headquarters in the Post Office and State Television and Radio Committee offices. Reacting to the violence in the capital, activists turned many of the nation’s oblast centers into battle zones on February 19 as they captured state buildings, including seven in Lviv.
The violence drew the first serious actions from Western leaders. The U.S. State Department declared visa bans on February 19 against nearly 20 leaders whom it identified as responsible for the violence. The next day, European Council President von Rompuy declared the EU was imposing both visa and financial sanctions against those Ukrainian leaders determined to be responsible for the excessive use of violence against Ukrainian citizens. He also called for immediate elections for a new Parliament and president.
His announcement came after exasperated EU diplomats – including Polish Foreign Affairs Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, German Foreign Affairs Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and French Foreign Affairs Minister Laurent Fabius – spent more than four hours negotiating with President Yanukovych on the afternoon of February 20 as shooting and fighting continued throughout central Kyiv, only to leave with gloomy expressions and no comments for reporters.
The next day, things came to a head. Mr. Yanukovych and the opposition leaders, Mr. Klitschko, Oleh Tiahnybok and Mr. Yatsenyuk, signed an Agreement on the Settlement of Crisis in Ukraine. Negotiations on the agreement were held with the participation of the aforementioned EU representatives and Vladimir Lukin, special envoy of the president of the Russian Federation. According to the agreement, within 48 hours after the signing of the agreement a special law that would restore the Ukrainian Constitution of 2004 had to be adopted by the Verkhovna Rada, signed by the president and made public. The parties also agreed on early presidential elections to be held immediately after the adoption of the new Constitution of Ukraine, but no later than December 2014.
However, President Yanukovych and his entourage fled Ukraine, and Mr. Yanukovych renounced the agreement. The collapse of the Yanukovych administration ignited conflicts nationally as pro-Russian forces took over the Crimean Parliament and shot at Euro-Maidan activists in eastern cities.
The Verkhovna Rada, which remained as the only legitimate authority in Ukraine, then removed Mr. Yanukovych as president, announced the date of pre-term presidential elections as May 25, and assumed political responsibility for the situation in Ukraine. Oleksander Turchynov, who was elected Rada chair on February 22, also became the acting president of Ukraine.
A prime concern was the catastrophic condition of the economy left behind by Mr. Yanukovych and his cronies, who reportedly embezzled $70 billion offshore in their three years in power while bleeding the nation’s financial reserves dry. Interim officials warned of economic collapse if the West didn’t offer aid. “The state treasury has been plundered and the country has been brought to bankruptcy,” Mr. Yatsenyuk told a February 24 meeting of state officials, three days before he was elected prime minister to lead the the interim government that would serve until the next government was formed after the presidential elections.
Upon his election as prime minister, Mr. Yatsenyuk declared it “the government of political kamikazes,” noting, “We stand before inconceivable economic challenges and in order to conquer them I declare from this high tribune: we don’t have any other way out besides making extremely unpopular decisions.”
On February 25 the Verkhovna Rada overwhelmingly backed a resolution saying Mr. Yanukovych, former Internal Affairs Minister Vitaliy Zakharchenko, former Procurator General Viktor Pshonka and others should be tried at the ICC for “crimes against humanity” committed during the brutal crackdown on anti-government protesters. That same day marked the beginning of the presidential election campaign.
Speaking at a news conference in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don on February 28, the ousted Mr. Yanukovych stated: “The time has come for me to say that I intend to continue the fight for the future of Ukraine against those who are trying, through terror and fear, to take charge over it.” He denied that he had been removed from power, maintaining that he had been forced to leave because of direct threats to his safety. “I was forced to leave Ukraine because of an immediate threat to my life and the life of my loved ones,” he claimed, vowing to return once he received guarantees of his safety.
Official Website of Ukraine’s President
President Petro Poroshenko holds up a copy of the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement after it was ratified by the Verkhovna Rada on September 16.
Shortly after that, Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin said Ukraine’s ousted president had sent a letter to President Putin requesting that he use the Russian military to restore law and order in his country. Speaking at the U.N. Security Council’s March 3 emergency meeting on the situation in Ukraine, he quoted from the letter dated March 1: “I would call on the president of Russia, Mr. Putin, asking him to use the armed forces of the Russian Federation to establish legitimacy, peace, law and order, stability and defending the people of Ukraine.” At that same emergency session, Ukraine’s U.N. Ambassador Yuriy Sergeyev said Russia had deployed some 16,000 additional troops to the region since the previous week. Russia had poured troops into Crimea, taking over practically all of Ukraine’s military facilities.
Ukraine continued to press its case at the United Nations, as meeting after meeting of the Security Council was called. Ambassador Sergeyev said Russia was telling “bold-faced lies” as it continued toward its goal of taking over Crimea. Such lies included references to the Russian-speaking population being threatened and its rights violated; the presence of anti-Semites and Nazis in the interim government of Ukraine; and statements that referred to Russian self-defense forces, and not Russian military, as being on the ground in Ukraine. Russia, he explained, was employing “the combined scenarios of Ossetia and Abkhazia” in Ukraine. He said Russia has distributed Russian passports and citizenship to residents of Crimea and was claiming the right to come in to protect its citizens. He also noted that, because Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians had said they would boycott the March 16 referendum on Crimea’s status, Russians and pro-Russian separatists would deliver a majority vote for Crimea to join the Russian Federation.
Soon thereafter, on March 6, European Council President von Rompuy announced the EU would sign the political portion of its Association Agreement with Ukraine before the presidential election, saving the free trade pact for afterwards. The Group of Seven told Russia on March 12 that it risked facing international action unless it stopped its moves toward the annexation of Crimea. And Ukraine, led by acting President Turchynov, was preparing for a Russian invasion of its mainland as its armed forces were activated into full combat readiness.
The day after the staged referendum on the Crimea seceding from Ukraine and joining the Russian Federation, on March 17, President Putin recognized Crimea as an independent state in defiance of the international community’s insistence that it remain part of Ukraine. On March 18 Mr. Putin and Crimean leaders signed treaties making Ukraine’s Crimea and the city of Sevastopol part of the Russian Federation. Mr. Putin said to a standing ovation that “in the hearts and minds of people, Crimea has always been and remains an inseparable part of Russia.”
In Ukraine, the Verkhovna Rada adopted a statement on the guarantees of the rights of the Crimean Tatar people within Ukraine. The document also recognized Crimean Tatars as an indigenous people within Ukraine and recognized the Mejlis and the Kurultai as governing bodies of the Crimean Tatar people. Crimean Tatars and others were reported to be leaving Crimea, and the Ukrainian mainland was making preparations to host the refugees.
Prime Minister Yatsenyuk joined the European Union leadership on March 21 in Brussels in signing the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement, a historic event that marked Kyiv’s return to Western civilization. The agreement closed the door to Kyiv’s membership in the Eurasian Economic Union being launched by the Russian government. Yet the signing was an anticlimactic event that drew little celebration in Ukraine given that it had required a violent overthrow of a dictatorial president and the death of more than 100 Euro-Maidan activists. The EU and Ukrainian leadership also deliberately played down the signing ceremony in light of the Russian invasion of Crimea that could lead to further unrest in the southeastern oblasts of Ukraine. The Association Agreement was formally ratified by Ukraine and the European Parliament on September 16. The legislation gained 79 percent support among the national deputies in Kyiv and 77 percent in Strasbourg, France. “The readiness to give one’s life and die for your fatherland is considered to be very natural, but the Heavenly Brigade and 872 courageous Ukrainian soldiers died not only for Ukraine. They risked their heads so that we could take our dignified place in the family of European peoples,” said President Poroshenko, who had been elected on May 25. “Since World War II, no nation ever paid such a high price for the right to be Europeans.” One negative note was that the actual implementation of the Deep and Free Trade Area was postponed until January 1, 2016, as a result of Russia’s threat to launch a trade war against Ukraine.
On March 24, leaders from the G-7 suspended their participation in the G-8 with Russia – “until Russia changes course” – and expressed support for the Ukrainian government. A strongly worded statement demanded that Russia “respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, begin discussions with the government of Ukraine, and avail itself of offers of international mediation and monitoring to address any legitimate concerns.”
As Russian forces invaded Ukraine, RFE/RL reported on war on another front – in the sphere of information. Russian media and leading political figures were shrill in their denunciations of “fascists” in Kyiv and their claims of anti-Semitic incidents, of attacks on ethnic Russians in the eastern reaches of Ukraine and of floods of beleaguered refugees streaming across the border into Russia. RFE/RL’s Robert Coalson wrote on March 5: “But much of this information is demonstrably false, emerging from unsourced media reports, then making its way into the statements of Russian politicians, and even into Western media reports. Events are echoing the 1997 U.S. film ‘Wag the Dog,’ in which spin-doctors use the media to whip up support for a nonexistent war. ‘This is how wars get started. As they say, “truth is the first casualty of war” and we are really seeing that with the way Russia is handling this,’ says Catherine Fitzpatrick, a writer and translator who has been live-blogging events in Ukraine for Interpretermag.com. ‘I think they are really irresponsible. They are inciting a lot of hatred and whipping up a lot of panic. People in places like Kharkiv are watching Russian TV. They may be watching also local TV, but they are dependent on Russian TV and a lot of it is not checking out.’ ”
On April 10, Freedom House President Kramer weighed in: “Kremlin propaganda is trying to paint everything that is happening in Ukraine as being caused by fascists and extremists. I have not seen evidence of that. I do recognize that there are some parts of the opposition that are viewed as far-right, but I don’t see them playing a dominant role in the current political situation.” Speaking at a press conference in Kyiv, he also praised the actions of Right Sector and Svoboda leaders who, in his opinion, had made efforts to reach out to certain communities and dispel the notion that they are anti-Semitic or anti-Russian. The expert said it was necessary to keep an eye on the actions of Right Sector and Svoboda activists, but it was more important to fight the Russian propaganda.
Meanwhile, NATO members on April 1 released a statement in which they declared: “We, the foreign ministers of NATO, are united in our condemnation of Russia’s illegal military intervention in Ukraine and Russia’s violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. We do not recognize Russia’s illegal and illegitimate attempt to annex Crimea. We urge Russia to take immediate steps, as set out in the statement by the NATO-Ukraine Commission, to return to compliance with international law and its international obligations and responsibilities, and to engage immediately in a genuine dialogue towards a political and diplomatic solution that respects international law and Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders. …” The declaration also said NATO and Ukraine would intensify their cooperation in the framework of the Distinctive Partnership and would implement immediate and longer-term measures in order to strengthen Ukraine’s ability to provide for its own security.” At the same time, NATO said it was suspending “all practical civilian and military cooperation between NATO and Russia” but would continue political dialogue in the NATO-Russia Council.
As the pre-term presidential election approached, it became evident that Mr. Petro Poroshenko was favored to win. According to a poll released in late March by four of Ukraine’s leading polling firms, the chocolate king enjoyed a commanding lead over his top rival, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Almost 25 percent of eligible voters said they’d cast their ballots for Mr. Poroshenko compared to more than 8 percent for Ms. Tymoshenko. In a second-round runoff, he would earn 46 percent compared to her 12 percent. Another contender, boxing legend Vitali Klitschko, earned 9 percent in the poll. But he announced on March 29 that he was withdrawing his presidential candidacy to support Mr. Poroshenko, who in turn would support Mr. Klitschko’s candidacy in the Kyiv mayoral election, to be held the same day. “We are pledging to fulfill the politics of European reforms, which will ensure the guaranteed protection of human rights and freedom, rule of law, economic development, free enterprise, uprooting corruption and conducting a policy of social justice,” said a declaration of unity signed by Messrs. Poroshenko and Klitschko published on March 29 on Mr. Poroshenko’s Facebook page.
Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine
Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk of Ukraine and European Council President Herman von Rompuy at the signing of the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union on March 21 in Brussels.
On April 4, the Central Election Commission completed the registration of candidates for president of Ukraine. There were 23 of them, including seven nominated by political parties and 16 independents. The candidates nominated by their parties were: People’s Movement of Ukraine leader Vasyl Kuibida, Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko, Batkivshchyna leader Ms. Tymoshenko, Civil Position Party leader Anatoliy Grytsenko, Svoboda leader Mr. Tiahnybok, Ukrainian People’s Party leader Oleksandr Klymenko and Radical Party leader Oleh Liashko.
The violence continued in Ukraine’s east as pro-Russian activists took control of state buildings in several cities in early April. In Donetsk they declared an independent republic on April 7 and invited Russian soldiers to ensure a referendum on joining the Russian Federation, just as in Crimea three weeks earlier. Buildings were taken over also in such cities as Kharkiv, Luhansk and Mykolayiv. The Ukrainian government said the Russian government was responsible for inciting the violence. The Ukrainian government and media offered ample evidence that Mr. Putin had dispatched armed saboteurs to the Ukrainian mainland starting on April 12. As of April 17, 20 government buildings in the Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv oblasts were under rebel control.
Mr. Putin denied the presence of his forces in Ukraine, just as he had with Crimea a month earlier. Yet that didn’t stop him from revealing his plans for Ukraine during an April 17 live TV broadcast. He indicated that, at a minimum, he intended to separate the eight oblasts of southeastern Ukraine, a region that he dubbed “Novorossiya.” But he also hinted at the annexation of all of Ukraine, when he said that Ukraine and Russia were “part of a single space” and “a single people.”
Also on April 17, a joint statement was released in Geneva to address the crisis in Ukraine. Signed by Ukraine, Russia, the United States and the European Union, it was a vaguely worded agreement to end the violence, de-escalate tensions and restore security. “All illegal armed groups must be disarmed; all illegally seized buildings must be returned to legitimate owners; all illegally occupied streets, squares and other public places in Ukrainian cities and towns must be vacated,” the statement said. It contained not a word about the removal of Russian forces from Ukraine’s territory or the preservation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, nor did it address the annexation of Crimea.
And the violence continued. Peaceful protesters who advocated the unity of Ukraine were savagely attacked in Donetsk on April 28. The pro-Ukraine mayor of Kharkiv, Hennadii Kernes, survived an assassination attempt that same day. In Odesa, street fights broke out on May 2 between pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian fighters and a blaze in the local trade unions building killed 31 of the pro-Russian camp who had taken refuge there, attacking the pro-Ukrainians with firearms and Molotov cocktails. The Odesa street fights were provoked by about 200 pro-Russian provocateurs, who attacked more than 1,000 peaceful pro-Ukrainian protesters – many of them Chornomorets Odesa soccer fans – with bats, chains and guns, pravda.com.ua reported. The pro-Russian forces swelled throughout the day, unrestrained by local police as they engaged in violence. Meanwhile, in Sloviansk, which had been taken over by pro-Russian fighters, the Ukrainian government launched an anti-terrorist operation (ATO).
On May 11, a “referendum” on sovereignty was held in the Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts. Verkhovna Rada Chair and acting President Turchynov said on May 12 that only 24 percent of residents of the Luhansk Oblast and 32 percent in the Donetsk Oblast who had the right to vote had done so. Mr. Turchynov underlined that voting in many towns of the Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts was not held at all. Mr. Turchynov stressed that the “referendum” was a farce that violated law. “This farce can have only one consequence: criminal responsibility for its organizers,” he added. RFE/RL cited ample evidence of ballot tampering and noted that voters were not even sure what they were voting for as the paper ballots asked if they support the “act of self-rule.” The “separatists” announced that the vote in the Donetsk Oblast was 89.07 for the Donetsk People’s Republic, while in the neighboring Luhansk region it was 96 percent for that local republic. They claimed voter turnout was around 75 percent in each oblast.
Pro-Russian forces in Ukraine’s east attempted to derail the May 25 presidential vote, but they were successful only in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Armed fighters took over half of the 12 district election commissions (DEC) in the Luhansk Oblast, preventing their functioning, reported the Central Election Commission. In the Donetsk Oblast , they took over six of 22 DECs, with five under threat of being captured. Kidnappings occurred of DEC chairs in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, where residents had been terrorized for weeks by armed pro-Russian separatists.
The presidential election was hailed by Western leaders as successful, free and fair. Mr. Poroshenko was elected as Ukraine’s fifth president, earning nearly 55 percent of the vote – enough to avoid a run-off with Ms. Tymoshenko, who got 13 percent of the vote. She was trailed by Mr. Liashko (Radical Party), 8.32 percent; Mr. Grytsenko (Civil Position Party), 5.48 percent; Sergey Tigipko (self-nominated), 5.23 percent; Mykhailo Dobkin (Party of Regions), 3.03 percent. Fifteen other candidates were on the ballot, barely registering support. Voter turnout was 60 percent, even with people in the Donbas being prevented from going to the polls. “This was the most important election in independent Ukraine’s history,” said a statement from the election-observing mission of the National Democratic Institute that was read at a May 26 press conference in Kyiv by its chair, Madeleine K. Albright. “By turning out to vote yesterday across the vast majority of the country, Ukrainians did more than elect a new president. They showed the world their commitment to sovereignty, unity and democracy.”
Facebook/Petro Poroshenko
Petro Poroshenko and his wife, Maryna, cast their ballots on election day, May 25.
The Kyiv mayoralty was handily won by Mr. Klitschko with 56 percent of the vote, compared to 8 percent for the runner-up, 32-year-old Lesia Orobets, a national deputy. His UDAR party won 39 percent of the seats for the Kyiv City Council, compared to 7 percent for runner-up Samopomich, a party founded and led by Lviv Mayor Andrii Sadovyi.
Mr. Poroshenko was inaugurated as Ukraine’s fifth president on June 7 amidst unprecedented challenges for independent Ukraine that threatened its very existence. Inauguration day ceremonies drew 56 foreign delegations to Kyiv, including U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and European Council President von Rompuy, as well as representatives of Ukraine’s political and business elite, including billionaires Rinat Akhmetov of Donetsk and Igor Kolomoisky of Dnipropetrovsk.
Drawing the most public acclaim was Mr. Poroshenko’s inauguration speech in the Verkhovna Rada in which he addressed Ukraine’s crisis with Russia and set the priorities for the first year of his presidency, including concrete steps to resolve the war in Donbas. He outlined major policies: Ukraine won’t relinquish its claim to Russian-occupied Crimea, Ukrainian will remain the single state language, he is ready to sign the free trade portion of the European Union Association Agreement. Mr. Poroshenko also spoke of his commitment to a parliamentary-presidential republic and early parliamentary elections, amending the Constitution to accommodate government decentralization, but rejecting any federalization of the country, and rebuilding the army with the support of domestic industry, which he identified as his top priority.
Mr. Poroshenko directly addressed the residents of the Donbas in the Russian language, assuring them that the Ukrainian government wouldn’t abandon them in these difficult times. “With what will I, as president, come to you in the nearest future?” the president asked rhetorically. “With peace. With a draft of decentralizing power. With the guarantee of free use of the Russian language in your region. With the firm intention not to divide Ukrainians between those who are right and wrong.”
Just over a week after the inauguration, Ukraine observed a day of mourning for the 49 soldiers killed when pro-Russian separatists shot down a military transport plane. President Poroshenko declared the day of mourning on June 15 and vowed a firm response against those who shot down the aircraft early on June 14 as it approached the airport in Luhansk. “Ukraine is in sorrow, but we strongly continue the struggle for peace.”
The new president on June 19 completed the formation of his new team when Parliament approved his nominations for three key posts: Pavlo Klimkin as foreign affairs minister, Vitalii Yarema as procurator general and Valeria Gontareva as National Bank of Ukraine chair. He also named new staff at the Presidential Administration.
In a June 21 address to the people of Ukraine, Mr. Poroshenko explained his peace plan, which included an immediate unilateral ceasefire to last one week. “These are decisive days that present a good chance for a peaceful settlement,” he said. The plan also included an “amnesty for those members of illegal armed formations who didn’t kill civilians or Ukrainian soldiers, who will lay down their weapons”; the release of all hostages; the opening of “a corridor for the escape of Russian mercenaries to their motherland,” but on one condition: “that they leave machine guns, tanks and armored vehicles here”; liberation of administrative buildings in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and restoration of order and functioning of local authorities; and the beginning of political dialogue. He underscored that “the issue of the territorial integrity of Ukraine is not open to discussion,” although he promised decentralization of power, with Ukrainian regions gaining more rights and authority. The Donbas, he said would not be left to deal with its problems alone. “Not only Ukraine, but also the EU will come to help. We will help to restore the infrastructure destroyed by militants. At the cost of the state, we will restore housing destroyed during combat actions, we will restore workspaces. Donbas residents will have a place to return, to live and to work.”
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1st Lt. Nadiya Savchenko in a photo posted on July 10 by RFE/RL.
President Poroshenko’s ATO had some success in early July when Ukraine’s armed forces liberated from pro-Russian terrorists their war-torn strongholds of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk in the Donetsk Oblast. The cities’ liberation involved the army and National Guard volunteers, the president said in a July 5 televised address to the nation. That day, 10 soldiers were injured and none killed, largely because the terrorists willfully abandoned these cities and dispersed throughout the region, including the city of Donetsk. “This is the beginning of a breakthrough in the struggle with fighters for the territorial integrity of Ukraine and for a return to the normal life of Donbas, which is an inseparable part of our large, strong, European country,” he said. The success in retaking control of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk boosted the popularity of Mr. Poroshenko, who was under mounting criticism for acting slowly in the Donbas, prompting thousands to crowd Kyiv’s Maidan to protest his actions just a week before the victories.
By mid-year, the war’s toll was keenly felt by refugees from the war zone. There were now more than 46,000 internally displaced persons – about 11,000 of them from Crimea. President Poroshenko ordered the creation of humanitarian corridors so civilians could flee areas worst hit by the conflict, and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk instructed his government to create a nationwide database of refugees to facilitate relief efforts.
Among those most affected were the Crimean Tatars. Many had fled the Russian-occupied peninsula, while those who remained were subjected to a campaign of harassment and intimidation that included abductions, torture and killings. Crimean Tatar leader Mustafa Dzhemilev was barred from entering Crimean, and his son was arrested and taken to Russia, where he was accused of murder and weapons possession. The elder Mr. Dzhemilev was quoted on October 1 as saying “the Crimean Tatar nation is now in a most complicated and dangerous position since it has always spoken out against the illegal occupation [of Crimea by Russia].”
At the same time, the terrorists in Ukraine’s east were taking prisoners. 1st Lt. Nadiya Savchenko, 33, was captured on June 18 by Russian-backed forces in Ukraine’s Luhansk region and then illegally transferred in July to Russia. The Ukrainian pilot was charged with complicity in the deaths of two Russian journalists in eastern Ukraine – spurious charges that are nothing less than a bold-faced lie. After she was abducted – the Ukrainian officer says she was captured by pro-Russian forces, hooded and handcuffed, and then smuggled across the border to Russia – Lt. Savchenko was jailed and subjected to a psychological examination at Moscow’s Serbsky Institute, notorious during the Soviet era for its treatment of dissidents, where she was held for a month. She remains in pre-trial detention. In the meantime, she was elected on October 26 to the Verkhovna Rada, running as No. 1 on the list of the Batkivshchyna Party, and she was chosen as one of the 12 deputies representing Ukraine in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Lt. Savchenko began a hunger strike on December 13 to protest her imprisonment and as the new year began, there was news that her health had begun to suffer. Her lawyers, who said they have ample evidence to prove her innocence, were working to secure her release as well as recognition that she is a prisoner of war being held illegally by Russia.
Another prisoner being held by Russia was Ukrainian film director Oleh Sentsov, who was detained in Crimea and accused of plotting terrorist attacks. The Lefortovo District Court’s spokeswoman said on July 7 that Mr. Sentsov’s pretrial detention had been prolonged. Mr. Sentsov and three other Ukrainian citizens were arrested in May on suspicion of planning terrorist attacks in Crimea’s major cities – Symferopol, Yalta and Sevastopol. In June the European Film Academy, the chairman of the Ukrainian Association of Cinematographers, Serhiy Trymbach, and prominent Russian film director Nikita Mikhalkov urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to assist in Mr. Sentsov’s release. At year’s end Mr. Sentsov was awaiting trial in Russia.
Among those who gave their lives while defending Ukraine was a native New Yorker, Mark (Markian) Paslawsky, 55, who grew up in New Jersey and graduated from West Point. He took Ukrainian citizenship in 2014 and joined the Donbas battalion to fight the Russian-backed forces in the Donetsk region. Known as Franko, he was killed in action on August 19. His funeral was held on August 26 at St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Church at Askold’s Grave in Kyiv. Mr. Paslawsky was buried Askold’s Grave, becoming only the second Ukrainian to be accorded that honor. He was honored with a National Guard funeral, attended by members of his Donbas battalion, as well as family members who arrived from the United States, several hundred friends and other mourners who simply wanted to pay their respects to a man they’d never met but admired from what they’d heard.
The eulogy was delivered by Patriarch Sviatoslav of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church. “Mark was born in the U.S., which seems as the quietest and calm land on the earth today, where many of those who desire to save their skins flee and save their lives,” said the patriarch. “But that was not the striving of the heart of our brother Mark. He traveled to Ukraine, became one of us here on our native land and had become our brother-in-arms in the struggle for a free and independent country. He became one of us even by citizenship, sacrificing the convenient U.S. citizenship in order to stand beside us in our present struggle.” Mr. Paslawsky attended St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic School in Newark, N.J., and was a member of Plast Ukrainian Scouting Organization. Patriarch Sviatoslav said Plast members all over the world were at the funeral in prayer and in spirit; some attended the services in their Plast uniforms.
Vladimir Gontar/UNIAN
Petro Poroshenko takes the oath of office as Ukraine’s president on June 7.
As if the fighting in Ukraine’s east was not enough, in mid-July came reports that a Malaysia Airlines flight with 298 passengers and crew aboard was downed in Ukraine, some 35 miles from the border with Russia. The Boeing 777 was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. A Ukrainian Internal Affairs Ministry adviser, Anton Herashchenko, claimed the plane had been shot down by a ground-to-air missile. Both Ukrainian and Russian authorities denied shooting down the Malaysian passenger aircraft. President Poroshenko called the July 17 incident a terrorist act, and a statement on the presidential website noted: “…In recent days, this has become the third tragic accident following AN-26 and SU-25 aircrafts of the Ukrainian armed forces downed from the Russian territory. We do not exclude that this aircraft was also attacked and emphasize that the armed forces of Ukraine have not taken any actions to strike targets in the air. …All possible search-and-rescue operations are being carried out. President Poroshenko addressed the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine to set up an Emergency State Commission for the thorough investigation of this tragedy. The president has invited the ICAO [International Civil Aviation Organization] and other international experts including Dutch and Malaysian representatives to join the investigation efforts. …”
U.S. intelligence officials said on July 22 that they believe pro-Russian rebels probably shot down the Malaysia airliner over eastern Ukraine “by mistake.” According to RFE/RL, they said the passenger jet was likely downed by an SA-11 surface-to-air missile fire by the rebels. While saying there was no direct link so far to the Kremlin, the officials said Russia had “created the conditions” for the downing of the plane. Search and retrieval operations at the crash site were hampered by the ongoing war in Ukraine’s east. In November, Dutch authorities said recovery workers in the rebel-controlled region had begun to collect debris from the crash. The operation was being carried out under the supervision of Dutch investigators and officials from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Debris was first collected at a location near the crash site before being taken to Kharkiv and then to the Netherlands, as most of those killed were Dutch.
Back in Kyiv, the Cabinet of Ministers resigned and the majority coalition in the Verkhovna Rada collapsed on July 24. Prime Minister Yatsenyuk blamed the government’s collapse on the failure of Parliament’s pro-EU factions to support emergency measures to finance the state budget and conduct serious natural gas reforms. Earlier that day, the UDAR and the Svoboda parties declared they were abandoning the parliamentary coalition. Mr. Yatsenyuk said, “It’s unacceptable that the coalition has collapsed, that bills haven’t been voted on and there’s nothing to pay soldiers, police, doctors, fill up APCs, the decision hasn’t been made to fill Ukrainian natural gas tanks survive the winter and to free ourselves from dependence on Russian gas.” He added: “When one coalition falls apart, the prime minister begins the procedure of forming a new coalition, which means that he is supposed to take the Communists and Party of Regions. I won’t do that any under any circumstances. The second, if there isn’t a new coalition and the current one collapsed, requires the government and prime minister to resign. I declare my resignation in relation to the collapse of the coalition and blocking of government initiatives.”
Also that week, the parliamentary faction of the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU) was liquidated as part of a broader campaign to outlaw the party after ample evidence surfaced that it had cooperated with the Russian government in its annexation of Crimea and the war in the Donbas. A parliamentary majority of 232 national deputies voted on July 22 to approve legislation that created a membership quota for factions and provided for their liquidation if the quota was not met. The new rule directly applied to the Communist faction, which had been hemorrhaging national deputies since the Russian invasion began in March. “Its deputies have run away from it, people in the country have turned their backs on them,” National Deputy Viacheslav Kyrylenko, the bill’s sponsor, told the Rada. “That’s why we’re now simply required to fulfill this formality and give the parliamentary head the ability to simply introduce regulatory order.” President Poroshenko signed the bill the same day, and it became law on July 24, when it was published in the Parliament’s newspaper, enabling Verkhovna Rada Chair Turchynov to declare the CPU faction’s liquidation from the seventh convocation that morning. “It is a historic event,” he said. “I hope that there won’t be any Communist factions in the Ukrainian Parliament anymore.”
RFE/RL via Facebook/Anton Gerashchenko
Mark Paslawsky, “Franko,” who was killed in action in eastern Ukraine on August 19.
Then, a week later, the Verkhovna Rada voted to approve amendments to the budget and tax code that it had rejected earier, and it refused to accept the resignation of Prime Minister Yatsenyuk. Mr. Yatsenyuk pushed to get Ukrainian citizens to foot a larger bill for the armed forces and the reconstruction of ruined infrastructure in the Donbas region. In particular, he targeted the biggest businessmen. As a result of the July 31 legislation, Mr. Yatsenyuk would be able to secure the next loan package of $1 billion from the International Monetary Fund and $500 million from the World Bank, expected to be issued in late August. Mr. Yatsenyuk and his Cabinet were to remain in their posts until after pre-term parliamentary elections were held.
Also in late July, the European Union and the United States unveiled their toughest measures yet against Russia over its support for separatists fighting government forces in eastern Ukraine. European Council President von Rompuy said the measures will restrict access to EU capital markets for Russian state-owned banks, impose an embargo on trade in arms, and restrict exports of dual-use goods and sensitive technologies, particularly in the field of the oil sector. The U.S. Treasury Department added three banks to a list of sectoral sanctions and sanctioned one shipbuilding company in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine. The EU on July 29, and again on September 8, November 27 and December 18, added the names of more individuals and entities to a growing list of those subject to sanctions over the Ukraine crisis. By year’s end, the European Union’s lists of sanctions had expanded to over 120 individuals and some 30 entities.
The sanctions were upped due to Russia’s role in the conflict in Ukraine and the holding of illegitimate elections in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts on November 2. President Poroshenko, it should be noted, depicted those elections as “a farce at gunpoint” organized by “terrorist organizations” and underscored that they were not an expression of the people’s will. Nonetheless, the newly “elected” leaders of the Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” (DNR and LNR) were sworn into office.
Before those “elections” were held, President Poroshenko had travelled to Minsk on August 26 for the trilateral summit that included leaders of Ukraine, the European Union and the Eurasian troika (Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan). The meeting participants discussed how to end the war, a new natural gas agreement and the remaining issues surrounding the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement. The players reached only minor arrangements, which consisted of consultations between the Ukrainian and Russian joint chiefs of staff and border agencies to address the war, activating the work of a trilateral contact group to produce a road map for peace and renewing gas talks.
Mr. Poroshenko also met one-on-one with Mr. Putin. The two failed to agree to de-escalate the Donbas war or even seriously discuss a ceasefire. Mr. Poroshenko reminded Mr. Putin of the need to release all hostages, as well as to close the border to transfers of arms and military hardware from Russia. These demands fell on deaf ears. While he shook hands with Mr. Poroshenko with one hand, Mr. Putin was escalating the armed fighting with the other as the Russian forces accelerated the delivery of military hardware, arms and fighters, according to the press service of the Ukrainian government’s ATO. Those reports were confirmed by the U.S. government. “The new columns of Russian tanks and heavy armaments that are crossing Ukraine’s border are evidence that a direct counteroffensive has already begun,” tweeted U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt on August 26, during the Minsk summit.
On September 5, agreement on a second ceasefire for Ukraine’s east was reached in Minsk between former President Leonid Kuchma, representing the Ukrainian government, and the self-proclaimed leaders of the Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics.” Among its 12 points were ceasing warfare, exchanging hostages and withdrawing Russian soldiers and hardware. The Russians nonetheless continued their offensive, reportedly shelling the outskirts of Mariupol with mortar fire, shooting up the Donetsk airport under Ukrainian control and evacuating a village outside of Debaltseve in the Donetsk region in preparation for an attack on the town, our Kyiv correspondent reported in The Weekly’s September 14 issue. In that same issue, a report from the Eurasia Daily Monitor headlined “Mariupol says no to Novorossiya” noted the failure of Mr. Putin’s Novorossiya project to attract popular support in southeastern Ukraine. Another RFE/RL report, dated October 8, noted that there is not even the pretense of honoring the truce that was supposed to pave the way for ending the conflict, as night after night, “separatists near the airport shell army positions inside the airport perimeter, and the soldiers respond with fire of their own.”
There was some good news in the realm of education, as President Poroshenko on July 31 signed into law the bill “On Higher Education” passed by the Verkhovna Rada on July 1. The legislation was described by political observers as the first comprehensive, structural reform to be achieved since the Euro-Maidan movement. Among the legislation’s biggest changes were provisions to involve universities in autonomously recognizing foreign diplomas and degrees (without ministry involvement); remove barriers for foreign professors, university faculty and students electing their rectors; and enhance university autonomy in managing finances. The reforms draw Ukrainian higher education closer to European principles and standards, said Marta Farion, the president of the Kyiv-Mohyla Foundation of America. She particularly credited the “perseverance and drive” of current Education and Science Minister Serhiy Kvit (previously president of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy), National Technical University of Kyiv Polytechnic Institute Rector Mykhailo Zhurovskyi and Parliamentary Committee on Education and Science Chair Lilia Hrynevych, who is also the deputy chair of the Batkivshchyna party. “These are changes that will affect generations to come. The law makes it possible to separate politics from education and to integrate higher education with the world’s academic and research community, making it possible for Ukrainian universities to comply with ranking standards on an international level,” said Ms. Farion.
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.”